EWEJE: RUNNING FROM PARENT INTO GOD'S ARMS

#pastorbiodunsoretire

 The aspect I found most interesting in his speech was that we would be boarding. 

Whaoh! I've never been a boarder all through my education thus far. Here is my golden opportunity to have a taste of the pudding. I grabbed it with both hands. A life away from parent! My curiosity had the better of me. And I got Mama Sho, that is, my mother, informed. Of course, my longing for freedom away from her was edited out of my presentation. Thank God, she had no objection.

God worked in mysterious ways! I went to Eweje looking for freedom from parental encumbrances. But He had a better deal for me.

Eweje was an experience indeed. It will need another memoir to recount that side of my life. But I will have to stay with the brief of this memoir. I was a nominal Christian for the greater part of Eweje episode. I lived my Goje life of student fun to the fullest within the first four or five months of our pilgrimage. 

Being together as students in a dormitory all through the day and night could not promise anything less. The experience was better than the one I could have had in a secondary school boarding house. Here, there was no housemaster, no light out and no other signs of externally regimented life. Apart from lecture and agric practical periods, we were f-r-e-e!

It was in short some sort of a tertiary hostel. We fended for ourselves, food and cooking inclusive. And that comes at times with "kre" moments: moments of short or stall in supply as my pastor will call it. And we were very creative in managing such situations. 

Have you ever heard of jollof Eba? It was there I came across and got involved in its preparation and consumption. The recipe is simple. Just put ground, grated or cut pepper (any pepper will do) in a pot of water. Add palm oil, salt and diced onion if that is available. Heat the concoction to boiling. It is time to put your gaari and turn it to a cream. Yours sincerely, there you are with jollof Eba ready to be taken without meat or soup. But please, eat it while still fresh and hot. At times, when we get buoyant, courtesy of fresh supply from the headquarters, Mama Sho in my own case, our pots get a feel of soup.

And as for animal protein, we don't go too far. It is either "tapa-titan" or "mortal". I will explain before you crucify me for using foreign lingo from the Mars. "Tapa-titan" is the "technical" jargon for the head and legs of chicken which have been cut off from the chicken sold or supplied to eateries and hotels. We were there as the waste management agents to mop up the head and legs into our pot at "shikini" money. But, "Mortal" is the senior of "Tapa-titan". These are the chickens that have just freshly died from the poultry around. We were always on time to take delivery of them at a ridiculously reduced price. Whatever killed the bird is none of our business. Even if it is bird flu. Let it go and be explaining itself to the boiling water if it can. Whenever we "jam" such luck, it will be festivities for us and our pot. We tried inventing another animal protein from the abundance of strange sounding, smelling and looking bats living between the roof and ceiling of our dormitory. The adventure was a failure. Those bats tasted horrible, just like their sound, sight and smell.

The only aspect of Eweje life I hated was the "face your arable" part. Cutting grass or clearing farm would never come easy for me considering my build and background. Even if suburban, I had lived in the city all the while.

Eweje life sped on with speed, to be cut short three months to go with an admission offered me by Ogun State Polytechnic. But it was not meant to end uneventful with respect to my spiritual life.

All along, a man usually came to our dormitory to spend long hours with us discussing football and politics. He was so versed in many fields that one could be tempted to label him a living encyclopaedia. We called him Booda Tunji. That was all I would have known about him but for two or so months to packing my bags and baggage out of Eweje when I discovered this was my destiny helper in waiting. 

Booda Tunji was neither a football analyst nor a politician. Here was the committed and word-of-God-rich pastor of the only Pentecostal church in the immediate neighbourhood using one of the school's deserted dormitories for their services. It was an interesting discovery as I sat with my mouth agape watching the hitherto football analyst ministered as a guest minister in a church where many of us students had been invited to for this their special programme.

The sleeping born-again giant in me instantly awoke. Indeed, the deep would definitely call unto the deep. Automatically, I gave his church a try. And that was it. My spiritual life has found a breeding ground. In no time the divine destiny that has brought Booda Tunji and I together transformed our togetherness into a mentor-mentee relationship. And so it is till date.

HOW I DROPPED MY GIRLFRIEND!

 #pastorbiodunsoretire

I used to be a nice boy that grew up to follow my mother, who had us, five children, in her custody and care, having been separated from our four-and-a-half-wifed father after many rivalry world wars, to a white garment church.

I mean I was nice. I had only one girlfriend, Bernice. She used to be Basirat but a convert from a non-white garment Christian denomination christened her such on assuming the duty of taking us the young ones Sunday school.

Bernice was a tall, fair-complexioned, beautiful girl with inviting smile always playing around the corners of her mouth as if she had some food bit there. I think a pair of dimples completed the profile of her beautiful face.

My girlfriend being one was not the main thing that gave me the impression that I was nice. It was my keeping sex out of the whole affair.

 But I was not totally innocent: I craved and sometimes created occasions that our walking together would lead us to some dark corner or another so we could quickly play a fast one about necking and petting before any hapless passer-by interrupted.

With respect to sex, I used to tell her: 

“You know I’m a child bred well in the norms and nuances of the elders, I will not want us to taste the forbidden fruit until we are married.” 

And she would smile her concession. Though I usually had a feeling that if I had demanded the illicit sex she would have obliged me. 

Between you and me, my presented reason before her for the abstinence was not the whole truth. The other part was partially fear – I’ve never done it before, what if pregnancy results, God's anger factor – and partially an unconfirmed concern that my “boyhood” size might be a disappointment. Of course, I kept that to myself.

In the midst of that relationship, I got born again. But the cord was too strong for me to break.

When the passion got the better of me and I could not resist this beautiful face, our necking and petting episode involuntarily played out. My grief became great thereafter.  It became great. Really great. Its conclusion: the end of a born-again period. 

Days or weeks after, when another altar call opportunity came, that was the forum for me to enter another born-again phase. Ignorance or deception, I wouldn’t know: I felt rededication would not be potent enough.

I actually tried some means to separate from this beautiful temptation. I created distance. But I can’t deceive you. Rather than her matter waning in our away period, it would actually ferment. And when we eventually met, this lust would brew to overflowing. An end to another born-again era was in sight.

My understanding opened and I discovered I am bereft of God's word and uplifting fellowship with brethren. 

I discussed with Mom to let me be attending a Bible-believing church. Of course I got the red light hey presto. She said: “You can’t leave ..., it's a glorious church”. It was a glorious church indeed. In fact, people will say, "You will see glory without getting to..."

Service starts on Sunday by ten ‘o’ clock. Many of us will turn in by eleven, that is, we the early comers. That was because my mother was among the faithful ones: we put our white garment on from home, meaning our bare feet were spoiling for punishment from the heating macadamised road covering the greater part of our twenty-minute walk from home to the base of the church mountain. 

Some others would wait till they had scaled the one-hundred-and-twenty-three-stepped stairs' hurdle of the church mountain before they got to remove their shoes and transformed from mufti to the “holy garment.”

Yes. We resumed service ten ‘o’ clock and the worship could extend to two or three in the afternoon. A lot of items found their ways into the programme but top on the list was singing and dancing. Even outside the denomination we were known for that. We are singers and dancers.

 When praises are high and mood follows in the trail, spontaneous visitations from the realm of the spirit become the order of the day. Prophetesses and prophets are sighted here and there jumping up, raising one leg, rolling on the floor, gyrating backwards and displaying many other manifestations of the spontaneous spirit possession.

Our service did even accommodate chairmanship competition. Well, that was a creative way of raising money for the church. A male is invited forward and seated on one side as the “chairman” and a female is equally invited forward and seated on the other side as the “chairwoman”. Ladies and gentlemen, it is now time for flexing of financial muscles between the menfolk and the womenfolk of the church. 

Not that we do not have a time for sermon. But the content and context of such sermons had not been able to convict or convince me in my spiritual pilgrimage. But Mom could not see that. I didn’t expect her to. She was an unrepentant faithful that always saw the best in the church; a prophetess of repute.

Do we really hold Bible study? Honestly, my memory is a pitch blackness on that. So, I continued wobbling and fumbling in my Christian race. 

The only place of real spiritual contact for me being once-in-a-week school fellowship; not the general all-comers fellowship during the school hour. This fellowship was after the school hours and few of us with thirsty souls were being ministered to weekly by a mature Christian brother that looked a deeper lifer. That was the place of altar call opportunity I earlier referred to.

My instability continued through my secondary school days.

It was an unusual way of taking care of temptation. Permit me to call it "rumour of war" method. 

You should remember the story in the Bible where God made an invading king to hear only a rumour of war and he had to abandon his mission and voted with his feet. Who would not? Just a rumour of war led to the death of one hundred and eighty five thousand soldiers in one night. I'm sure if I were in his shoes I would not want to wait to see the real war when just a rumour of it has done so much damage.

It was a rumour I heard too that forcefully disengaged me from my ungodly engagement. Up to today, it remained a rumour. I never bothered to confirm it.

A little bird told me that my lust-entangled mistletoe, Bernice, was caught red-handed in a love-tangle with another boy in the church who was our age mate but not my acquaintance. It was under the roof of our spiritual asylum building, Ile Aabo, they were seen to be committing such sacrilege. 

That did it. Nay, I mean, that undid it. Indeed jealousy was as strong as death. This jealousy forced me to die! I had to die. Yes, I had to die to this sin stronghold once and for all. 

Imagine, the one for whom we engage ourselves in fasting to save from predicament setting his table outside having a gourmet lunch. It was painful I allowed the perfecting of my salvation dragged for what was not worth it. 

Even though I didn't jump on a fact-finding mission immediately or thereafter, I instantly saw my folly. If I had died in the sin-struggle of not letting go of her, then I would have been forced by the cold hands of death to let her go anyway and, in addition, face the pangs of hell all alone. 

I came to my senses like the biblical prodigal son and finally let go.

If my memory would not be failing me, not too long after, I wrapped up my secondary education in Lantoro High School. 

But just before we dropped our pen, we had a destiny visitor to the school. 

It was the principal of one Odeda Farm Institute, Eweje. He had come on an awareness campaign of a one-year general agriculture course in his Institute for secondary school leavers like us.

God worked in mysterious ways! I went to Eweje looking for freedom from parental encumbrances. But He had a better deal for me...

(Culled from This Christian Race) 

BUMPY ACCUSATION: When your reputation is on the line

I was accosted by a woman who happened to be an usher in the assembly that hosted our last combined service.

 Some things went wrong in the combined service, part of which was the boycott of duty by the district (combined) ushers. It was at the ministers' meeting that followed that many of us got to know the reason for such action. They were protesting the lassitude of the ushers from that assembly towards district functions. I got to know of it, like many other ministers, at that ministers' meeting.

But this is how the woman accused me:

‘I heard you were the one who raised it at the ministers' meeting that the district ushers chose not to support us at the combined service because we don’t participate in activities that combine the ushers in the district.’

You can imagine my anger! I was literally boiling.

 But do I really need it? 

When we are wrongly accused, what should be our reaction and action? Just before that…

GOD'S STAND

God reckons that man possesses essentially four things: his life, his home, his properties (which are basically food, clothing and shelter) and his name. He therefore promulgated laws to protect them in the Ten Commandments,

Commandment 6 – Thou shall not kill – to protect the sanctity of life

Commandment 7 – Thou shall not commit adultery – to protect the sanctity of home

Commandment 8 – Thou shall not steal – to protect the sanctity of property

Commandment 9 – Thou shall not bear false witness – to protect the sanctity of reputation (or name)

And anything that will rob man of any of these, God takes very seriously and will punish – 1 Pet.4:15. 

False accusation damages a person’s name. And God hates it with passion. If man can punish it under laws such as libel and defamation, God will do much more. So, God charges us to always prove all things - 1 Thess. 5:21

NOW TO YOUR ACTION AND REACTION

Your reputation has been having a very smooth ride all around town. So, you feel you are a good driver. 

Suddenly, a bump comes into view. That is when your driving skill is put to the real test. That false accusation is the bump. And here are a few tips on how to go over it:

1. Apply the break – we will always overreact when we act on first impulse. Yoruba have an adage: you don’t row your boat violently because the waves of the sea are breaking violently.

They mounted pressure on Jesus to speak at once but He didn’t allow them to rush Him into it, John 8:3-6. When He eventually spoke, everyone spoiling for a fight instantly ran out of steam, John 8:7-9. 

When we calm it, we are better collected and our words or deeds will be better convincing. Steam burns and hurts but when it is calmed and collected, it becomes the purest form of water for drinking.

2. Match the clutch – it is always necessary to do some soul-searching before firing any salvo. In fact, that is what the foregoing step should prepare you to do. 

There can be no smoke without fire. As much as possible, trace the fire, then you will be able to know whether it is a misrepresentation, misinterpretation or quoting out of context that is responsible for the smoke.

I discovered mine almost a bit too late. It was because I spoke in defence of the ushers at a point in the heat of the minister’s meeting debate.

Such verification of the facts in your heart will help you to decide what to do with the accuser and the accusation.

3. Select the gear – this is the action-end. This should happen when the eventual products of your thoughts have been made to pass through the scrutiny of the Holy Spirit, your greatest counsellor in this matter. 

So, depending on the Holy Spirit, you might just have to educate the accuser or debunk the accusation as a rumour in its entirety. But one thing I’m sure of is He will never send you to fight anyone. 

What of false accusation that has spread like wildfire? Tell everyone who cares to know the truth and leave the rest to God.

The Pharisees paid and supported the soldiers to peddle the rumour that Jesus was stolen from the grave by his disciples (Matt. 28:11-15) but today, millions of people know the truth. 

The God who has always been protecting your life when you cannot is always at work to preserve your name and will handle those trying to drag your name in the mud Himself.

A CASE FOR THE TALENT-BURYING SERVANT (JESUSTOONS SERIES 5)