Welcome to the April 11th edition of Faith & Life Lessons.
You will see this email full of tidbits from my week. My goal is simple. I hope that from how I live my life, you can find a thing or two that helps you as you try to live a life that matters. I am always trying to do one thing - make Christ-focused decisions in love, work, and life. And this was my week.
The Story of My Week
On Easter Monday, the family had lunch at a restaurant. This was the first since we had our baby.
The best thing that could happen in those moments is having a waiter who anticipates your needs and makes the whole experience as painless as possible.
Fortunately, we got one in the floor manager.
As I replayed the whole event, a bit of history played in my head.
When I graduated from school, I had planned to get married by age 23.
A year before the deadline, my girlfriend broke up with me.
Even though I was hurt, I refused to jump on the soapbox bandwagon that “if she left you, it means she is not good enough for you”. That is such a callous way to look at one of God’s children.
She chose to say “Yes” and another choice to say “Not anymore”.
Even God respects our choice, so I can’t do less than that. We remain friends and fellow God lovers. Marriage or not.
Anyway, after the breakup. God told me I was not going to meet my wife until 7 years later.
During that time, I had people say that I was not dating because I had not gotten over my previous breakup.
I can’t answer everyone but I know my redeemer lives.
Cue seven later, I met The One (sounds like a phrase from a romantic movie, right?).
We met and were married in less than 12 months.
Our kids were born 5 years into the marriage and almost 5 years apart.
It had nothing to do with family planning. That’s a story for another day.
As I playback the image of our family eating together at the restaurant, I am grateful for the faith walk that got us here.
Where we are is not the outcome of careful calculations. Just a guy trying to make daily decisions based on what he believes God is telling him.
He may not always hear right but he tries to always do the right things.
The God things
That guy is me.
And this is my story.
Things I Learnt
1-When Why Doesn’t Come First: I was reminiscing with someone during the week about a couple of things relating to my walk with God.
At one point, I mentioned the 7-year-wait-till-another-relationship message from God.
She asked me “did you ask why?”
I realized that I never did. I guess at that time, after years of walking with God, I had developed this conviction - “God is more concerned about me than I could be concerned about myself.”
I had also picked up a lesson or two from the book of Job.
Job spent most of the time in his talking asking “Why”.
God did not give him a bad rap for asking “why” but He did not give him a response either.
Instead, God gave Job a new perspective of Himself. Job came out of the whole experience with a bigger sense of who God is without getting any answer to his questions.
That perspective is what modern-day Christians call “Revelation” or “Rhema”. Perspective comes with a new sense of authority and power to operate in God’s kingdom.
After this perspective, Job was able to act as an intermediary between God and his friends. He was able to offer the acceptable sacrifice to reconcile them to God.
I learned from Job.
Instead of chasing the “why”, I chase who God is revealing about Himself and His ways through the life experiences He carves out for me.
I hope I can find new perspectives about God through them.
Perspectives that will help me live life in a way that makes God happy the most.
And serves the people around me the best.
Not got my eyes on why with God.
2-A Boring Life for Some: One of my mentors who runs a solopreneur business told me something - you need to be ok with living a boring business life.
According to him, chasing the next shiny thing can be a huge distraction that keeps any business from growing.
He explained that his approach is to develop a product that meets the need of his market and keep at it.
It can feel boring to not release new products over 1 year and keep selling the same product over and over again.
Doing that increased his mastery of the product and ability to deliver the full value of the product to the clients.
He is doing well because in 2019 he recorded over 1 billion naira ($2.2m) in revenue.
But this lesson is not lost to me for only making it in business.
I know it’s difficult sometimes to be living the “boring Christian life”.
It’s so easy to be looking for the next shiny thing that is supposed to come with Christianity.
Someone talked about a miracle that turned their life right-side-up, another talks about new “Rhema” they got reading their Bible, still, other talks about people they are impacting via a social justice outreach they part of, add to that someone tells us a miraculous promotion at work.
And the rest of us - our lives sound normal and boring compared to this.
We get up in the morning, get ready for life, and try to make sure life doesn’t pass us by. We read our bibles but don’t get our spider-sense tingle at anything we just read.
We pray on some matters and wonder when the change will come.
At our job, we don’t see the Red Sea part like some of the stories we have heard.
But there is glory in the mundane. There is life in the boring.
The wonder in the boring drudgery of life is not in the events. It is in the hearts that continue to love Jesus and bask in heaven even on earth.
It might be a boring life for some. But the adventure of making the mundane glorious is a miracle like nothing else.
If we can all embrace it.
This is one of the great adventures of faith
Postscript
May you find joy knowing that every day lived in the wonder of Jesus is not boring. May you discover how to see Him at work in the mundane aspects of life, even when there is no big bang. Amen
Tata,
Tola
0 comments