Month: May 2007

Q and A and angel update

Chidi: why does your pastor wear his hair the way he does?

DGK: firstly, this is my response to your question, and it in no way reflects pastor chris’ view on the subject. but having being a member of the church for a period of 4 years, and a headquarters staff for almost 2 years, this is my take.

so, why does he wear his hair the way he does? because he likes it that way. why do other pastors in the ministry wear their hair like him? not all the pastors do, the others chose to do it because they want to look like their mentor/hero/father. the only thing behind the hairstlye is simply a matter of preference. when i was much younger i used to cut my hair like mike tyson because he was a hero. when i began reading max lucado, i started writing like him because i like his style. it is not spooky that you pick up some attitudes from the one you look up to. without question, there will be something about you and your siblings that you picked up from one of your folks – an accent, a walk, a gesture, dress sense etc.

besides even if there was anything behind the hairstyle, God once recommended a very strict hairstyle for a “Man of God” – Jdg 13:3 but one day an angel from the LORD appeared to her and said: You have never been able to have any children, but very soon you will be pregnant and have a son. He will belong to God from the day he is born, so his hair must never be cut…

true, the devil is up to a lot of mischief in these last days, but God is also up to a lot of good. Lets have as much faith in God as we have in the devil. 

i personally wear a low cut, though i once in a while consider doing my hair, but i just don’t dig it. And there’s no written or unwritten rule that any member/pastor/staff should.  I hope i have been able to amswer your question objectively.

in angel matters, i called Ify from my previous post. Twice now. Human or angel. I still scratch my head. I mean, who asks after your well being with so much intensity and passion? I was literally trying to get off the phone. How was your day? At you at work? Have you eaten? What did you eat? How is your cell meeting? etc. Gosh! I felt like i was being mothered. Why doesn’t this happen when i bump into “raise-d-dead-gorgeous”? Like those ones at Tminx‘s beach party (details still coming up i promise). LOL. (Or am i mixing up beauty with bare flesh? Hey, first time i was seeing bikinis LIVE. I know i am bush boy, once upon a time, all of us were! shoot me. ) Anyway, she sounds like a real friendly person, so let’s see how things turn out. I was/am a big fan of the TV series “Touched by an Angel” and my pastor did mention in his new year message “2007 – The Year of Supernatural Accomplishments” that we will experience 
the ministration of angels.  so my fingers are crossed. double LOL.

angel or stranger

this morning i went to the bank a few blocks from my office to pay in money from our cell offering. i hate going to this particular bank because they take forever to attend to you, so after filling in the deposit slip i took a seat hoping i wouldn’t have to wait long.

i only noticed her when she spoke, and barely heard her. “Am sorry, didn’t catch that”. She repeated her question; something about what payment i was making. okay, let me backtrack a bit. the bank is owned by my ministry, and most of the transactions are church finances. She was obviously a member of the ministry also. I informed her that i was making a payment for my cell group. I thought it would end there, but i had inadvertently opened up room for more convo. She wanted to know which cell group it was, how many we were in the cell, what i did in the cell, what it was like being a church staff etc.

somewhere in the middle of her inquisition, i turned around to take a good look at her. i was surpised i hadn’t noticed her at first, I am quick to notice members of the opposite sex – i know, i am gifted like that, lol. she was very fair skinned, with braided hairs and very clear eyes. average height, slightly built, nice looking but not a head turner for me. i collated the data my eyes fed me and began processing. i was flattered for a bit. was she coming on to me? i was excited too – i was actually making convo with a total stranger. okay, so maybe i was doing more of responding and listening. she talked a lot ; i mean i came away with enough unrequested information about her – she was a medical student who would be going to school abroad next month, her two brothers had laptops and she was just about to learn how to use the computer, she had just come from a bureau de change to switch the dollars she had for naira yada yada.

the only reason i consider this worth blogging is because somewhere in the middle of all her talk i caught a few precious points to ponder. she said something striking about the importance of always commiting your day to God before leaving the house. it made the difference between having a good day and a better day. she spoke about her partnership with some arms of the ministry and wondered why i was only partnering with one arm. she said she loved doing a lot of volunteer work for her branch of the church, and didnt even bother about asking for bus fare, and i cringed at the thought that i had been harassing my HR dept for a raise.

we eventually exchanged digits and said goodbye. i thought about her long after she left. really, she wasn’t the kind that would have caught my attention if she hadn’t spoken to me. and i wondered why she had decided to open up so much to a total stranger in a way that challenged my faith.

i do remember the part of scripture that talks about angels who were mistaken for strangers. i am still wondering if i should give her a call.

after the honeymoon

HEADLINE NEWS: Yesterday was Tminx beach party, and with a sense of accomplishment I am happy to say I WAS THERE! Details coming up shortly.

i have come to realize that true success and the fulfillment of god’s purpose for our lives requires more than pure passion. passion is what gets us started, but discipline is what takes us to the finish line. it is like romance; we find the object of our affection, and we are enraptured. we drink in her beauty and delight in her presence. we discover her person and determine our help mate. we pop the big question, and somewhere down the line we tie the knot. then comes the wedding night where we discover the treasure that we have dug; the gem that god prepared for us in the consummation of our love, and the songs of solomon become our song too.

a few weeks later, or months later for some of us, we wake up to reality. we discover that the object of our affection is indeed another human like ourselves. indeed, this object of our affection has bad breath in the mornings like we do; they have trussed up looks as they get out of bed each day, as we do. we come to find out that beneath the cloud nine in which we walked during courtship, there is good old, solid, dusty earth. the one god prepared for us becomes the one we have to wake up to every morning and grow old with. it is somewhere in this discovery that we realize that it will take more than the passion that attracted us to each other to keep us together. but it would take the discipline to slowly live out the vows that we quickly said at the altar. it would be our commitment to each other that would bring us home each day; it would be our commitment to each other that would display the wedding band to the secretary at work in the low-cut top and short skirt. it would be discipline that would make us stay as marriage partners, not just passionate lovers. somewhere down the line, after the honeymoon is over, our passion is going to grow old and then it will take our discipline and commitment to make the marriage work. Someone said it like this: …regardless of how hot and steamy a relationship is at first, the passion fades and there had better be something else to take its place.

this simple truth carries over to every other area of life. for example, it is 5am on a Monday morning as I write this. i love to write, passionately, but there’s a long day ahead of me and i need as much rest as i can get, and my bed is indeed quite comfortable. plus Christmas is around the corner and the festive mood is already creeping up on me. only commitment to my blog readers, and the discipline to improve on my writing skills, will get me to pick pen and paper and begin to weave words together for another blog entry.

when i joined the ministry, working for the lord had all the bells and whistle. i was excited especially at the fact that i could work for god, without necessarily being a clergy. i could actually be in the ministry, bringing in souls to the kingdom, through one of my favorite things to do – programming the internet. i was passionate about my work, and i spent many days and indeed nights before my computer, convinced that god was fortunate to find a laborer like me. today, i rethink my thoughts. because ministry work has gone beyond programming the internet. it has come to involve lending a hand in putting things and places together for ministry programs and events. it has come to involve getting under the hood and helping to make sure the bandwagon of the ministry keeps rolling on. i used to think working in the ministry would give me an opportunity to be super-charged in the lord at all times. now i have come to realize that when god called me to the ministry, he wasn’t handing me a meal ticket, but an apron and a tray, to help in feeding so many lost souls. now i know that there’s a time when you come into god’s kingdom and get fed; after a while you need to move over out of your seat, pick up a tray and begin to feed others. it is at this point that you will need the discipline to stick around, the courage to do all the grunt work and the wisdom to not neglect yourself even as you give of yourself.

god gives us passion to get us into his plan and purpose for our lives. but it’s up to us to develop the discipline and commitment to that purpose. it is my lack of discipline that almost cost me my faith in these recent months. it is my lack of commitment that saw me hollering for a time-out when passion faded. i have learnt to look at jesus in a new way. it must have been a novel experience for him to take on human form and walk the face of earth. it must have been passion that drove him to perform miracles and teach the word with such conviction. but it was commitment and discipline that kept his head up when the stones were held high; it was commitment and discipline that kept him mute when the accusations and the scourging came back to back; it was commitment and discipline that drove him to his feet every time the weight of the cross knocked him to the ground.

i still love god very much; the question now is “how much?”