Dear Agatha,
I am an avid reader of your column in the Daily Independent Newspaper. I have benefited immensely from your responses and timely answers to people's questions.
Mine is baffling and beyond my understanding. I gave my life to Christ in 1988 at the Scripture Union Conference shortly after my secondary school. Later I joined the Deeper Life Bible Church in 1990. I became a staunch worshipper combined with the rigours of their well-known practical Christianity. Before then I had vowed not to have sex before marriage and have asked God instead to remove me than doing that. That was way back in class two when I hadn’t even become born again.
I kept to this despite temptations and challenges of masturbation. I got appointment with a bank and was transferred to the east. I had grown as a Christian enough to taste the powers and gift of the Holy Spirit.
Over time however, my official assignments made it impossible for me to attend weekly services. I could only attend Sunday services. My moral strength got weakened without my notice.
Either in 2004 or 2005 I read a message sent to my box mistakenly sent by a lady in one of the universities in the east. I discovered the mail was not for me, but established a kind of relationship with this lady. Eventually I had sex with her.
The consequences were alarming and almost instant. Two days after we had sex, I got a call that my younger sister who though for some time hadn’t enjoyed the best of health was seriously sick. Agatha, till date, I can’t explain why I failed to respond to the emergency call until she died.
Being a very important member of the family to whom we are all connected, it was the worst kind of experience. The lady asked me to leave my house immediately on the premise that she can’t endure staying in a place where people are crying.
I was very hurt by the statement but I stupidly kept to her because of my emotional breakdown. It was indeed a very trying moment for me.
The next thing was my job. Before I got the letter terminating my appointment, I had a spiritual experience with a strange person who touched the centre of my head. Following that spiritual episode, I misplaced and misappropriated fund belonging to the bank. I lost control over my actions.
I lost my job in the most shameful ways. Few months to this, I had met my Pastor who told me that God wasn’t happy with me and my problems have to do with a lady. He said a lady I jilted.
I eventually got a job, after three years of roaming the streets searching for a job. I am yet to pay off the debts I went into following the bank saga.
I am approaching 38 years of age and have been unable to find an ideal wife to assist me or identify with me considering my background and my humble educational attainment, a Higher National Diploma. My father died when I was just four years of age.
Certain sources have attributed my plight to not having performed traditional burial rites on my late dad. I have always considered those things as not conforming to Christian traditions. But when such comments are coming from seemingly strong Christians, I begin to wonder.
It has not been easy and my salary does not seem to meet pressing obligations. In Lagos now, I am still squatting and not able to get ready to become a man.
Kindly advise me.
Hue.
Dear Hue,
Doubtless what you suffer from is a spiritual problem but caused by your own carelessness and insensitivity to the things of God whom you went into a covenant with.
Of your own freewill, you went into a partnership with God. Even when you hadn’t fully given your life to Christ, you swore to remain a celibate until your wedding night. You went as far as asking God to take you away if you go against this covenant with Him.
You were not forced to go on any agreement with Him; you did on your own freewill. You broke this agreement when you had sex with a woman whose history, spiritual relationship you know nothing about.
God, by every standard, is merciful but one who is very jealous and who holds covenant sacred. This is because everything about His relationship with us revolves round covenant. Being a God who works His wonders through promises, He values every promises made to us more than even His name so when we go into freewill agreements with Him, we must have the resolves to keep to them else the protection and peace that go with such promises would begin to work against us instead of in our favour.
Whenever we break our promises with God, we unwittingly empower the devil to have legal grounds to fight against us. We weaken the power of God over us because being completely just, and bound by His words, He painfully looks the other way when devil and his agents come to demand for their pound of flesh arising from our own faults.
This has nothing to do with your inability to give your father the final burial. Rather, it comes from your own severance of your protection chain from God.
If the former were true, you wouldn’t be able to get any job at all or come out of the problem with the bank without going to prison. You survived because of the grace of God, which never really goes away where His anointed are concerned.
His refusal to kill you as you requested when going into that vow with Him shows that He has something in store for you. However, you died spiritually the moment you went against this promises. For you to go back to your former glory and climb to a greater one, you must first seek and restore your spiritual relationship with God.
The moment you dreamt about being attacked by an unidentified person in your dream, you should have gone to your pastor to raise a prayer team for your deliverance and help.
Touching you on the head in your dream was a withdrawal of your spiritual gift and prosperity. For you to make it physically, these must be returned to you spiritually.
First, you have to go back to God for forgiveness and mercy because without first seeking the help and interventions of God, no amount of deliverance will be able to set you free. He has to be involved in your deliverance because only He has the authority to defeat the devil completely.
Reconciling with Him means confessing your sins and re-entering into another covenant with Him. This time, think before going into it. Be sure what you are pledging is something you have the will power to fulfill. Be sure you will not derail again. Remember God has not put any burden on you beyond the general rules that apply to every child of His. So if you are going the extra mile through your own freewill be sure, you have what it takes not to fail because it would always count as a debt against you as well as an avenue for the devil to triumph over you.
From all you have went through, you ought to know by now that it is best not to going into covenants with God than to go into one and fail.
On your own don’t ever allow yourself to be scarce in the presence of God. No matter how demanding your job is, maintain the relationship you have with God at all times because without Him, that job can cease to exist.
Had you maintained your relationship with God, this girl and whatever powers she had wouldn’t have been able to defeat you. This is not saying being a prayerful Christian protects you completely from the trials of the world, but it offers you a shield and stronger platform to overpower and defeat whatever challenges come your way.
Though as children of God, we still have our crosses to carry but are made lighter with His grace and mercy.
As for being 38 and unmarried, don’t worry when the time is right you will find the right woman. All you require to find the right woman is to place your request before God. Being the establisher of the marriage institution and your creator, He knows just the right woman for you, the one who will not only be your wife but your friend and comforter as well.
You failed with the first woman because you didn’t involve God and went about it the wrong way. Having broken the link between you and God, she was sent on the assignment to make your fall complete. She too may not know what happened which is why you should always remain in the presence of God.
There is no way you would make it under the current spiritual yoke you involve yourself. Everything would work right for you once you restore your spiritual relationships with God. This is the promise God has for all His children who love and trust Him unconditionally.
Good luck
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