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Once upon a time we looked anxiously forward to see 2018. By His grace, 2018 has only 9 days to go and we all now look forward to 2019. The year 2018 is a memorable year for us all in terms of ''CHANGE'' in every front. I don't know about you but I can generally say It is a year that no HONEST man's efforts to survive financially counted or worked as planned. My observation is that EVERYBODY survived only by the direct Grace and Miracles of provisions of God given birth to by His UNCONDITIONAL MERCY. To buttress this, how did people survive without earning salaries or with business men and women having no money to do business that will yield them incomes (profit) adequate enough to cater for them and their families? 2. On the spiritual front, 2018 is the year that churches faced the greatest ever challenges on their age-long doctrinal teachings that went to the very foundation of church funding, I mean tithing - interpreting the same Bible which have been taught to people over 2000 years - the church became clearly divided into two distinct camps: those for or against tihing and doesn't appear that the centre will ever hold again.
It is the year the lifestyles of church leadership (affluence) versus followership (poverty ridden) lives were thoroughly subjected to scientific investigations. The outcome was that the former was rebuked and the latter pitied and was directly taught that the church had become a milking ground upon which they should stop pouring their hard to earn milk. Whichever side
one belongs, God continues to care for everybody because He does not attach conditions to His love. He doesn't need bribes!
2018 is the year that God used the safe fallure of someone like Daddy Freeze’s marriage to open us all up to understand the Bible better by challenging the status quo of Christianity in Nigeria and it is still doing so. The struggle in the church shifted from focusing on anti-christ to focusing on those who profess to be the true children of God with particular reference to the Pentecostal churches.
It is a year that contrary to God's command to bless, our revered 'men men and women of God' chose to curse everybody, government, congregation members, terrorists, or just anybody opposed to their sustained but challenged doctrinal teachings on many issues ranging from money, marriage, lifestyle, wealth, etc but such curses never had effect but simply waived aside by our merciful God who was busy meeting everybody's daily needs. God made manifest His statement ‘vengeance is mine’, not Pastors.
2018 is the year that Nigeria was able to detect that apart from Boko Haram, the greatest war she really has to fight and win is Corruption. Many political parties with or without influence emerged but the two most influential parties are APC (the anti-corruption party) and PDP (the suspected promoter of corruption) and the leaderships of both parties are known for whom they are. 2018 lays the foundation for 2019 that will determine who wins between Mr Anti-corruption and Mr Corruption and Nigeria will never remain the same.
2018 is the year that our Igbo brothers advanced their (shadow chasing) campaign for Self determination as if once won, there will be no problems for their people Biafra which I thinki s a farce because every tribe has the progressives and the unprogressives amidst them and the problem that makes Nigeria what it is today is waiting for the Biafra Country expecting to emerge. The most sensible thing to me is to retain one Nigeria (You can, if you like, change her name to WAZOBIA or anything but let the geographical entity be as is) and focus on fighting our real enemy: CORRUPTION, the mother of a son called INJUSTICE!
In Ekiti State, 2018 is a ZERO year for farmers (I mean my direct economic constituency) as the FAYOSE administration drove home the point that he had nothing for them except fight the herdsmen whose cows were devouring the toils of the hapless and helpless farmers that cannot even fund their little farms to get good results anyway.
That Government portrayed itself as pro farmer but in reality, the farmers themselves knew it was anti-farmers.
The 2018 Fayemi's administration has laid her 2019 farmer's expectation budget of 6% for the farmers which I summed up by asking a rhetorical question: when will farmers received favor from Ekiti State's Government? I personally don't expect farmers to have less than 25% share of the total budget if we truly want to promote agriculture as our main source of generating good income and food sustainability for the State. What will be the outcome of 26% to be spent on KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION, as applicable to farmers when FBS/ADP trained/certified farmers acquire knowledge without the corresponding finances to practise what we learnt from professional farmers schools? Ekiti farmers are still deep in trouble! May God rescue us.
Now coming to education. In 1973, I obtained my Primary School Leaving Certificate/Testimonial free of charge. In 2018 after a laborious negotiations, it cost me N3000 to obtain same for a child I sponsored!
In 2018, I experienced the greatest challenge of my close to 40 years of parenting when one of my 15 year-old children (don't ask whether biological or not . I draw no distinction) I am trying to shape for the better proved impossible. After my incessant prayers, preachings, internal/external counsellings, teachings, appeals, begging, etc were all proving ineffective, I painfully and reluctantly handed over my difficult child to the police. He spent 24 hours in their cell to let him know the fate awaiting children who choose the wrong way. The police helped counsel as well as threatened him and narrated the ordeals awaiting criminally minded children in their latter life and finally released him to us thinking I had done something that would help us but he came back home doing exactly what he was doing in a more coordinated way. More hardened is he became such that my heart melted inside me. Yet this is a wonderful child God gave me a vision of a better tomorrow about. See now why I can change my upbringing strategies on him but cannot abandoned him altogether. This is a child whose school fees never fails to come from his sponsor so I am not even the one paying it! Mine is limited to ensuring heis character is rightly moulded. . (Don't ask me whether the Police demanded for cola. They did not hammer on that because they knew me as a Pastor as one of their officers was my church member. So I did as I deemed fit to appreciate them for a job well done) Then I resorted to going to, again PAINFULLY AND INVOLUNTARILY taking my boy to Welfare where he spent close to 3 month's being corrected. He came back more hardened. We're now back home working on him because this is a soul desperately in need of salvation but what to do we don't know but I remain trying in God to change him for the better. However what baffled me most was I was not able to get him released from welfare easily because of the illegal demand for 'ransome'. However my professional legal and pastoral trainings helped me greatly to resist paying 'ransome' for what I should get free, as I boldly demanded he be released without any strings attached and my wishes and command obeyed to the letter. Such is life. The devil doesn't leave you until you tell him “God rebukes you". How can a Senior office who doubles asks a parent see our predicament as an avenue to make money? Where is the conscience of a native or orthodox Dr who is approached by a woman suffering from infertility for help but ended up being raped by the supposed helper?
Brethren, reflect for the rest of this year.
Recount your experiences but don't ever forget that you are surviving 2018 not because you were able to manage your lives yourself but that God in His infinite mercies graciously came to your aid. Look forward to 2019 optimistically but cling to Jesus. Compliments of the Season to you all. May the coming New Year usher in for us all unspeakable joy.
May Nigeria never fail, falter and fall I'm 2019 in Jesus name. Amen.
Once upon a time we looked anxiously forward to see 2018. By His grace, 2018 has only 9 days to go and we all now look forward to 2019. The year 2018 is a memorable year for us all in terms of ''CHANGE'' in every front. I don't know about you but I can generally say It is a year that no HONEST man's efforts to survive financially counted or worked as planned. My observation is that EVERYBODY survived only by the direct Grace and Miracles of provisions of God given birth to by His UNCONDITIONAL MERCY. To buttress this, how did people survive without earning salaries or with business men and women having no money to do business that will yield them incomes (profit) adequate enough to cater for them and their families? 2. On the spiritual front, 2018 is the year that churches faced the greatest ever challenges on their age-long doctrinal teachings that went to the very foundation of church funding, I mean tithing - interpreting the same Bible which have been taught to people over 2000 years - the church became clearly divided into two distinct camps: those for or against tihing and doesn't appear that the centre will ever hold again.
It is the year the lifestyles of church leadership (affluence) versus followership (poverty ridden) lives were thoroughly subjected to scientific investigations. The outcome was that the former was rebuked and the latter pitied and was directly taught that the church had become a milking ground upon which they should stop pouring their hard to earn milk. Whichever side
one belongs, God continues to care for everybody because He does not attach conditions to His love. He doesn't need bribes!
2018 is the year that God used the safe fallure of someone like Daddy Freeze’s marriage to open us all up to understand the Bible better by challenging the status quo of Christianity in Nigeria and it is still doing so. The struggle in the church shifted from focusing on anti-christ to focusing on those who profess to be the true children of God with particular reference to the Pentecostal churches.
It is a year that contrary to God's command to bless, our revered 'men men and women of God' chose to curse everybody, government, congregation members, terrorists, or just anybody opposed to their sustained but challenged doctrinal teachings on many issues ranging from money, marriage, lifestyle, wealth, etc but such curses never had effect but simply waived aside by our merciful God who was busy meeting everybody's daily needs. God made manifest His statement ‘vengeance is mine’, not Pastors.
2018 is the year that Nigeria was able to detect that apart from Boko Haram, the greatest war she really has to fight and win is Corruption. Many political parties with or without influence emerged but the two most influential parties are APC (the anti-corruption party) and PDP (the suspected promoter of corruption) and the leaderships of both parties are known for whom they are. 2018 lays the foundation for 2019 that will determine who wins between Mr Anti-corruption and Mr Corruption and Nigeria will never remain the same.
2018 is the year that our Igbo brothers advanced their (shadow chasing) campaign for Self determination as if once won, there will be no problems for their people Biafra which I thinki s a farce because every tribe has the progressives and the unprogressives amidst them and the problem that makes Nigeria what it is today is waiting for the Biafra Country expecting to emerge. The most sensible thing to me is to retain one Nigeria (You can, if you like, change her name to WAZOBIA or anything but let the geographical entity be as is) and focus on fighting our real enemy: CORRUPTION, the mother of a son called INJUSTICE!
In Ekiti State, 2018 is a ZERO year for farmers (I mean my direct economic constituency) as the FAYOSE administration drove home the point that he had nothing for them except fight the herdsmen whose cows were devouring the toils of the hapless and helpless farmers that cannot even fund their little farms to get good results anyway.
That Government portrayed itself as pro farmer but in reality, the farmers themselves knew it was anti-farmers.
The 2018 Fayemi's administration has laid her 2019 farmer's expectation budget of 6% for the farmers which I summed up by asking a rhetorical question: when will farmers received favor from Ekiti State's Government? I personally don't expect farmers to have less than 25% share of the total budget if we truly want to promote agriculture as our main source of generating good income and food sustainability for the State. What will be the outcome of 26% to be spent on KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION, as applicable to farmers when FBS/ADP trained/certified farmers acquire knowledge without the corresponding finances to practise what we learnt from professional farmers schools? Ekiti farmers are still deep in trouble! May God rescue us.
Now coming to education. In 1973, I obtained my Primary School Leaving Certificate/Testimonial free of charge. In 2018 after a laborious negotiations, it cost me N3000 to obtain same for a child I sponsored!
In 2018, I experienced the greatest challenge of my close to 40 years of parenting when one of my 15 year-old children (don't ask whether biological or not . I draw no distinction) I am trying to shape for the better proved impossible. After my incessant prayers, preachings, internal/external counsellings, teachings, appeals, begging, etc were all proving ineffective, I painfully and reluctantly handed over my difficult child to the police. He spent 24 hours in their cell to let him know the fate awaiting children who choose the wrong way. The police helped counsel as well as threatened him and narrated the ordeals awaiting criminally minded children in their latter life and finally released him to us thinking I had done something that would help us but he came back home doing exactly what he was doing in a more coordinated way. More hardened is he became such that my heart melted inside me. Yet this is a wonderful child God gave me a vision of a better tomorrow about. See now why I can change my upbringing strategies on him but cannot abandoned him altogether. This is a child whose school fees never fails to come from his sponsor so I am not even the one paying it! Mine is limited to ensuring heis character is rightly moulded. . (Don't ask me whether the Police demanded for cola. They did not hammer on that because they knew me as a Pastor as one of their officers was my church member. So I did as I deemed fit to appreciate them for a job well done) Then I resorted to going to, again PAINFULLY AND INVOLUNTARILY taking my boy to Welfare where he spent close to 3 month's being corrected. He came back more hardened. We're now back home working on him because this is a soul desperately in need of salvation but what to do we don't know but I remain trying in God to change him for the better. However what baffled me most was I was not able to get him released from welfare easily because of the illegal demand for 'ransome'. However my professional legal and pastoral trainings helped me greatly to resist paying 'ransome' for what I should get free, as I boldly demanded he be released without any strings attached and my wishes and command obeyed to the letter. Such is life. The devil doesn't leave you until you tell him “God rebukes you". How can a Senior office who doubles asks a parent see our predicament as an avenue to make money? Where is the conscience of a native or orthodox Dr who is approached by a woman suffering from infertility for help but ended up being raped by the supposed helper?
Brethren, reflect for the rest of this year.
Recount your experiences but don't ever forget that you are surviving 2018 not because you were able to manage your lives yourself but that God in His infinite mercies graciously came to your aid. Look forward to 2019 optimistically but cling to Jesus. Compliments of the Season to you all. May the coming New Year usher in for us all unspeakable joy.
May Nigeria never fail, falter and fall I'm 2019 in Jesus name. Amen.
