The clattering of gunshots rendered the air as bowls of amala and fufu littered everywhere. As we scrambled for cover, I remembered muttering under my breath ‘God please save me this one more time, and I would serve you for the rest of my life’. I always knew I belonged to God, but I couldn’t help doing ‘my own thing’. At the end of the commotion that lasted for about 10 minutes that very day, what I had left in front of me were the gory sights of bullet riddled body of Terry, my childhood friend with his head dangling over one of the tables, and the dead remains of my three other friends with whom I was chattering over plates of amala some thirty minutes before. That happened to be one the several close shaves I had had with death in time past. A similar event occurred when ‘Sly’ another friend of mine was attacked and killed in front of their family house, on the day he was supposed to resume at the law school. I was only 5 minutes late; else we would have been together at the time of the incidence.
I can’t recount the numbers of time I had escaped death by the whisker as a non Christian and even later as a Christian. As a Christian, I was often struck by mysterious illness. The last I had before making up my mind to discard orthodox medicine happened during my service year. I was bedridden and partially paralyzed for almost two months and of all the efforts of conventional medicine none could detect what was wrong, not to talk of reviving me. Help didn’t come until I chose to look up to scriptures and dare to trust God like I’d heard so many faith people preached in the past, only then did my help came. It didn’t even take a week after I started trusting God before I got well and was discharged from the hospital. Expectedly, my faith went through the roof thereafter, I literally started believing that God could do anything through me, and I did dare to trust God for practically everything. There were some things I did that I wouldn’t bother to mention here, but weren’t for God, those risks would had backfired big time.
Soon after this period of the great miraculous, I started experiencing drought. I couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong. There were lots of mundane issues that I sheepishly watched turned monster while waiting. Practically everything I handled became jinxed as soon as I touched them. I couldn’t do most of what I used to do with ease any longer. Gradually, I began to lose courage, and I couldn’t understand why God seemed uninterested in my case anymore. I was losing ground on all fronts. I couldn’t get living wage job years after graduation. I was losing established relationships, and I wasn’t able to build new one. I often felt lonely, and I couldn’t understand why God word couldn’t console. The height of it was seeing one of my brothers got lost for years. This was a brother God delivered from a terrible lifestyle, gave the wife children after ten years of barrenness. He was a man used to perform divers’ miracles, among them raising the dead. This was the same man who got lost for three good years, throwing everybody to a mournful mood, only to re-appear to narrate a story of aimless wanderings round the streets and the wilderness of Nigeria.
All these prompted a lot of soul searching. Often, I heard people talk of God using suffering to teach us some lessons. Sincerely, I was baffled at a God who could save from the grip of death, but took pleasure at watching me suffer from ‘common place’ issues like unemployment and other material wants. What is the place of God’s word at instructing and correcting like Apostle Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:16, if bodily suffering is His best tool of instruction? Can’t our deliberate disobedience and even ignorance of God’s will as revealed in the scripture attract negative repercussions? Can’t bad things also happen because we live in a corrupted (imperfect) world where Satan still wields some degree of power 2Corithians4:4, 2Peter 1:4? A lot of things happened that I couldn’t understand. But I nevertheless strongly disapproved the notion that God brought us sufferings. It contradicted the teachings of the scriptures in all ramifications. Severally, like Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12, I asked God to take away my many infirmities. Only that in my case, I received total silence; I didn’t even get Paul’s ‘my grace is sufficient…’, at least, not to my sensual knowledge.
My problems persisted for a while, but suddenly in the midst of these calamitous situations I began to understand that as Christians we live in a hostile world. Though, the scripture says in James 1:13 that ‘let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempt he any man’. Yet, the devil, the natural order of an imperfect world, our human imperfections are all veritable weapons of temptations. However, in the midst of all, He didn’t allow his holy one to see corruption Psalm 16:10, Act 2:27-31. This, He did for us. He is definitely not made happy to see us suffer. Not until I realized this, did freedom come in the form of loosening my thought from wrong thinking which had held my life captive for years. Today, I am a better person, because I no longer have a split personality on the notion of my Christ identity. Now, I understand better what it means to be saved in Christ and that this salvation is an integral part of my life, even when things don’t seem to work right sometimes. Seeing for myself what Christ did for me through the new covenant makes a whole lot of difference. And, I can’t seem to get enough of it, each time I opened my bible.
Bankole Bamidele