Afos’e

There was a community that I was asked to supervise when I was still working as the personal assistant to a pastor.

The community is located on the outskirts of Ogun state, very close to the border.

We had a mission outpost there as a church, and the missionary working in the community was a member of the church’s direct staff.

The community had a lot of issues, ranging from illiteracy to government neglect.

The church decided to build a school, boreholes, and churches and also provide other amenities for the convenience of the community.

The budget allocated to the village was in excess of a hundred million Naira.

My boss at the time handed me the file for this mission outpost and insisted that I ensure the fund was well spent.

There were seven small villages in this community, but they all agreed that they were one.

Each community had its own leader, but overall, they didn’t have a king or a leader since the last generally accepted head of the seven communities died.

As soon as we began our projects in this community, one of the leaders of the seven communities approached our missionary and demanded that we put one of the boreholes and the schools we wanted to build right in his compound.

He wanted to become the leader of the seven communities, but he didn’t have the means to fund his ambition by himself.

He decided to take advantage of the goodies the church extended to the community so that it would seem to the people that he was the one who brought the church in and, therefore, controlled the purse strings from which all the milk and honey were flowing.

The missionary he approached with his offer ignored him. He didn’t even bother to report it to any of the pastors.

It was too simple a plot for a ten-year-old not to see through it. We finished our borehole projects, and water began to flow in the community.

We started the school building project in that same community the same day we cut the ribbons on the borehole projects.

This man then went to the missionary and said he would talk to the seven spirits of the village to stop allowing water to flow in the boreholes unless the church did what he had demanded.

The missionary ignored him again. A week later, all seven of the borehole holes dried up!

Without the borehole holes, we couldn’t continue our building project because we needed water to build it.

The missionary sent a report to my boss, my boss told me to go and find out what was going on in the village and bring him a report.

I went to the village reluctantly; it was a very long journey, although I was given one of the church buses and a driver for the trip.

When I got there the missionary told me all that had transpired.

I asked some of the young ones there to press the hand pump of the borehole, and all that came out was dust. I told them to pack the dust in a nylon, and I stuck the nylon in the back pocket of my jeans.

We went to this man’s house and met him at home. He said he waited purposefully to meet with me since the missionary told him the church was sending down a representative.

I told him what I had heard and he confirmed it boldly, he said “I told the seven spirits to take their water away from your boreholes if you will not be wise enough to do what I have demanded of you,”

I said, “I have the three with me, and (I brought out the soil in the nylon from my back pocket and dropped it on the table. ) I said, “This is all that is coming out of the boreholes,”

He said, “It will remain so until a borehole is built right outside my entrance and a school is built opposite my compound on the land over there.”

He was so arrogant, so sure of himself. I hated that I represented the church, and the church was not a joke.

The church is not a powerless entity.

The church is a stone of offence. If you stumble upon her, she will break you into pieces; if she falls upon you, she will grind you to powder.

Of course, he had met too many powerless Christians, and he was sure he had us by the jugular. I said, “This dust is what you and your household will be eating henceforth”

I said this in reference to the scripture where God said the serpent will be eating dust and moving about on its belly.

It was a completely harmless statement meant to throw a jibe at him and call him a snake.

(This is not a recommended behaviour, please; remember that this happened years ago, and I am also growing every day)

As we headed back to the church bus, I told the missionary to tell the villagers to take their buckets and kegs and return to the boreholes later that evening because there would be water.

I was so convinced of this, and when the missionary asked me what I meant by the instruction, I told him the boreholes would flow with water again by the evening of that day

I left for Lagos.

Two weeks later, the missionary and this man arrived at my office in Lagos.

Water flowed as I declared, but something else also started happening, which I didn’t expect.

Members of the household of that wanna-be leader began to eat dust with their food!

I mean, they would have a plate of food in front of them, and with their hands, they would pick some dust and pour it into the food before eating it.

This was why the man came to see me.

He wanted me to pray for him and release him and his children from this malady.

I introduced him to Jesus, and his family was set free

I also explained to him that I didn’t curse him; I had only underestimated the power of my words and totally forgotten that a believer should always say what he or she intends to see happen.

He got it.

I hope you got it, too.

The words you speak are spirit and life

You are not a washout.

You are not a victim.

You are not a walkover.

You have authority, and you have power.

You are full of the Holy Spirit.

You are the prolongment of the days of Christ.

Please live up to the status you have been given in Christ!

 

-GSW-