Sought by Love
HOW TO FACE THE NEW YEAR
I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown”. And he replied: “Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than any known way”.
So I went forth and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night. And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day. (Minnie Louise Haskins).
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2017, Feelnubia community!
Real-life stories of faith and miracles…
GREATER THAN CANCER
Last year, I went to visit my children in the US and mentioned to my brother who is a medical doctor that I had been experiencing some discomfort and occasional pain in the abdominal region. My periods had been a little erratic as well, but I attributed it to early perimenopausal symptoms. My brother made an appointment for me and I went for some tests. I knew something was wrong when he sat me down and told me he had made another appointment for me with a colleague of his. Long story short, the results showed that I had some abnormal growth in the uterine cavity that had spread to other organs. When I saw the surgeon, his question took me aback: “How did you make it into this country on time?” He asked. He was surprised when I told him I came in on a commercial flight, that I walked on and off the flight unassisted and that the only sign that something was afoot were the pains and irregular bleeding that I had complained about to my brother.
My family was notified and what started out as a routine family visit became a medical emergency. When my children learned of the Doctors prognosis, they started to cry as I was prepped for emergency surgery. I shouted at them, saying: “Where is your faith? I do not have cancer. I am not going to die. I will have the surgery and everything will be fine. You’ll see”. A lot of my internal organs were affected and the surgery took longer than they envisaged but God was with them and they got everything out. When I came out of sedation, i opened my eyes to the worried look on my brother’s face. He recounted that when the surgeons opened me up, the lead surgeon’s hands started to shake. He later told him that he had never seen any growth like that in his entire surgical profession. Now we had to wait for the lab results for what they were sure was merely a matter-of-fact confirmation of cancer.
When the results came back, they could not believe it. The growth was benign. No sign of cancer!! The doctors themselves stared at me and the results in disbelief. We were ecstatic with joy and faith. All the preparation for chemo was unnecessary. Of course, because of the extent of the invasive surgery, my recovery took a while but it was nothing in my eyes.
God topped the season of miracles up with financial miracles, the least of all not being that he miraculously slashed our medical bill of tens of thousands of dollars to a few thousands and even that, He enabled us to pay off!
by T.A-E
(Shared with permission)
FACING THE FEAR OF DEATH
A few years ago, I found myself complicit in prolonging the suffering of a dearly beloved aunt. She had been ill a long time and as her body and will packed up, all of us who loved her kept hoping and praying for a miracle.
One day my Mum called me and told me she had taken a turn for the worse, asking me to pray. As I started to pray, I perceived the Lord chastising me: “Why do my children fear death?”. I meditated on those words and realized the Lord was saying we should give in to His sovereign will and trust Him even in the face of the death. It was hard to accept. Furthermore, I had learned a hard lesson from the death of my dad about a year before that. When the Lord made His will clear concerning my Dad’s illness, that he was to come home, I shared this word with my Mum and she dropped the phone and would not speak to me for days. When I received this word concerning my Aunt, I decided not to be the harbinger of bad news. Instead, I called my cousins and asked them what they were believing God for, joining my faith to theirs as we kept her alive through our prayers. My Aunt returned home from hospital but she remained very weak. On a visit to Lagos, I asked my husband to look in on her and when he told me how weak and frail she was, unable to stand or sit up unaided, my heart broke but I was still very confused. Soon afterwards, she was back in hospital again. When my Mum called again to ask me to pray, I begged the Lord to give the message to someone else as I could not bear to be the one to deliver it. My Mum called my brother after she spoke to me and the Lord gave him the courage to say the words that I could not. He told my Mum: “Mum, let us ask the Lord for the courage to pray right concerning Aunty”. My Mum called her brother and told him these words. He knelt by his wife’s bedside and released her to God. She passed away within a short time of that prayer. It was only a couple of hours after the previous call that I saw my Mum’s number calling again. I knew. When I asked her what happened, she told me the sequence of events and the Lord expounded it to me. God gave a number of family members visions of my Aunt as she was received in heaven. She was dancing: happy and pain-free.
Death is swallowed up in victory. For the children of God, death is a doorway through which we enter eternity. It is not a punishment. It is not the end. Sure, we hurt, we grieve but we do not mourn as unbelievers do, because WE KNOW we will see our loved ones again. Christ has taken the sting out of death and removed the victory of the grave. I will live and not die, nevertheless if God wills it, then “for me to live is Christ… to die is gain”
SIT AND EAT
I started the year facing one of the biggest battles of my life on behalf of my brand new baby boy. A few days after he was born, the enemy came as a devouring lion intending to steal, kill and destroy.
With no energy to pray (having had a Caesarean Section – first ever), I held on to the word that was spoken at his conception: ‘I have set a table before you in the presence of your enemies’. Exhausted, I rested on that word and watched as the Lord* made short work of the enemy’s plans. He raised Intercessors far and near who labored tirelessly to raise the Lord’s standard against the barrage of harassment from the pit of hell. The Lord spread Himself over my baby and kept him safe from each dart of the enemy, deflecting them as only He can. We spent Christmas and New Year’s in hospitals but at the end, we emerged victorious. The Lord proved Himself and made liars of of men! We are reassured that He who promised is faithful!!!
Just imagine a table laden with the choicest meats this earth can provide: rack of lamb, turkey, bokoto, lobsters bursting with flavour, etc and all around the table are hungry wild animals baying and snarling, trying to get at the feast. Then your Father says: “Sit and eat, beloved. This feast is prepared for you”. If you keep your eyes on those salivating, dangerous animals, there will be no sitting not to speak of eating. With my eyes on my Father and my ears tuned to His voice alone, I SIT AND FEAST!
What He says to one, He says to all. This year, believe Him and take Him at His word. Sit and Eat, Beloved. He has set that table specially for you!
*The Lord: strong and mighty; the Lord Mighty in battle. Commander of the hosts of heaven. The Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Lion who maketh no way for another. Baba mi, aribiti rabata, oyigiyigi Oba atobijulo. Kaaaaaaaabbbiiiiiiiyyeeeessiiii !!!!!!!!
ALONE IN THE DARK
Like every first-time mother, I was excited about being pregnant. I took good care of myself, took my vitamins, attending all the appointments and my regular check-ups. As my EDD approached, I shopped for the baby and discussed the birth-plan with my Doctor. On the actual day, the labor was a breeze and she was the most beautiful baby I had ever seen. Everyone wanted to hold her. When I got home though, something was different. The baby cried a lot and I did not want to hold her. I would feed her and change her but I could not stand the sound of her crying. It upset me no end that I was feeling this way: rather than be excited, I just had a sense of an anti-climax, almost of sadness. I wondered what was wrong. When my mother came to visit, I tried to talk to her about it. She thought I was being self-indulgent when I told her I thought I might be suffering from post-partum depression and told me to: ‘Snap out of it’. So I did, or so I thought. I went on with life and had two more babies in the following three years. One day I just realized that the joy of life had all but left me. I hated getting up in the mornings. I would lie awake for hours, willing myself to get out of bed but my life seemed pointless and all I wanted to do was sleep. I became a spectator in my own life, watching my husband play with the children, I would always find some excuse not to join them. First I would complain about my weight, then it was the fatigue. My husband kept telling me there was nothing wrong with my weight but I was full of self-loathing and there was a dark cloud hanging over my head that left me dejected. It really came home to roost in a couple of years. Coinciding with my leaving paid employment, I thought perhaps that was what was wrong with me. I suffered from feelings of loss of identity without the career in which I had been a fast-tracker for 20-odd years but the decision to focus more on my family was mine. I could blame no one but I took it out on my husband, often snapping at him. Managing my lack of energy with exercise, I would often cry for no reason and I felt guilty that my children were growing up with an emotionally absent mother.
Then one day about a year after I left work, something snapped. My husband and I were driving to a friend’s send-forth party when we got into an argument. He became unusually uncompromising and I asked him to pull over because I was getting really angry and did not want to continue the conversation. I just wanted to put some physical distance between us at that moment. Probably sensing my seriousness, although he slowed down he would not stop the car. I became extremely agitated, feeling like a prisoner in the SUV. When I shouted at him for the third time to let me out of the car and he would not, I opened the door and leapt out of the moving vehicle. My husband had the presence of mind not to slam on the brakes as I fell to the hard tarred surface of the road. I rolled myself into a ball with my arms around my head to protect it as I somersaulted on the road, all the time praying the cars driving up behind us on the free-way would not crush me. It occurred to me that if I was killed, I would have been responsible for my own death and would have gone to hell for committing suicide, albeit unintentionally. I prayed to God for forgiveness. When I finally came to a stop, I saw thankfully that I had rolled off the highway towards an embankment and that cars had pulled over on the free-way. As I got up shakily, I realized my clothes and hair had been ripped in the fall and I saw my left shoulder was bleeding. A military truck pulled up and the soldiers trained their guns on our car with my stunned husband in it, thinking there were armed robbers involved. I screamed to say he was not as he got of the car and walked quickly towards me. Still in shock, he started yelling at me and the soldiers started scolding me all at once as they made sense of the situation. I started walking away from them until my husband calmed down and tried to hand me the phone. He had called my mother. We drove straight to the hospital where my wounds were treated but I would not speak with anyone about what had happened. When we got home, I washed up and cried myself to sleep while my husband held me.
I spent the next few days in bed and prayer. My husband kept saying ‘It was the work of the devil’ but I was not willing to take that cop-out. I held myself responsible for what I had done and begun to pray for understanding of what was happening to me. The word depression came up in my head again. So I called an older Christian friend and told her what had happened, describing the experience I had hidden from everyone for years. She said it outright: ‘You are suffering from depression’. I stayed indoors for about ten days reading up everything I could find on the internet about depression, while my shoulder wound healed and I continued to pray. I apologized to my husband when the realization hit me that he had been living with only half of me. I wondered how he had put up with me and although the knowledge and increasing understanding of what was going on brought some peace, I was still struggling especially in the mornings.
A few days to my birthday, I decided to walk rather than drive to a prayer meeting near-by. It started to drizzle on my way back but I continued walking. I had always enjoyed walking in the rain but had not done so for years. I heard the Lord say to me: ‘What do you want for your birthday?’ Without hesitation, I said: ‘To once again wake up with a song in my heart as I used to do all those years ago’. The next morning, I woke up and jumped out of the bed as soon as my eyes where open. As my feet hit the floor mat, I burst out in a song of worship. That had not happened in years! I could not believe I was the one singing. My heart was full of joy. I started crying and singing in gratitude to God. The cloud had finally LIFTED!!!
IN WHOM DO YOU TRUST?
And so they gathered to find a way to destroy him but it came to nothing. Then someone had an idea: they took his photograph to the national convention of wizards and witch doctors (who would have thought the devil was so organized?). Passing his photograph around, they sought to know who his protector was. When the picture had made its rounds of the large group, someone asked: ‘Who did you say is in this photo you are passing around us?’ They said ‘He is a traditional ruler in this country and we want to know who is his diviner because we want to know what it would take to get the better of him’ Convinced that it was impossible that no one in the group was his protector, they passed the photo around one more time. None of them knew him. His detractors went home shame-faced.
If a man was his protector or he had put his trust in a diviner, they would have sold him to the highest bidder. The arm of flesh will fail but they that trust in the Lord will be as mount Zion that cannot be moved!!!
“WHAT IS THAT LIGHT?”
God hides Himself and only when we seek Him with all our heart do we find Him – yet, He says ‘Here I am, Here I am’ to a people who have not sought Him.
When I was a child, I thought like a child… I was very inquisitive as a child. Constantly asking questions to which I barely waited for an answer before I asked the next one, my elder brother nick-named me: “Why Dad, why?” after an impetuous comic character who asked incessant questions of his oft exasperated father. I recall I was about 13 when I actively begun to ask the question “Who is God? If He made everything, who made Him? What is the source of God?” However, I suspect the questions started much earlier than that.
God first introduced Himself to me as a soft flowing light at the end of a church hall. I was 8 years old, rehearsing with the Choir at Archbishop Vinning Memorial Church in Lagos, our family church. I loved singing and had joined the Choir and a couple of evenings a week, my mother would drop me off for rehearsals. I enjoyed every one of those meetings and looked forward to wearing the choristers robe on Sunday morning for the service.
This evening, as I stood up with the other Choristers to practice a hymn, a light caught my eye in the far distance at the end of the huge church hall. It was a soft flowing amber-colored light that seemed to flow slowly up and down, like a piece of silk cloth dancing to a silent orchestra. It evoked a feeling of peace and deep-seated quiet joy in the depth of my soul. After watching it mesmerized for a while, my curiosity was aroused and I wondered where the light came from: “What is its source?” I l looked around for a clue – perhaps a curtain billowing to the influence of a fan in the church hall? I saw nothing to explain this strange but comforting light. When rehearsal ended, I was a little sad to leave the church hall. The next meeting, I eagerly looked for it and there it was again! Convinced it was probably an optical illusion of some sort, I resigned myself to enjoying it as it flowed back and forth, watching it with a mixed sense of satisfaction, vague curiosity and awed wonder. I never discussed it with anyone and never asked if anyone else saw it. I was one of the youngest members of the Choir and the Choir leader was a formidable no-nonsense Archdeacon. Shy and introverted, I was not comfortable engaging older choristers in conversation and my Father to whom I posed most of my questions about life did not feature in my church life. I however continued to wonder what the light was for the couple of weeks during which I experienced this. Then it stopped as suddenly as it started but not before I got some answers.
The answer came in the lyrics of a hymn. That Sunday in church, we sang a hymn that put an end to the mystery in my mind. The hymn by William Cowper (1779) says: “Sometimes a light surprises the Christian while he sings; it is the Lord, who rises with healing in his wings”. It made sense in a senseless kind of way. Satisfied, my childish mind accepted it as truth. No sooner did I accept that explanation of the light than I stopped experiencing the phenomenon.
Why would God appear to me as a healing light?
OBEDIENCE SAVED MY LIFE
On my way to the Bank that afternoon, I had an unusual thought: “You don’t need this money now”. ‘Sure I do’, was my response as I drove in through the Bank’s gates. I entered the Banking hall, took a look around and had a strange vibe about the Banking hall, as it seemed more crowded than usual. The thought came again. For the second time, I pushed the thought aside and filled out my cheque. When the man in front of me on the queue finished his transaction and moved off, the cashier beckoned to me. As I stepped forward, a quiet but clear voice in my head said: “What value is there in your disobedience now?” I needed no further persuasion. I walked past the surprised Cashier and walked out of the Bank, got in my car and drove out. Nearing my home a few minutes later, I answered a call from a friend who asked if I was outdoors. When I replied that I was just heading home, she said to stay indoors as there were reports of an armed robbery incidence and gunshots fired on the main street in my neighborhood. That evening, I spoke to my husband who was out of town but had contacts in the security forces. To my shock, I learned that the armed robbery incidence had actually been in my Bank. The fact that I got the first call before I got home indicated to me that it all went down probably a few seconds after I drove out of the Bank. The impact of God’s deliverance did not fully hit me until the following day.
Still having to go into the Bank to carry out the transaction that I aborted the day before, I walked in to find the Bank had delayed opening until Noon and the clean-up was just concluding. I sat in my car as I watched blood being cleaned off the pavement. Apparently there were casualties during the shoot-out. What if I had decided to stay on for just one more minute? I was already in front of the Cashier. It would have only taken a few minutes to cash my cheque, yet those could have been the last couple of minutes of my life. Truly, obedience is better than sacrifice and it is its own reward.
HEALED BY PRAISE
I had been away for a few weeks when I came home and noticed my 2-yr old daughter walking as if she was in pain but I was told she was fine and was only recovering from a cold. A couple of days later, I took her to the doctors because she was very clingy and unlike herself. ‘Her blood count is so low, I don’t understand how she is standing upright’ said the Doctor who hurried to admit us and set her up for blood transfusion. Diagnosis: Pneumonia. As my colleagues and friends rushed around to find safe blood, I remembered Someone who had shed His precious blood for her. I sneaked my daughter out of the hospital, went home and brought out my shekere. I did not have the words to pray but as I slowly beat a tune, faith rose up within me and I did warfare in praise!
I completed the solo all-night praise warfare and returned to the hospital in the morning. To fulfill all righteousness, I asked them to run another test. The doctor said: ‘Is this the same baby I saw yesterday? What did you do? Her blood count is perfectly fine’. Even I was amazed at the Doctor’s words! But there was the evidence right before us: she was up and about, running, playful, back to herself.
Without a doubt, a host of angels were with me that night and God answered my prayers!
