‘’Were there not ten that were cleansed? But where are the nine?’’ Ever since the Lord Jesus Christ asked this question (Luke 17: 17-29) over three thousand years ago of ten lepers whom he had healed and only one returned to give him thanks, none of the nine ungrateful lepers has ever surfaced to apologise for their ingratitude and repented of their sin and asked to be made whole.
According to this much quoted story in Luke 17: 17-29 which has become the Scriptural anchor on the subject of praising and giving thanks to God for His blessings upon our lives, ten lepers had besotted Jesus Christ asking him to heal them of that terrible affliction. He obliged them but only one of them returned to give thanks and this one was healed completely of that disease. Although the nine ungrateful ones were healed but they were not made whole.
Those 9 ingrates, we can guess, are still out there boasting about how they had an encounter with ‘good luck’ which helped them to be healed of their leprosy. I do not blame these nine because at the time this historical incident took place, the Bible as we have it today, had not been written. The people of that time too were not as privileged as some of us today are to have been blessed with the knowledge that when you are blessed by God He requires of you to thank and give Him praise for whatever it is He has done for you.
I think I was formerly one of the nine ungrateful lepers. So only eight of the ten healed lepers are actually now remaining. Due to the benefit of the era or dispensation in which I live I have now learnt the necessity of thanksgiving and praising God for his favours. What is more, exactly twenty years ago this year, God gave me a command to choose a date in the first month of every New Year to offer him thanks for the blessings I have received from Him in the year that has just passed. I therefore decided that I will set aside the first Saturday of January of every New Year to organize this event.
Since the year 2005 when this command was given, I have faithfully staged a thanksgiving event every year to express my gratitude to the Lord Almighty. Today, Saturday, January 4, as you are reading this, the event is holding in my humble house in Nyanya, Abuja. And let me give you one sincere testimony. Since I started doing this, no old year has been better than the new one. And I can bet that it will continue to be so until the day I called forth by God. It means in effect that I have been growing from strength to strength. Each New Year has been better than the one just passed.
But just what am I thanking God particularly for for the year 2024 which ended some four days ago? I think , among others, it is the renewal of my strength, my ability and agility. I have never felt as strong and as vibrant as I ever did in the year that just passed. My spiritual and physical intelligence has increased. My ability to hear God’s ministration has increased. God directs me on the path to go.
When I wake up in the morning and pray to him and tell him that I have surrendered myself, my will, my emotion, my thoughts and my desires into his hands; that he should draw up or write an agenda for me to pursue for the day and for him to give me the strength and the wisdom to execute those items on my agenda, he has always been faithful in doing just that for me. Sometimes my plan is to do a set of things for the day but when I commit my ways to Him he directs me to do a completely different set of things. And when I obey his direction, I get bountiful profit. How do I know? When I start pursuing those things he has directed me to do, they get done with such relative ease that you will know there is an unseen hand in their getting done. I urge you my brethren to try this out and see for yourselves.
Thanksgiving is so important to God. Why this is so, I do not know. But the question quoted above which Jesus asked is very instructive. It means that God expects to be thanked and praised by his creatures. God has everything. It is not a stress to him to give anyone anything. Why then does he bother us about thanking Him for every favour he has done us? The answer is that it is the only thing God cannot give to himself. He therefore requires it of us. He cannot tell himself ‘’well done’’. It will sound so odd to the ear if He does that. He therefore requires the beneficiaries of his goodness to carry out that small task in his honour.
