testimonies

GOD ANSWERED

Praise the Lord with me, one Saturday evening in January, I sneaked into this auditorium to have a look but as I stepped in, I was led to pray on the altar concerning some things one of which was my professional examination. To the glory of God, the Lord answered my prayers and I made a vow to come back to testify of these miracles before the children of God.Brethren, the All Sufficient One dwells in JESUS CAPITAL. Hallelujah.

Biodun Agboola

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Thanksgiving  Service March 2009 Pastor Tumi on dance at the centre

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JOKES

Where is God?
Two brothers are terrible trouble makers. They are always breaking things, stealing things, lying, and making all kinds of general trouble. The parents have tried everything to get the boys to change, to no avail. Finally, out of options, they ask their pastor if he can help. He says he will talk to the boys, but only one at a time. The parents drop off the youngest and go home, promising to return to get him soon. The boy sits in a chair across from the pastor’s desk and they just look at each other.
Finally, the Pastor says, “Where is God?”
The boy just sits there and doesn’t answer.
The pastor begins to look stern and loudly says, “Where is God?”
The little boy shifts in his seat, but still doesn’t answer.
The pastor is starting to get angry at the boy’s refusal to converse and practically shouts “Where is God?”
To the pastor’s surprise, the little boy jumps up out of his chair and runs out of the office.
The boy leaves the church and runs all the way home, up the stairs and into his brother’s room. He shuts the door and pants, “We’re in BIG TROUBLE. God’s missing and they think we did it!”

Preaching
The preacher was wired for sound with a lapel mike, and as he preached, he moved briskly about the platform, jerking the mike cord as he went.
Then he moved to one side, getting wound up in the cord and nearly tripping before jerking it again.
After several circles and jerks, a little girl in the third pew leaned toward her mother and whispered, “If he gets loose, will he hurt us?”

LOVE AND RESPECT.

BOOK REVIEW

TITLE: LOVE & RESPECT

AUTHOR: DR EMERSON EGGERICHS
REVIEWED BY: ADEOLA OYEBODE
OVERVIEW: This is a book with a focus on the family and the simple message it passes across is that both the husband and wife each has a driving need-RESPECT and LOVE respectively. When that need is met, both are happy. When either of these needs isn’t met, things get crazy. Love & Respect reveals WHY spouses react negatively to each other, and HOW they can deal with such conflict quickly, easily and biblically. The writer stated in his introduction that his message of love and respect has to be lived out DAILY for the couple to experience peace, closeness and understanding the way God intended. Divided into three parts which describes  three different cycles a conflict-filled marriage under repair will experience, Love & Respect is filled with practicable principles that need to be wholeheartedly submitted and committed to by both parties for a lasting relationship to exist. Dr EGGERICHS in his concluding pages addressed exceptional situations in which either of the couple is not making these principles work.
Why not learn how to meet each other’s needs and crack the communication code between you and your spouse by getting a copy to read along, you will be blessed and be glad you did.

AMAZING GOD

AMAZING GOD

Isaiah 65:24, And it shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.

One night I had worked hard to help a mother in the labour ward; but in spite of all we could do, she died, leaving us with a tiny, premature baby and a crying two-year-old daughter. We would have difficulty keeping the baby alive; as we had no incubator (we had no electricity to run an incubator).  We also had no special feeding facilities.

Although we lived on the equator, nights were often chilly with treacherous drafts. One student midwife went for the box we had for such babies and the cotton wool that the baby would be wrapped in. Another went to stoke up the fire and fill a hot water bottle. She came back shortly in distress to tell me that in filling the bottle, it had burst (rubber perishes easily in tropical climates).. ‘And it is our last hot water bottle!’ she exclaimed. As in the West, it is no good crying over spilled milk, so in Central Africa it might be considered no good crying over burst water bottles. They do not grow on trees, and there are no drugstores down forest pathways.

‘All right,’ I said, ‘put the baby as near the fire as you safely can, and sleep between the baby and the door to keep it free from drafts. Your job is to keep the baby warm.’

The following noon, as I did most days, I went to have prayers with any of the orphanage children who chose to gather with me. I gave the youngsters various suggestions of things to pray about and told them about the tiny baby. I explained our problem about keeping the baby warm enough, mentioning the hot water bottle, and that the baby could so easily die if it got chills. I also told them of the two-year-old sister, crying because her mother had died.

During prayer time, one ten -year-old girl, Ruth, prayed with the usual blunt conciseness of our African children.  ‘Please, God’ she prayed, ‘Send us a hot water bottle today. It’ll be no good tomorrow, God, as the baby will be dead, so please send it this afternoon.’

While I gasped inwardly at the audacity of the prayer, she added, ‘And while You are about it, would You please send a dolly for the little girl so she’ll know You really love her?’

As often with children’s prayers, I was put on the spot. Could I honestly say ‘Amen’? I just did not believe that God could do this. Oh, yes, I know that He can do everything; the Bible says so. But there are limits, aren’t there? The only way God could answer this particular prayer would be by sending me a parcel from the homeland. I had been in Africa for almost four years at that time, and I had never, ever, received a parcel from home. Anyway, if anyone did send me a parcel, who would put in a hot water bottle? I lived on the equator!

Halfway through the afternoon, while I was teaching in the nurses’ training school, a message was sent that there was a car at my front door. By the time I reached home, the car had gone, but there on the verandah was a large 22-pound parcel. I felt tears pricking my eyes.  I could not open the parcel alone, so I sent for the orphanage children. Together we pulled off the string, carefully undoing each knot. We folded the paper, taking care not to tear it unduly. Excitement was mounting. Some thirty or forty pairs of eyes were focused on the large cardboard box. From the top, I lifted out brightly-colored, knitted jerseys. Eyes sparkled as I gave them out. Then there were the knitted bandages for the leprosy patients, and the children looked a little bored. Then came a box of mixed raisins and sultanas – that would make a batch of buns for the weekend.

Then, as I put my hand in again, I felt the……could it really be? I grasped it and pulled it out. Yes, a brand new, rubber hot water bottle. I cried.  I had not asked God to send it; I had not truly believed that He could. Ruth was in the front row of the children.  She rushed forward, crying out, ‘If God has sent the bottle, He must have sent the dolly, too!’ Rummaging down to the bottom of the box, she pulled out the small, beautifully-dressed dolly. Her eyes shone! She had never doubted! Looking up at me, she asked: ‘Can I go over with you and give this dolly to that little girl, so she’ll know that Jesus really loves her?’ Of course, I replied!

That parcel had been on the way for five whole months, packed up by my former Sunday school class, whose leader had heard and obeyed God’s prompting to send a hot water bottle, even to the equator. And one of the girls had put in a dolly for an African child – five months before, in answer to the believing prayer of a ten-year-old to bring it ‘that afternoon.’

‘BEFORE they call, I will answer.’ (Isaiah 65:24)

BIMPE’S LIFE

Bimpe Holding  On, To CELEBRATE LIFE.

Pastor Bimpe Eskor Mfon was all packed and ready to go home in April 2007, after a harrowing nine months of watching her lifetime partner battle a debilitating ailment, only to lose him, to complications arising from a common bacterial infection. This soft spoken woman has gone ahead to author one book and mid-wife some projects her husband championed, even as she remains on track to celebrate his life through living an exemplary life herself.

BIMPE’S LIFE

It’s been more than one year and the pain is still very raw. Bimpe is a graduate of French who ran her own business for a number of years, but has, since her husband passed, had to run Tie Communications, his PR and Advertising firm. As Bimpe welcomed me to her office in Surulere Lagos, I could see the pain, in the dullness of her eyes, and beyond that, an uncertainty about what she was about to do; grant an interview on how her life celebrates her late husband, Pastor Eskor Mfon. But as soon as she begins to speak of him a smile slowly lights up her face, and the uncertainty disappears, because, as she says, she believes he is in a better place. ‘’Life goes on. I feel guilty that it does, but it does and God is helping. For me it is not about how long anymore, it is about what you do in that life God gives you, and that gift of life is actually a loan because you don’t even know how long it is for. Whether it is one or one hundred and twenty, it is just a question of eternity, where are we going to spend it? Is it with God or with the devil? It was painful and it is still painful but then what sustains is, number one knowing that my husband is in the Lord and then with the hope of re-union, that when I go, I pray at a good old age, I will meet him again which leads me to the next point, if I know that I want to meet him again, then I must work like he did. Impacting lives not just by preaching, but by living whatever he preached.

ESKOR’S LIFE AS A GIFT

Making sure that her husband’s work is put down for posterity is one of Bimpe’s way of appreciating the gift that he was to her and many others. Pastor Eskor was the Provincial Pastor of The Redeemed Christian Church of God, Lagos Province 4, Head pf RCCG, Apapa family and Pastor of the City of David, which she says was home to all. ‘’ He was tolerant in everything, he never discriminated against anyone, and City of David was home to all kinds of people. He used to say, ‘leave them, let them come to church, let them hear the word of God, the word of God is like  water, it will wash them, it will cleanse them …’ the one thing that his passing has taught me is that we really need to document things for generations to come, that is why I am transcribing his sermons into book form, because you can bless many by some of the things he did, some of his CD’s, his sermons  … when I listen to them I wonder at the insight he had, he really did have a passion for souls, for Jesus, for the work of the gospel, so that is the best way we can celebrate his life … by putting his works together. He was intolerant of mediocrity because he was driven by excellence, yet he was very considerate of people’s feelings’’.

The book she authored early last year, Standing By His Grace, is perhaps the ultimate celebration since it is in fulfilment of the promise she made to God during the period of her husband’s illness, that she would give account of God’s faithfulness at the end of it all. This was around about when her husband was to be discharged. ‘’I am going to write about how God brought us through it all, he also planned to write all about his experience, so in writing this I am actually writing for the two of us even though some of the experiences I can’t describe as well as he would have described them. Writing it was very difficult for me, very painful! I was invited to a book reading recently and after I was called to speak, I couldn’t even say a word. It is still too emotional for me’’. The book gives a blow by blow account of the illness, which started off as a tummy upset, taking them all by surprise as they planned her fiftieth birthday. Of course the celebration never took place, rather it was a seemingly unending hospital stay and spiritual battle they fought for Eskor’s life, as well as the love and support they received from family and friends.

Writing about God’s faithfulness even after it seemed death had triumphed, is indeed a celebration of one man who only saw good in others. A man Bimpe has known for more than three decades, and was married to for twenty two years. He fathered her three children, and was indeed her best friend. ‘’i remember one of my children said, ‘mummy we were always telling you to have friends, you had only daddy, what are you going to do now?’ I said, well I will make you my best friends now that daddy has gone. Friends used to tease me that Eskor was my only ministry. But you know, given the responses I’ve been getting, it’s all been worth it writing the book. It proves true what my friend Debbie told me ‘you are writing for a woman whose husband is still alive’, I guess it could help women realise that life and loved ones have to be constantly appreciated.

COPING WITH THE LOSS

Her coping strategy may sound trite to some, but Bimpe says it is simply that of having a thankful heart, and she gets the message across without mincing words. ‘’Life, of course, lost its meaning after my husband died, because if you ask anybody who has been bereaved, it is as if the world has ended. In fact everything looks gloomy, because you are wondering how this can happen, especially in my own case where we were getting ready to return home and have a thanksgiving service. On the human side, it is difficult; God is the only one’’ she pauses with a distant look in her eyes and continues, ‘’our General Overseer (G.O.) Pastor Adeboye, and his wife ministered to me, asking that I find those things I could thank God for. I remember mummy G.O. told me that there are some women who depend on friends to bury their husbands because they have no money, some have no children and some die shortly after because of the pain and grief! People underestimate grief; they come and say ‘oh! She’s okay’ and i always laugh at them. The memory just comes, sometimes you are walking and it just jumps at you, but people think you are fine. So it is God that keeps us, so I will tell others who find themselves in similar positions to take it one day at a time’’.

Eskor’s thoughtfulness, loving heart and generosity, Bimpe says, she will never forget and she is holding on to the outfit, shoes and bag he had intended her to wear on her fiftieth birthday celebration that never was but, she recognises that, ‘’life goes on whether you like it or not, whether you want to die or stay alive, the days just keep passing by, so celebrate life by being true to what you believe, if you say you are a Christian, be such in and out of church. That is how life is for me, and then that my children and I will make it to heaven, it is not about making money. And even if I did, I will put the money back into the work of God.

Culled from Totally Whole