Brother, at least smile 😭

Firstly, I wanna apologise for my woran woran. I was supposed to message those that won my giveaway but life got ahead of me. If you hear your name, say “present aunty”. I’d message if I know you personally or send an email with my number if I don’t. I’m truly sorry ❤️

• Rebecca Obiebi

• Oluewutolulope4

• Ayobamiarola

• Thiasparks

• Oreadele

Beginning of the year, I joined a revival group organised by my spiritual mentor. We were to pray in tongues for at least 40 minutes for 40 days. I wrote down 4 prayer points before it started and the first one was “Divine courage to do Kingdom work”. I would pray fervently for this “courage” and one day on my way to work, it came and it chop my eye.

A little backstory of myself…. I am a super shy person and I don’t like talking to strangers/new people. Sadly, I have the ability to compartmentalise and wear a social butterfly persona which makes people feel welcome, safe and turnt. I don’t actually like going out to places where I have to meet new people especially parties (house parties, games night, or other occasions) where I know no one. Nobody ever believes me when I say I’m shy and it just increases my social anxiety. Anyway, back to the matter at hand.

I boarded a bus from somewhere in Yaba going to Obalende, sat in the front as per big madam and after a while, I realised I hadn’t prayed that morning (my preferred prayer time is 12am). We were on third mainland bridge and I started praying immediately starting with the prayerpoint I spoke about. I had not spent up to 3 minutes in the place of prayer when the Holy Spirit told me “Tell the man beside you that he is loved”.

Immediately I thought to myself, “Holy Spirit if you wan disgrace me, just tear my cloth in public. You don’t need to be extreme”. He then replied saying, “Do you think courage will magically come upon you? Rather, you would be placed in situations where you have to exhibit courage”. It made sense to me so I reminded myself that I am no longer a slave to fear and I turned to the brother beside me.

This brother’s face was strong ehn!!!!!! He was also signing into a zoom meeting. At that moment, I told myself “Wahala o. How will you disturb someone’s meeting na?”. One word I want you to get out of this post is “When God calls you, He makes provisions for your shortcomings”. For some insane reason that day, I had a notebook and pen in my bag. This is something I never used to do prior to then. I remembered having them so I utilised them in writing a sweet note to this brother telling him that Jesus loved him. I also applied my lip balm as ammunition (My life can be falling apart and I’ll first apply my Vaseline lip therapy in Aloe).

I smiled at this young man and stretched the note towards him. He refused to collect it and I am sure he was thinking that I wanted to beg him for money. I smiled encouragingly and told him “you can take the note”. He used a finger to open it while I was still holding it and when he didn’t see anything about money, he collected it. He read it and continued with his meeting. Not a word. No acknowledgement whatsoever. Nothing. If anything, his frown got deeper. At that moment, I just wanted the ground to swallow me.

We got to Obalende and he decided to come down before reaching the bus stop. He looked at me, no word, no acknowledgement still and he walked away. I realised that that day was going to be my day of dragging on twitter. I kept saying “God why would you do this to me” and ruminated on this situation for a long while. The answer came to me two weeks after.

I wanted courage to preach to people and win souls for God. I wanted to be able to preach in buses and at bus stops. I wanted the “gift” of evangelism. While it is beautiful to desire the gifts of the spirit, evangelism is not one of them. It is your primary job as a Christian. Christianity is the religion of love. The most popular verse attached to it is John 3:16 and it clearly says “For God so LOVED the world”. Everything that we enjoy now as Christians spurred from that immense love the Father showed us and we should ,at all times, show that love to others.

While it is beautiful to preach with your mouth and win souls, it is even more beautiful for your character as a Christian to do this for you. How do you treat those in your immediate environment? How do you treat strangers when you see them in need of help? How often do you smile at people and tell them “God bless you” or “Jesus loves you”? How often do you tell your friends that they matter to you? How many times do you intercede on the behalf of others? How evident is Christ in your life?

It would be a disservice if you went out, spoke to a lot of people about Jesus while those close to you cannot associate themselves with your ministry because you are synonymous to wahala. That kind of “Christain” that is unkind, a gossip, lazy, angry amongst other bad characters. It would be a disservice if on your way home from evangelism you stop over at your partner’s place to engage in sexual immorality (this phrase sounds really weird to me 😂). Let people associate the word Christ-like to your life. Christ’s tone was compassion and sacrifice.

I guess all I’m saying is, let love be your ministry.

P.S: When people walk up to you, irrespective of the reason, please I take God beg you, smile or acknowledge. Abeg! That thing dey pain die!