Empowered

The average Christian has been so choked by head knowledge

That spiritual knowledge couldn’t get through to them

The world is full of such Christians

They have been Christian since forever

They were even "there" on the day Jesus ascended to heaven

They have memorized all the epistles

They know the exegesis and the hermeneutics

They had sat at the feet of foremost wordsmiths

They have been in the business of faith for donkey years

What else can anybody teach them?

They gladly gave ridiculous interpretations to some parts of the scripture and insisted no other interpretation is allowed

Where the Bible say “Spoke in other tongues”

They said it means “spoke other human languages”

Where Apostle Paul said “I spoke in tongue more than ye all” you ask them who were the “humans” he was speaking those other languages to in prayer

They think about it

They said “speaking in tongues ceased with the apostles”

They also scorn miracles, signs and wonders

Because they lack the ability to make such happen

They want to use the rudder of logic to ride the wind of the supernatural

And they lack power because of their unbelief

So much so, they are easy preys for the evil one and his agents

She met one of such Christians at a Pentecostal church’s monthly service

The service holds on a Friday of every month

The service was reputed to sometimes hit over a million people in attendance

While they were praying

The woman in front of her kept looking back and hissing like a snake

She didn’t know the woman from Adam and wondered why the woman was looking at her with so much venom

She came to the meeting for just one purpose

To get answers to some serious issues

But the woman in front of her had become a major source of distraction

She would have left her seat

But the crowd was mammoth and she wouldn’t get such a vantage spot again

She arrived early in order to get a good seat

She didn’t know that a good seat is not only the “chair”

It also has a lot to do with those seating around you!

At first, she was intimidated by the woman’s disposition

But at one point during the night, she realized she was the losing out

She left her house for the service so that she be a proper nuisance in the presence of the Lord

And the woman and making her “comport” herself

Her spirit needed the release

The assurance that she did not deny herself sleep for nothing

She threw caution to wind

She closed her eyes, lifted her voice and started “Kabayadaing”

At a point the woman couldn’t stomach it anymore

The woman tapped her on the shoulder

“Young lady, please when you do that please do it silently, or do it in your closet”

She opened her eyes and looked at the woman

Why the woman was picking on her was very unclear

The pastor leading the prayers on the altar was speaking in tongues into the microphone!

And she was the one the woman was harassing???

Wasn’t that a form of bullying?

The distraction was like water poured on hot coal

She realized she wouldn’t get any farther with the woman hovering around her

She picked her bag and walked towards the altar

She eventually found another space and God helping her she was able to forget the woman’s antics and focus on God

That very night, when the convener of the service was ministering

The word of the Lord came to her where she was seated

She heard it clearly in her spirit

“Go, I have empowered you”

The message was very puzzling

She wanted God to settle her martially and also in her career
She wasn’t really asking for power

She didn’t understand it

The following Monday, she was handed a letter of transfer

She was told to move to the Ibadan branch of their organization

She was very unhappy

She had lived in Lagos all her life

She was about to write a letter of protest and reject the transfer when she remembered the word of the Lord

She moved with a lot of reservation

When she got to Ibadan, she settled in quickly

One of the advantages Ibadan had was the down time

She opened a catering outfit to compliment her job

At first her outfit serviced only corporate organizations

She started with the company she worked for and wrote proposals to other outfits

Within a year, her outfit was catering to 21 companies

They also took special orders for parties

Within two years she opened her first fast food outfit

She was already contemplating leaving her paid employment to face the catering business

She didn’t know it would be such a humongous success when she started the project

She realized for real that God’s word had somehow come to pass while she was watching

She couldn’t take the accolades for what has happened

The kind of people God brought her way to work with her were after her success

They worked with her as if it was their business

She never recorded a quarter of losses

Not even once

She also didn’t have to take out a loan

The man who first requested that she be the caterer at his daughter’s wedding was the one that pitched the idea to her to expand the business

The man was also a silent partner of hers

He invested heavily in the business

In three years, she had turned an idea into a money-spinning machine

That year December, her silent partner invited her to meet his family

His wife had just returned from India

His wife went for a major surgery and they were holding a thanksgiving party during the Christmas holidays

She packed a very expensive hamper and gifts and went for the party

He saw the man in the garden of his compound

The man introduced all his children to her

The man called her his “special” daughter

He even gave her a Yoruba pet name

The man’s first son took interest in her

It was unplanned

It was also not orchestrated by the parents

His fiance was supposed to return home for the Christmas break with him

She was from Trinidad and Tobago

She decided at the last minute she wanted nothing to do with marriage

She was satisfied with their relationship as it was

They parted ways

Just a few days before

He came home heart broken

But her presence broke through his gloom

They talked like old friends

The familiarity was almost instant, all his siblings noticed

Eventually the man emerged with his wife

The wife was the same woman she sat behind at the prayer service years before

She could never forget that face in a million years

The woman didn’t recognize her

The man (Her investor) had told his wife so much about her

The woman embraced her

Told her she had longed for a long time to meet with her

The party was a success

She left later in the evening

Their son intensified his attention towards her

He called daily and they became very close friends

Eventually they became an item

He was supposed to travel back to his base in a few weeks

He proposed

She said yes

Then the bombshell!

He wanted her to be pregnant before he travels

When he returns at the end of the year, they would do the wedding

She said no

"She is a believer and she will never do that"

He didn’t understand it

He was a Christian too and it was not a big deal in his own denomination

He told his mother the gist

His mother called her

Spoke to her like a mother

“What are you afraid of?”

“I assure you he will marry you, my son is Mr. Responsible”

She said she is a born-again Christian, full of the Holy Spirit

She cannot do it

Though it may not be a “sin” to many people and the church

It is a sin to her

His mother said “The bible is subject to human interpretation, God is not as harsh as this”

"Mummy, there was a day I sat beside you at so and so prayer camp, you would have forgotten,

You were against praying in tongues. Even though you don’t know me, you made my life hell that day. I had to relocate to another seat!

It is with the same venom that the Holy Spirit inside of me hates the suggestion that I do anything that offends him in my spirit. I will rather walk away than marry your son under this condition”

She left the meeting very unhappy

She was in no hurry to get married

She was just twenty-nine years old

She resented being put under pressure to get pregnant

It was so selfish of them

He called her several times that night

She refused to pick his call!

The next day, he came to her office

He told her his mother told him she would never give in to his demands

“Mummy said you are one of those girls who carried “religion” on the head” He said

He had decided he would wait till he returned at the end of the year

He wanted her to know that he still wanted to marry her, if she was still willing to marry him

She agreed she would wait for him

He traveled and returned home a year later

They got married

She got pregnant a month after they married

Everything was fine until she delivered a set of twins

His mother came to the hospital and demanded that a paternity test be done

She said she must have given birth to a set of bastards

Because her son had a bicycle accident at the age of fifteen and the doctors told them at the time that he will never be able to father a child and secondly, in that family historically, they don’t give birth to twins

This was why she insisted that he had to get her pregnant before marriage

So that he can see for himself that he was impotent

It was because of his case that she had been going from church to church

Asking that God would intervene

Her son had never told her that God intervened in any way

How come she got pregnant and delivered a set of twins

The children must be bastards!

The son was shocked!

He knew he had a bicycle accident and surgery had to be done on him as a teenager

But he was never told he could never father a child

JESUS!

The paternity test was done

He was 99.9% the father of the children

How come?

The lady told her husband’s family

“God told me He empowered me, I believe him! Since I came to this city, he has proven over and over that in my hands the unprofitable becomes profitable. I didn’t have to know if my husband is potent or not! I have the power to make dead seed come alive inside of me! I have the Holy Ghost!”

PS: The family lives in Ibadan

The father of the groom, the silent partner, died some weeks after the wedding

The husband did fertility test over and over

it was discovered that his sperm does not have any cell

Medically he shouldn't be able to father a child

and yet the couple have five children

Two sets of twins (all boys) and a girl

The couple are Pastors with a popular Pentecostal mission

The Husband’s mother now prays in tongues

This event happened in 2014