Growing up my home was filled with so much freedom and I realized this when I became of an age when I could take independent decisions. It is this freedom that led my mother to elope [and run away] with my younger brother who was 2 years old in 2007. Because my grandmother practiced ancestral worship, she was confident in this to find her daughter. We consulted traditional spiritualists all over our province but to no positive response. In 2015, when my aunt told our household of the many wonders that take place at a church she recently found, we were so excited that we could finally find answers to the questions dearest in our hearts. We visited severally and this was when we learnt of this God who goes out to find the lost sheep.
The church was filled with so much miracles that we knew ours would soon follow. What was interesting is that in these night vigils or ‘fire Fridays’, as the prophet would call them, we walked about a kilometre overall in the dark, in our notorious town, to and fro the church without harm. Moreover, we hitchhiked back safely to our village as taxis had ran out by midnight when we returned back home. The prophet would tell us that this God who performs these miracles in church also protected each person in their comings and goings. We testified to this with our own experience. In some of their teachings, the church assumed everyone had a firm foundation of scripture. Because of this, I ventured off to find a bible-based church.
From this time, I fell in love with Nigerian films that portrayed God’s faithfulness and love to rescue those who suffer. I developed believe in Jesus Christ through these fictional films that He will come through for our family situation. One film stood out where the main character who was orphaned went to work at a royal palace, where it was later revealed that she was the heiress to the king. This story related to how Jesus Christ came down from heaven to earth to experience the ordeals that His creations go through – first hand as it is written in the book of John in the Bible. These films also revealed to me that God gave His son to die for our own wrongs. Many of the characters were convicted to make a turnaround back to God’s ways.
So was I also convicted to believe that the God who protected my household through the lonely nights walking back from church also suffered and paid fully for my wrongs. So I repeated after one character who repented in one film. He said “Lord Jesus, I come humbly before you in my shame and disgrace, with the weariness of this world’s burdens. I offload them before you to cleanse and make me anew. Wash me with your blood so that I may share in your righteousness. I now confess that you are my Lord and Saviour. Guide me to follow you alone. Amen.”
After this I began to make sense of all the favour that has followed my family.
I now see everything that happens as part of God’s will which works out to good. I led my grandmother to believe and trust in Jesus too as we wait for the plan of God to work out in our lives. The void left by these lost ones in our family has been filled by a great helper who is faithful always unlike man. Jesus Christ has found us as His lost sheep. We now see Him as the friend who sticks closer than a brother and now share this freedom to appreciate Jesus’ presence in our house. I am now (2022) in training to equip me with His truth and ways through Bible study and to go out and make Jesus known to others out there.
