God Ain’t Lied

It’s Christmas Eve, really where I am from, it’s Christmas. We will be talking about the eternity of knowledge and the finity of obedience.

But First, a Pic for the Medium

Let’s start with some self loathing.

I got fat.

My recent love interests don’t care about six packs but one.

I’m finding that the more I eat the happier I am especially the more food coma I slip into.

I’m also finding that the more I eat, the more drowned I feel in something sorrowful.

It’s almost as if the food coma is a panadol or ibuprofen for some pain or sorrow that is lingering.

I don’t wanna face it but I don’t even know what it is to know why I don’t wanna face it but I know enough to know that I don’t wanna face it.

So, I’ve been eating away at the pain eating away at me. My body, the temple, is grunting at me to stop grunting at my pain but doing nothing to stop the pain from getting fat in me. From buying a house in me. From sending a change of residence form to the DMV. It wants to reside in me and I eating for two, me and him. I’m making my body home and cozy for the pain to park his car and birth babies like rodents in the home town of mosquitoes street.

Today, we are talking about Knowledge.

I have sat down to write many times since my last pieces. Everytime, I wait on God to speak, to confirm the topic. Everytime, I try to force God’s hands. Because somehow it feels like the world is now watching, reading and evolving with me. I see people I don’t know now read my stories and react.

They read my journey and clap. They clap at what is eating at me. They clap because I don’t Offer answers, I provide a mirror.

So I wanna keep writing, I wanna keep provoking, I wanna keep being used. Yet, I’m reminded that one who gets ahead of God, goes far quickly and nowhere eventually.

I just watched Harriet Turbman. And there were two themes that provoked me to write.

• She said, I came back thinking God wanted me to come get my husband, not knowing it was to get y’all.
• The road God leads ain’t Me we make sense, if you are walking along the path that flows effortlessly and logically, it ain’t ever really God’s involvement.

In other words, those who go south when logic says to go north; these need a compass beyond logic. I see God in there.

In other words, you can be acting in obedience and motivated by the wrong thing.

Let me say that again, you can be acting in obedience, and be motivated by the wrong thing.

She was motivated by reuniting with a man that loved her and she loves. Factually though this man was married. So he wasn’t hers no more but she ain’t known that. I resonate with that deeply but I am refraining from making this about me.

Sooo… it was obedience to answer the call. The call was vivid to her and it looked like going back to get her man. Yetttt… she didn’t get her man, but she was where she needed to be.

Question for God:

God, you know if you showed her the people she was to rescue, Harriett Tubman was gonna go! Why did you have to show her, her husband, when you know dang well that her husband was married? Why did she have to get to that town and put herself in danger trying to save a man long gone? Why was her love used as bait when she didn’t need to be baited to obey and fight for her people ?

I don’t know. But what I do know is this:

Knowledge ain’t help the kinda obedience God loves.

Infact, obedience without knowledge or obedience without logic or obedience without a full picture … these the kind that He consistently lauds.

You cannot make decisions that require faith by seeking more knowledge.

I struggle with this sentiment but the more I stare at it the more real it is to me.

5 years ago, I was ready to be married. Yet, I reckon now that the version of man that I was, was ignorant about love, husband, manhood, adulthood, headship and leadership.

It is almost as if the more I have learnt about these things that should help me be a better man, a better lover, the more I see my inadequacies; the further away I feel from being ready to marry.

Make it make sense.

I’ll use another example, when I started my business. I knew very little about what it takes to run a business about what exactly a business was. Yet I jumped face first and poured everything I am and knew into it.

I am 8 years in now, and I ask myself. If I know what I know now, if I know what it will cost me; would I jump into business full throttle like I did ?

The answer is no, I would appreciate those doing business, and choose to buy a white picket fence and live a selfish American dream with my damsel in distress cuddled up underneath my big arms.

This is true, yet I am humbled because what I get to do in my business, what I get to build with my team; it’s the very reason I live, it’s the very reason I am alive. It’s the very reason I wake up everyday and feel a heart pulse to breathe another breath.

So you’re telling me that you would have chose to slide away from purpose and fulfillment to live the American dream? If you knew the road that will take you here ?

Yes, I would.

God told Adam,

Don’t eat of that fruit… okay let me quote the God who became flesh

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. — Genesis 2:17

Can you imagine what life was like in the 1900s?

Technology has done one giant thing, it has accelerated the rate of knowledge.

It has also accelerated the drowning of God’s voice, His call to obedience.

We ain’t got Harriett’s no more because even if she still seeing, so many of us have sound logical options that don’t require any faith.

I don’t live in obedience to God, because I have all the answers that I need on the internet.

I know how to make atama soup, my new obsession, even though I ain’t ever made it before. I don’t need a grandma to help me, I don’t Need to go to Akwa Ibom for recipe. I just go on my good ole YouTube.

But that is good knowledge? I think. It ain’t hurt nobody.

It was good knowledge that let Adam know he was naked. It was also good knowledge that helped him figure out how to cover himself.

Isn’t it fascinating that death in that verse is preceded by knowledge of good and evil.

God Ain’t ever Lied

I have often thought that it was the knowledge of evil that led to decay of man. Like if only we only acted on the good knowledge and left the bad ones for God.

But that isn’t true, what led to death, and is still leading to death is the desire to not need God for answers.

It’s the desire to be independent of God.

It’s the desire to not have to wait on God every day in the morning to know wha needs to get done that day.

It’s the desire to know what is good and what is evil.

It’s the desire to know for myself what is right and what is wrong.

It’s the desire to be, God.

I’ve been god, and I’m tired.

How about you? Are you enjoying being god? Are you enjoying being independent of god? Are you enjoying knowing good and evil? Are you enjoying the void within?

God still wants obedient people, He still prefers blind obedience. Obedience that goes against the grain because He says so. Obedience that becomes miracles. Obedience that points to His Majesty, His Sovereignty.

This is why I write my business because I felt Him say:

I want you to model Holiness. Holiness isn’t perfection. Holiness is putting a hot iron on your skin and brandishing yourself a slave to a good master — Jesus. A master that will take you against the grain and make a fool out of you. A master that will use you for your faith and obedience to remove scales from the eyes of many. But you can’t desire to know good and evil. Just pen as I command you, and know your life though open and vulnerable, is in the hands of the ultimate protector. You may lose your job, lose love, lose all that you hold dear. In My hand, you will feel purpose and joy. And that will be enough.

7 But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ.

8 Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,

9 And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:

10 That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;

Verse 9, I ain’t Paul. I am a sinner that loves booty. But this is the Christian faith. Not my righteousness. David didn’t use his own righteousness either. He was a murderer.

Get off the hamster wheel, the soothing wheel devoid of life! The hamster wheel that keeps very busy, informed, maybe even good.

It only leads to death.

Time to obey the voice, the beckoning voice, so so crazy. It’s calling to go against the grain. To be the wretched filthy evil that you know you are.

Only then is the righteousness of Jesus worth every loss. Will you know Him like Paul:

The excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus.

It’s Christmas Eve, really it’s Christmas where I am from. Let’s talk about knowledge. No, let’s open the curtain of our souls to obey that voice; it’s not pleasant or sound logic.

But, it is life.