Hello to all of you who have been reading my sermons on this platform. I want to sincerely thank you for your time, and I hope that you’ve found the articles worth reading.
I’m presently working on a book which chronicles my encounters with God in almost four decades past, and I have decided to share a snippet of those encounters with you before hand. The motivation for doing this is purely out of a desire to give hope to someone out there, that Jesus Christ is alive, and that He wants to have a relationship with them if only they can trust Him enough to surrender their life to Him. All what you’re going to be reading here are real experiences, which happened to me over the years of my walk with God. There are so many of them, but I’m just going to share four of those encounters here as a testimony to the fact that Jesus Christ is alive, and that He still does great and amazing miracles in the lives of those who know and trust Him. Hallelujah!
My First Testimony.
I was born in the northern region of Nigeria in the early 70s and was raised up by very devoted Christian parents. My mother was especially a very devoted Christian and I followed in her steps from a very tender age of four years and, thus, grew up to become deeply religious. By the time I was eleven years old , I had already been baptized, been a communicant, been confirmed and was already doing house to house evangelism and hospital visits under the banner of a popular Society in my church ( name withheld).
I was also a chorister and a trainee manservant.
When I turned sixteen years something extraordinary happened to me: I had gone to bed on a fateful night and the room was pitch dark because there was a power interruption. So, as I waited to fall asleep, a voice spoke to me in the darkness, calling me by my first name. It said: “ Joseph, if you die now where would you go to?”
I had no answer to that question so I remained silent. Strangely, I felt no fear at all. Somehow I knew it was God speaking to me. Just then He answered His own question to me. He said: “ you’d go to hell”. Then everywhere was quiet once again.
It was at this moment that fear gripped me. I was really afraid to sleep thereafter because I thought I’d die that night. So, I was greatly relieved when, after what seemed like an eternity, I heard the first Cock crow heralding the dawn of another day. But, thereafter, every night became a dreaded time for me to live through because I feared I might die in my sleep and go to hell.
At that time my family had relocated to the middle belt region of my country, but my mother whom I was closely attached with left us to go back and live in the family house in the north so as to attend to her religious duties which, as she said, she missed so much. As a result of the distance between us, I couldn’t share my experience with her, neither did I with anyone else , instead I started asking my father to allow me relocate to the north to stay with my mother and continue with my education, but he declined the request.
Worthy of note is that at this material time I had stopped almost all of my activities in the church because the Church at that town I was living was not really encouraging me to carry on with those duties: the atmosphere was not as spiritual as was the previous ones I had been. It was the same reason my mother had given to my dad for her relocation back to the north. So I prayed to God and said that if He’d make my father to allow me stay with my mother in the north, I’d serve him with my whole heart. But in the mean time, I devoted more time to prayer and study of the. Bible to see if that could at least bring me some assurances of salvation because I still lived with the fear of God’s verdict passed on me that night. I tried to flow with the activities in the church, but it didn’t just make any difference; the more I tried the more I really saw reason why I cannot fellowship with the church any more. Every service was a sorrow to me; I couldn’t see the true devotion and reverence for God which I had grown to know existed among God’s people. Some of those things that totally put me off where as follows:
1. There were allegations of theft among ushers who handled the offerings, and during one particular harvest ceremony an usher stole eggs and stuffed them in his pocket, but he was caught when it broke and stained his trousers.
2. Almost every boy my age at the time was promiscuous and they did not hide their sexual escaped with the opposite sexes; they actually flaunted it.
3. I saw two young male choristers smoking and when I asked why they did that, one of them explained that it was because he’d broken off with his girlfriend and needed to forget the pain. I guess his friend was just smoking along with him for some emotional support.
4. The priest was just interested in making each service a time of laughter for his congregation; we were told lots of stories and it seemed everyone was okay with that, except me.
So, I stopped attending church altogether, much to my father and certain church leaders’ dismay. I intensified my Bible study and prayers at home, asking God to help me relocate to where my mother was, while promising Him that I’d serve Him better there under my mothers guide and influence.
At this particular time of personal retreat two things happened to me:
1. I witnessed the transformation of life that occurred in a bachelor who was a close Neighbour to us. He was a very angry young man and was feared by many. But he liked me and would sometimes invite me to spend the night with him. On one of such nights he suddenly jumped out of the bed screaming in fear He got a machete and started slashing at an invisible enemy in the air. I stood aside watching him, not knowing what was wrong until he later explained that some demonic beings came to drag him to hell and it was so real that he didn’t think it was a dream.
Subsequently, his colleagues at work who were Christians came to pray with him at home and he accepted Jesus as Lord and Saviour of his life. He became a totally changed person. I couldn’t help noticing those remarkable changes in his life.
2. A girl in my neighborhood who was attending a Pentecostal church noticed my activities with the Bible and tried to help me to gain a more accurate knowledge of the Christian faith. I ended up attending a revival service at her church and listened to the testimony of two young girls who got hypnotized by a man when touched them on the head. This man led them to the river Benue, but just as they reached the river bank and started following him across the train bridge ( it was a secluded area) one of the girls suddenly shouted out and said, “satan you are a liar, in Jesus’ name!”
Immediately after she said that, the man vanished into thin air, and they regained consciousness , and ran back into town.
Other testimonies followed, all of them declaring that Jesus intervened at critical moments of their lives to show Himself mighty to save and to deliver. It was my first time of being in such an atmosphere of worship and revival; in such a place where everyone seemed to have a testimony of a personal intervention of God in their lives. There was joy in that church and I felt that I needed to have more of Christ in my life. I pressed on with my prayer for God to help me go to my mother.
My prayer was answered after two years and I travelled back to the north to continue with my study.
There in my old community it seemed everything had also changed. It seemed the church I had grown up attending had also changed; there was no difference with what I experienced in the middle belt region I had relocated from. It seemed there was no more fear of God. I was shattered. I stopped attending church once again. The Priest personally paid me a visit at home to find out why I had stopped attending church, but I kept my observation to my self. Little did I realize that that encounter with Christ which I had in that dark room had totally opened my eyes to what true communion with Christ should be: it was not , as I later came to realize, all about church activities or the observance of church rules; it was rather a life transforming relationship with the very person of Jesus Christ. He needed to be so real to anyone who must walk with Him. My encounter with the Lord had awakened me to that reality and now I saw the church through the eyes of God’s Spirit, or God helped me see it just the way He wanted me to. Which ever was the case, it changed me totally and I was never the same again; I was constantly in search of what would give me that kind of a relationship, an inner peace and acceptance with God. But just how I could achieve that was what eluded me.
As the year turned round and I enrolled in a new school, the Lord led me to befriend a boy in my class. He was different from the others and I guessed that was what attracted me to him. Something felt so different about him and it was spiritually tangible; I could feel God around him.
One fateful afternoon after school hours, as we were walking home, he told me about a certain German Evangelist ( Reinhard Bonnke) who was scheduled to hold a five days open air crusade in our city in the coming month. Frankly I wasn’t interested in that talk and I somehow felt that he was over hyping the issue, especially when he said he’d be on that crusade ground two hours before hand for each of those five days. I was curious to know why he’d be under the sun for two hours before the crusade starts, to which he replied that it was so that he could pray for the Lord to manifest His power to heal and to save souls through the ministry of that visiting Evangelist.
At that point we were at an intersection and I just stood for a while to look at him because I thought that was a crazy thing for anyone to want to do. But just then something happened which I couldn’t really explain: but the Lord spoke very clearly to me that afternoon. It was just past noon and the sun was shining so bright, but I noticed another brighter light around my friend and a voice spoke to me. It said something like this to me: “this is what’s different between you and your friend; you claim you love me but you have no commitments to show for it. Your friend on the other hand is ready to spend two hours under the sun to pray at the crusade ground for the benefit of others”.
I was deeply convicted. My friend kept talking enthusiastically about the crusade and what he’d be praying to see happen in peoples lives. I didn’t even hear him make any wish for himself. It was all about the benefit of others.
For the first time in the three years following my encounter with Christ in that dark room, I suddenly felt that I knew what God wanted me to do. When I reached home that day, I locked up my self in the room, fell on my knees and, from the bottom of my heart, asked God to change my life and make it like my friend’s. I didn’t know anything about the sinners’ prayer ; I just prayed according to what I felt was what I needed – a new life like my friend’s own. I felt so hopeless. I cried bitterly. I kept asking for his kind of life. At a point afterwards I stopped crying and I felt some relief. I rose to my feet with a kind of peace I had never felt before. From that day onward I always felt this strong desire to pray and to read the Holy Bible, sometimes all through the night until early the next morning without even realizing it.
One day my mother’s younger brother had a guest and he asked me to serve them some food. While I was in the kitchen the Lord opened my ears to what he was saying to his friend about me, in a hushed tone, right from the living room, and it was that I had changed within few days and that my new life was pleasing to him. Immediately the Lord spoke to me again. He said: “ do you hear what he said? It was because I answered your prayer when you asked me to change your life and to make it like that of your friend”.
I was overjoyed and full of the holy Spirit at once after hearing the Lord’s word to me. I was so much under the influence of the Holy Spirit that I began to sing a new song I had not learned before that time. That was almost some thirty three years ago and that song is still fresh in my memory. Hallelujah!
The crusade did eventually hold and though I could not attend the first two days, yet on the third day being on the 17th day of October, 1990, I was in attendance. Even though I knew I had already been saved, yet when the alter call was made that day I decided to publicly confess Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour before an estimated crowd of 500,000 people. It was a memorable occasion to me: from criticism to enthusiasm in identifying with and serving my Lord Jesus Christ.
It’s been a long time since then and I’m still walking with Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour of my life.
Even though I am aware of some decisions I’m not proud I had made as a Christian, I can say that for the most part of those years I have enjoyed a great relationship with God to whom I still remain grateful and deeply indebted for giving me the new life I asked for.
This can be your story, too, if you are truly ready to surrender to Jesus Christ and to make Him the Lord of your life.
If you are, then call upon Him right away; He’s just a prayer away!