Bisi carefully opened the journal Gideon had sent her. It must really be a special book to him considering he had requested that she mail it back to him as soon as she was done with it.
Opening the journal, she found out that perfect Mr. Gideon Ojo, ever serious, was not so perfect after all. His handwriting was legible but a teacher will definitely struggle when marking his answer script. She laughed to herself.
The first page had just a sentence and Bisi knew where Gideon had quoted it from: God works in Gideon to will and to do God’s own good pleasure. It was paraphrased from a verse in Philippians 2:13 and Bisi had only recently known it by heart when she was troubled about going back home after her youth service for job hunting.
She was worried at first considering her colleagues were seriously laying out future plans and she had nothing to tender from her end other than going back to her parents, not even marriage was in sight.
It took her father to call her to order one family prayer altar morning. He had charged the family particularly her with that Scripture verse and since that day, she had kept at meditating on it and learning to hold God’s hands with that verse.
Seeing it in Gideon’s journal, she sensed it meant very much to him too and he must have a story to share about it. The first entry in the journal had Gideon describing,
‘After the sermon today, I have kept on pondering within me what the preacher meant when he said ‘I invite you to share in God’s burden today. God needs people to share in His burden, just as Peter, James, and John were with Jesus at the Garden that night.
Would it not be a great honour for the Lord to find you worthy of partaking in the deep concerns of His heart. Will you be willing to let Him have your ears, heart, and receive His call to true purpose? I have been wondering what this means, Lord.
Does it mean that joining hands with you, being available to meet the concerns of Your heart is the true meaning of purpose?
Is that how I get to glorify you and do Your will? If that is it, I want it. Invite me to share in Your burden. I want that kind of purpose, Lord! It will be a great honour from You, Lord to be on an assignment for You. Please invite me to do what You will provide the grace for’.
That page ended. The next entry was dated some five months later. Looking at the date, it coincided with when he had newly begun his service year. He journaled ‘Lord, the Rural Rugged experience can’t seem to leave me!
My heart can’t stop hurting from the realities of those villages that I saw. I see and understand better how blessed I am to have Christ and to have Him in such great comfort. Why is it that these areas have had little to no contact with the Good News of Jesus!
Don’t we have missionaries who go on these assignments? The part that has left me broken was the man I witnessed who locked the door of his house and was beating his wife. How much we struggled to break the door so we could deliver the poor woman from his hands.
If the Gospel of Christ had gone there earlier and they had consistent interaction with the Gospel, I believe that man would not be so audacious to beat that young woman.
Christ would have changed him! Father, please raise men and women to go ahead to places like these who need help!
Reading about his experience of Rural Rugged as organised by the Christian serving corpers made Bisi think about her experience too. She did not follow others much when they went on two by two.
She was in the welfare unit and whenever they were not prepping meals, they were helping out at the make-shift temporary sick-bay assisting the medical corpers with whatever they needed.
But then, she remembered some two women who came around where they were prepping meals and begged for some so that their kids could eat. Bisi’s heart ached when she found out that those women had many children and their fathers were drinking buddies at the village palm wine stall.
They never provide for their family. She wondered at their irresponsibility considering that one of the women was still pregnant beside five other children. How will these ones cope!
Bisi flipped over to the page it was dated about three weeks from the last entry. Gideon wrote: ‘When I saw that missionary today, soliciting for funds in church and I saw people pulling out kobos and such, my heart ached so much! Lord, when is it so hard to give to just courses like this and we find it easier when it comes to buying fancy clothes and shoes for Christmas.
I know I should not be judgmental. Forgive me, Lord, If I am. But it felt so sad that such a man serving You among those who are hostile towards the Gospel, would have to stoop to begging for widow’s mite.
It would be great if people were actually with only widow’s mites. No Lord, we both know they have more than mites, at least some, if not most. Then why the reluctance on their faces?
Father, if You ever call me to any ministry to serve and it needs to be funded, please however way possible, You fund it through me or people You lay it upon their hearts to do so. I don’t want to go begging. Your name and Your work, does not deserve that, Owner of the Universe!’
Bisi recollected that very day Gideon referred to. The missionary came with His first daughter, a girl of about 14 years old. He had brought her back home so she could receive proper education apart from the homeschooling his wife had been doing for the children. They wanted her to go to the university and she would be staying with the family of a pastor friend of theirs.
The wife stayed behind with the other three children because it was too expensive for them all to come visiting. Seeing that the young teenager had to be separated from her family for long, Bisi’s heart ached terribly and she wished she had so much to give to help the family out. She remembered giving the only one naira note she had to her name.
In all honesty, it was this missionary’s wife that inspired her blurting the nonsense she said that day to Gideon. She had thought for a little while back then that it would be such a honourable thing to be- the wife of a missionary, like Apostle Peter’s wife and even Priscilla and Aquila.
She remembered discussing with her mom while they were in the kitchen about the missionary family and she had asked if there were Biblical examples for such women like her.
Bisi’s mum had shared on Peter’s wife that her life must have influenced Apostle Peter’s charge about womanhood in Christ as referenced in 1 Peter 3:1-6.
The way her mom explained it that day, it gave her a desire to be such a woman and in her simple mind, a missionary’s wife would be it.
She kept on reading, flipping and flipping, page after page, and all that Gideon was journaling on was about missions, such that he wrote that he had gotten a book of compilation on serving missionaries from the Ministry’s Convention Administration Board as he had requested for.
He had begun to pray for one person per day.
The list had 400 names in it.
Then about two months towards the end of his service year, Bisi noted as she read through that page.
Gideon had recorded that as he sat in church reading a book about missionaries, he had been asking God in between his reading that is he being burdened by God to draw his attention towards seeing being a missionary as his calling.
He wrote, ‘Are you calling me to become a missionary? I asked You Father. Then I asked you again after reading a couple more pages that You will have to be plain to me if this is what You want.
You know I was not being particularly serious as I asked You about it so casually. And when I was reading about Emma Carmichael’s missions to India, I wondered if I would get a woman willing to go to any lengths with me if I were truly called.
Jokingly I said maybe the woman who will go with me will come over herself to confirm that You want me on this boat. Lord, I was only joking but You decided to play that one on me!
You actually sent a woman to tell me she will be marrying a missionary and you bore witness of your will to me both in calling and marriage at the same time! I did not expect that you were waiting for me all along to ask, Lord.
I would have asked without even bringing a woman into the picture!
Lord order my future in Your will.
Satisfy me with the abundance of Your grace.
Strengthen me to make the right decisions per time in the future.
And about sister Bisi, establish Your will in her life and in mine too, Amen!’
———
Wheeeeew!
Indeed, God works in the most uncommon way. What do you think? Your comments are absolutely welcome.
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Checkmate Episode 13
