As usual, whenever I had my day off on Sunday I will go to church with my wife and son. Today the reading from the Gospel was quite interesting. It was taken from Luke 17:11-19 about the Ten Healed of Leprosy.
It reads, “Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!” When he saw them, he said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” Andas they went, they were cleansed. One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him — and he was a Samaritan. Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”
Is this thing happening to Christians nowadays? I would say yes. I quote what the priest said today. In his sermon, he concentrated on how low church attendance was every Sunday. St. Thomas Church Bintulu registers about slightly more than 700 congregants.For him it was poor considering that every year almost 200 people receive their confirmation here. Then he asked from the congregation how many of them attending the confirmation class this year and only 15 people raise up their hand but there are 160 people register for confirmation class.
For me, I would rather relate this to a more personal view in our daily Christian life. Look at the scripture. How many are those seeking Jesus help to heal them? It was 10 people and all was healed by Jesus. But only one went back and give praise to the Lord and thank him.
A lot of Christians nowadays only seek God when they hve trouble, problems and need some healing physically and mentally. Some even question God why God make him/her suffer. But how many of this people who moan about God when they are in trouble give thanks to the God when they receive their share of good things? I can say none of them. People that always thank God will never moan to God when bad things happen.
Let me share some of my experiences during my ministry of healing and deliverance. I didn’t do the healing and deliverance. I was in the group playing guitar and coordinating the band. I have seen a lot of people coming to God when they are sick and need the healing touch of God. They join our fellowship and go to the altar when it is time for healing and deliverance. Many of those who have faith are being healed. They do spread the good news just like the other none of the leprosy sufferers whom had been healed. But I can say only few of them come back the following week to join the fellowship. And some did come back when they are sick and need God healing power. It just like they said, “Bye bye Lord. Thank you for healing me. I will come back to you when I’m sick again. Now I want to enjoy myself while I’m still healthy.”
It was sad, but this is what happens. Then we need to question ourselves. Did we do the same thing? What we can do to ensure we didn’t do the same thing? We can start by doing the small thing. Always pray at least when we receive our food. Go to church every time we are not working and have our day off. Never complain and moan to God when our life is getting tough that we had really hard time. Always thank God when we receive our salary and make a big offering to the Lord when we get our salary raise. That is the simplest thing we can do to ensure we don’t go to God only in time of need.
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