BY Guest Writer
If you are a ‘churchboy’ like me, you would have seen all kinds of unholy fundraising techniques, gimmicks, and manipulations in religious gatherings. Lord, have mercy!
Before I matured (and, I’m still growing and learning) in spiritual things, I had fallen ‘victim’ once or twice to such pressured fundraising, money spinning yarns!
Some years back, someone had sent me $1,000 for the Work of the Ministry. It was early January that year, and I remember testifying in my small local church assembly of GOD’s wondrous provision for our Ministry, and promptly paid tithes to the church. I don’t joke with my tithes.
I was, however, ‘forced’ to drop the remainder in June of the same year, because we never ceased to hear about ‘first-fruits’ and the inherent danger of not giving it, week in and out, till that June. January to June!
Ah! When my soul was vexed to the limits, I reluctantly cast the money into the hands of the Pastor, ‘Gba jensimi’ (take and let me rest) kind of thing!
The money was used to dig a soakaway in the church, which collapsed some 2 or 3 days afterwards. That money, the whole lot, went down the drain.
Till date, I can’t point to anything, spiritual or physical, that came to me from that ‘transaction’, except, perhaps, the lesson I’m passing across here.
I had given $700 before in that same church, without anyone asking or pressing for it, and I can count 2, 3 or 4 things that happened positively in my life, family, business, and ministry, afterwards.
Hey, I try to be truthful to myself, and therefore refuse to blame the preacher for the ‘loss’ of the money. The man was just doing his ‘job’. I blame my immaturity and naivety!
Subsequently, I have been in congregations where preachers, waxing eloquent, called for people to drop their cars, landed properties and jewelries, accompanied with incredible promises and subtle ‘threats’. ‘I no drop O!’
But, I was somewhere else about 3 years ago (not even a church O) where the man of GOD just blessed the people, and my wife and I were convinced to bless his ministry with a vehicle, and we did!
MY POINT!?
Never give out of duress, pressure, manipulations, or threats. Only GIVE OUT OF CONVICTION (and LOVE) BY THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD. Therein alone shall you have just rewards.
Last year, I heard Pastor Sola Kolade of Vinebranch Church narrate the gory details of how his daughter, a medical student, had been involved in a terrible motor accident a couple of years back; how her body and bones had been badly damaged, and how GOD, and medical personnel, in and outside Nigeria, had performed a great miracle on her.
He summed up the whole story by saying, “I’ve always found a way to share this beautiful experience every where I have had the opportunity to minister since it happened, even when what I’m called to speak on has nothing to do with the story.”
My own Pastor, Architect Alex Adegboye, is always talking about GOD’S Divine Intervention during his gun shot ordeal. He was shot within the church premises some 18 years ago, the leg wound became terribly infected with a deadly bacteria (MRSA), and his leg could have been amputated, but for GOD, and a medical miracle.
He tells that story often, with passion and gratitude.
Joel Osteen is always talking about his father’s humble beginning, his mother’s supernatural healing from cancer, his years of struggling to pastor Lakewood Church after his father’s demise, and how they acquired the Compaq Centre for Worship, etc. He never gets tired of telling these stories.
If you have been reading my write-ups in the last few years, you’ll see me share, from time to time, my mother’s miraculous return from ‘coma land’, the $700 seed my wife and I gave away when we really needed to hold on tightly to it, and the terrific breakthroughs that followed, my son’s deliverance from being crushed by our own vehicle, and one or two other peculiar TESTIMONIES.
I just can’t stop talking, and writing, about these awesome things that GOD has done in my life, family, ministry, and business.
Like Ron Kenoly sang, “I just can’t stop PRAISING HIS NAME, just can’t stop PRAISING HIS NAME, JESUS!”
If you have a story of GOD’S GOODNESS to tell, go ahead and shout it on the roof top, regardless of what anybody thinks, says or does! They may say, “Your own is too much! You too dey overdo!”
Let them say! A la Sunny Ade.
They don’t feel what you feel, and felt, when it had happened.
Tell your STORY of GOD’S GOODNESS unashamedly, boldly, graciously, gratefully and gloriously. It’s your STORY, tell it!
I see GOD showing you exceptional KINDNESS and MERCY, today, in JESUS Name.
Have a lovely week.
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