Image by Amna Sayeed from pixabay.com
When I was in 11th grade, a married couple that I liked split up. Their split rocked people and saddened me.
So I felt that surely something could be done to save their marriage, and the only person I knew who had this power was God if I prayed and fasted for their marriage.
I was an idealistic teenager on the cusp of adulthood, with a very limited understanding of life as you can imagine. The lives of others (celebrities the likes of Gwen Stefani and Zendaya) held much sway in my life since I wasn’t paying any bills or cooking. I had time and youthful exuberance on my hands. I felt like I could take on the world.
I was raised in a Nigerian church doctrine that which taught that God answered prayers if you prayed and fasted.
But I had heard some preaching about finding out God’s will before embarking or praying for things because If something was not God’s will, it would not happen, and you would waste your time and effort.
So I asked God a question: Jesus, can I pray and fast for this couple so that You bring them back together?
I waited a few seconds and after that I felt like God said “yes, yes”.
Why would God say no sef? God Himself said that He hates divorce. Obviously God would say yes.So it was confirmed. Yes, I could pray and fast for this couple to get back together.
So began my ~12 months journey of praying and fasting for this couple. I would pray (as a high school student) at 10 am, 12 pm, 3pm, and 6pm, going without food until 4pm-6pm.
I also kept away from any information about this ex couple that could hinder my faith. Unfortunately, in a moment of weakness, I read an article which reported that the ex husband was seeing someone else. This took my faith and plunged it to the depths of the sea of my heart because it meant that there was no hope of reconciliation between him and his ex wife.
But no, I encouraged myself.This was just one of those bumps they warn you about when you embark on your journey to success. Other bumps came, which I also brushed aside.
Keep the faith Sefunmi, don’t give up. So I did.
I set a date for when God would answer to my prayers, which was like a year after I started praying and fasting.
On the set date, nothing happened. Two days later, this ex husband and the woman who I assured myself he was not seeing announced that she had just given birth to his baby.
I was shocked. Angry at God. My heart felt sick because hope deferred makes the heart sick and eventually bitter. How could this happen after all the praying and fasting I did?
God TOLD me I could pray and fast. God cannot lie, so this cannot be true. In fact, it was false. That ex husband and the ‘not his girlfriend’ woman were not the real people. They were kidnappers impersonating them.
I loosely held on to this delusion for a few days, and then let it go because it was TOO far fetched.
I accepted reality. I was angry at God.
Eventually I put aside my hurt and pain into a box of painful unanswered prayers that resided in my heart and moved on with my faith in God.
At university, I came across a teaching by Andrew Wommack, in which he explained that God cannot answer certain prayers that go against a person’s free will, for example reconciliation between a couple. All He can do is to put thoughts in their minds that encourage reconciliation. But they could choose not to get back together.
“Ohhhhhhh”, I thought. So God couldn’t have brought that couple back together.
“But God why did You allow me to pray and fast to You for basically a year for something You couldn’t directly change?”
And this is what God whispered back to me in the inaudible voice of my heart :
“If I had told you no, would you have listened?”
I didn’t need to contemplate that question. I knew the answer immediately:
No, I would not have listened.In fact, I would have thought it was the devil trying to steal my faith.Looking back, I saw that I quickly fabricated a ‘yes’ in my my head because it was what I wanted.
I always try to understand why I made certain mistakes in my life so I had to ask myself why I embarked on such a mission. I concluded that there were 3 reasons:
1. Ignorance. I was ignorant about how God answered prayers that involve free will.
2. Isolation. I never told anyone about what I was about to embark on and I had no mentor to wisely and compassionately advise me about it. I isolated myself from readily available information that could have shown me that the ex husband’s girlfriend was pregnant and that he was always with her. There was no chat gpt back then to check things.
3. My ego, pride/arrogance, and stubborness. I believe that this was the main issue. I was saddened by their break up, and my sadness and my desires for them was all that mattered. Their desires and free will did not even enter the equation. Even if I had a mentor, would I have listened?
So I write all this to say:
“Would you have listened?”
Whatever is going on in your life, whatever opinions you hold, if you’re about to embark on something, if someone was to advise you with a “no”, would you listen or would you allow your ignorance to lead you down a wrong path? Are you isolated such that no one knows what you’re going through? And do you have a heart of stone such that you hold on to your opinions so tightly, thinking you are always right, and therefore no matter what anyone says, you would never change your mind?
Let my mistake as an 11/12th grader be an example to you.
Would you have listened?
Books by Sefunmi Oladumiye
Dealing with Your Implicit Racism (For black people and anti-racism activists
Apostle Paul was a Feminist Vol 1
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