There is something I need your help explaining to me… This is an issue that I have always wondered about. I have had several reasons to wonder how two things that seem to be incompatible can be exhibited in the very same space.
A Nollywood movie I watched a few days ago actually brought this issue back to mind and I knew it was time I spoke about my worries thus the conception of this post.
In that movie, there was this guy who deprived his wife of sex for about 3 months or more after the wedding. I mean from day one… No honeymoon things.
His commonest excuse was that they needed to pray. It was either that he just had a nightmare when the wife makes advances at him or that he was observing lent in August. Even on their wedding night, it was prayer that they prayed till they both slept off and I was like, “Are you kidding me?”
The wife kept suffering in silence. She was deeply frustrated.
To cut the long story short, he kept using the issue of prayer to camouflage his obvious purpose of punishing his wife.
Now, this was the real issue which he refused to reveal until after the lady attempted suicide:
The wife had stolen money from the husband’s late brother (whom she worked with as a secretary) which she gave this same man to travel out of the country with. It was during the period when they were out of the country that the elder brother died from a stroke linked to the money which was stolen from him; when he couldn’t resuscitate his business or make ends meet.
He had later sponsored the lady to join him overseas and returned to the country together for their wedding. Upon their return, the man took his fiancee to meet his sister-in-law and that was when he got to know about what had transpired between his wife-to-be and elder brother.
So, instead of confronting the lady or calling off the wedding he went ahead to marry her with the intention of punishing her.
Did I mention that while the wife from suffering from deprivation, this man had a side-chic that was performing his wife’s conjugal duties?
What am I driving at with my narration?
I have seen people who profess to be believers and sometimes can pray like fire would descend right there in their prayer rooms act terribly towards people around them.
I have seen pastors who are skilled in dividing the Word of truth beat their wives blue-black upon every slight provocation.
I have seen tongue-talking, fire spitting believers rob their bosses or involved in fraudulent activities at their places of work.
And all I can ask within myself is, “How do they do it?”
How do you harbour sin yet are able to pray?
How do you keep malice and are still able to raise ‘holy hands’ to the Lord?
How are you able to steal money and yet bring the tithe to church?
How do you abuse your spouse physically or emotionally and still be able to stand before the congregation of the righteous with your hypocritical smiles?
How do you call yourself a child of God and still act like that of the devil?
How can light and darkness live in the same vessel at the same time?
…Because the Holy Spirit I know will always call you out when you are out of line.
Something must definitely be wrong somewhere then, I conclude…
Either you are not born again in the first instance or you have decided to continually ignore the voice of the Holy Spirit to you.
This is a call to you reading this to examine your ways.
Check where you have fallen from and make amends. Allow yourself to be thoroughly broken down, have a circumcised heart which is sensitive to the voice of the Holy Spirit and decide to begin to obey Him always.
May your eyes be opened to those areas of your life that are not conforming to the standards of the Word of God.
And may grace be multiplied unto you as you decide to repent of your ungodly ways!
©OMOSEBI Mary Omolola
