Date Archives April 2019

Dear Mentee || The HolyGhost and Sleep

Dear Mentee Educative 5 Comments

So I have this leading to start a segment where I write what’s desperately on my heart. Obviously, that’s what the entire blog is for, but this is different. On the blog, I’m addressing myself, addressing my future children and grandchildren, addressing you and your uncles and neighbours. This segment though is addressing my mentees. The things that I desperately want to pass on to the younger ones (not only age wise) that’s what I will write here. They are the things I’ll tell my younger ones who come to sit beside me at night and say “advise me. Tutor me”.

Today, what’s on my heart is “your sensitivity to the Holyghost”.

I have been in meetings where the Holyspirit woke me from sleep to attend them. I have been in meetings I left for in the rain because my spirit was restless. None of those meetings have been in vain. I have been sleeping in vigils – on two distinct occasions, when the Holyspirit woke me up and said ‘Its time’. It always was time*.

I would’ve missed some blessings, had the Holyspirit not tugged at my heart till I gave.

Friend, you need this thing. Its called divine ordering of steps. The Holyspirit does it!! He did it for Philip and it is forever recorded for Philip that he led that Ethiopian Eunuch to Christ and many others through that means. Its seen in the entirety of Jesus’ life – He lived in sync with what he received from heaven. Don’t be blind to the spirit’s move per time.

If in your spirit, you never have the prompts, develop your sensitivity to the holyghost. Start first by having a relationship with him. These steps may help:

  • Tell him you want to be best friends
  • Study your bible and pray in the spirit
  • Read books (like those on Kathryn Kuhlman) and listen to ministers like Benny Hinn. These people because they have had wonderful relationships with him and teach us how to.

He is a person and he wants to be more real to you, than your friend is. More real to you than I am too.

That’s it for today. Do not miss out when others are getting help through this very means – let the spirit order your steps.

Till next time, mentee.

I remain Debby.

  • Because you’re my mentee, I’ll tell you bluntly : If you so like, go around sleeping at vigils, waiting for the Holyspirit to tell you its time, you go sabi.

Debby on the Game Of Thrones (GOT) matter

The Christian Faith 28 Comments

Before you read

So there’s this stuff that raved about twitter for a while and still goes round occasionally: Unpopular opinion. You state something most people do not believe in but that you strongly do.

When I decided (quite impulsively) to write on Game of thrones, I thought to myself, well here’s an unpopular opinion.

Should it be though? My opinion shouldn’t be unpopular among Christians if it is based on God’s word. Don’t buy into the lie that each Christian should live differently – rather we have a common faith, there is no favourite with God, his standard is sure for all generations 2 Timothy 2:19.

As you read, know that there is no tension in God’s word, if there’s any tension, its with us.

So let’s get right into it!

Ah, Still hold up! This post is for Christians, beautiful people. If you’re not a Christian, I can very well understand your annoyance.

I was hall representative in my fellowship close to two years back now (This means hall pastor). At that time, Game of Thrones was trending. It later died down so I forgot about it but its noise increased in the past few months as the anticipation for season 8 came up.

At the time I was hall rep, I put together a short advice to the members of my hall church on our Whatsapp page and it is below:

Good afternoon everyone.
Something has been on my mind for a while and who else to share it with than you all?

We need to be mindful of the things we feed our bodies, souls and spirits with. Very mindful. We are Jesus people and we can’t afford to get contaminated. We stand out with purpose.

This is about that popular TV series “Game of thrones”. This series has taken the world by a storm. Please I plead with you to desist from seeing it. It troubles my spirit. I’ve never seen it before but I know it’s not the best.
There are much better entertainments for you, without you welcoming evil spirits. I confess to you that I’ve seen the movie ‘twilight’ before and I know its not good for Christians. This Game of thrones seems to be the same and extremely prolonged for a purpose.

You can exercise discipline to stop seeing it if you’ve started. You can pray it out of your desires.
Just imagine how it has taken most people worldwide and held them captive. Scriptures says “don’t become so well adjusted to your society that you fit in without thinking”. Please think. Don’t let this sap out God’s current dealings with you. There is more to it than meets the eye, contend for the faith.
A word is enough for the wise.
God bless us all.

Romans 8:1-2 “So here’s what I want you to do, God help­ing you: Take your ev­eryday, or­dinary life—your sleeping, eating, go­ing-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embrac­ing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your cul­ture that you fit into it with­out even think­ing. In­stead, fix your at­tention on God. You’ll be changed from the in­side out. Readily rec­ognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the cul­ture around you, always dragging you down to its lev­el of im­ma­tu­rity, God brings the best out of you, dev­el­ops well-formed ma­tu­rity in you.”

With love,
From your sister

Today, I find that I still don’t have much to write other than the bible passage above, and if you’re in need of more passages, here are two others:

1.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8).

Whatever sets your mind outside the course of intimacy with God, that thing is your enemy, don’t cuddle it. Your heart and mind is the primary way God speaks to you as a believer, don’t let it become misty. Of course, this goes beyond game of thrones to other things (including other movies).

2.

“But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (Romans 14:32)

Rather than saying to yourself, “its not that bad, I can handle it”. Rather than quietening your discomfort by focusing on the thrill of the movie, be honest with yourself that seeing this movie is not coming from a place of faith. The swearing, the sex scenes, the worldview it projects…(at this stage, we’re broadly discussing movies). Your desire to be in tune with the Holyspirit should supersede your curiosity for an interesting movie, if you’re properly developing.

Finally, on the issue of nudity.

Desiringgod.org has an article on GOT(12 questions to ask before watching GOT). When I read it, I remembered someone mentioned once that GOT is very graphic, sexually. John Piper of Desiringgod.org invites us to join him in the pursuit of purity of heart and mind. Don’t let us become so well adjusted to our daily culture that we fit in without thinking, thereby ruining our witness.

Christians do not conform – this is not a mouth confession, its a lifestyle profession.

Whatever tension you may feel now, whatever discomfort, its coming from one of two places:

– My reference to evil spirits in my address to those hall members two years ago, lol.

-Your inner discomfort because you know this is right and you have a candid choice to make. You probably preferred not having a choice to make by not considering the matter seriously but then, I just ruined that.

We’re the ones who need to change, not God. Certainly not God.

If this opinion is still unpopular with you as a Christian, lets discuss below.

Love and light,

Debby

BOOK REVIEW || Under The Udala Tree

Book Reviews 4 Comments

I read this book about 11 months ago and I didn’t, couldn’t write a review or bookmark any pages. I thought since I didn’t support the message the book was advocating I didn’t even have to review it. However, it unsettles me to skip out on this one, so of the many I ignore for review, this one forges ahead.

(P.s: I finally wrote this review like 5 months ago and still didn’t publish it because I was busy)

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Ijeoma was just eleven years when the war began. The life she’d known had been one of middle class comfort as an only-child in her family, where she was fed abundantly and told it would help stimulate her brain.
Prior to the war:

“as for us, we moved about in that unhurried way of the butterflies as if the breeze was sweet, as if the sun on our skin was a caress. As if slow paces allowed for the savouring of both. This was the way thing were before the war: our lives, tamely moving forward”

The book is a coming of age story which dwells on the Biafran war, and on the war against homosexuals.

“There is no way to tell the story of what happened with Amina without first telling the story of mama’s sending me off. Likewise, there is no way to tell the story of mama sending me off without also telling of papa’s refusal to go to the bunker. Without his refusal, the sending away might never have occurred, and if the sending away had not occurred, then I might never have met Amina
If I had not met Amina, who knows, there might be no story at all to tell”

The book consists of three parts. The story goes back and forth in the first part and reveals how Ijeoma’s father refuses to run into the bunker during one of the air raids; he embraces despair about the losing war, and is bombed in his own house by the fighter planes.
The book explores grief and loss consequent to this. Mama who fails miserably in coming out of her grief sends her daughter to live with a school teacher.

It is in being sent away to live with the grammar school teacher and his wife, that Ijeoma faces the question of her sexual identity.
After being caught, Ijeoma would go through tumultuous times in her mind seeking for the truth, and for peace.
She would have compulsory lessons with mama at the kitchen table every evening, in order to cleanse her mind with the word of God.

This book tries to raise questions and doubts in a readers mind. It wants you to question the religious beliefs you may have already held. The book does this by employing a strategy of shifting grounds on morality – what exactly is an abomination? Was Adam’s meeting with Eve only symbolic of relationship between different people, thereby having no relevance to their sexes?

It brings up forbidden love, and as with love which is restricted, the author tries to win the reader’s sympathy. Its moving when the lesbians hide themselves in a bunker from a violent mob – a bunker similar, and even worse than those used during the Biafran war. Again – a literary tactic to depict a greater war being waged on homosexuals.

The book leads you to watch Ijeoma try to repent before God but being unable to, “not being heard by God”.

Ijeoma’s thoughts often center on the context of Bible passages – discrediting the inference Christians hold from those same passages.

Chinelo Okparanta deliberately explores the religious background of Nigerians by making her central characters well abreast of scriptures. There’s nothing less than twenty passages on homosexuality in this book, some analyzed in depth (though erroneously). It’s a strategy that’s supposed to take the fight out of the opponent by seizing their very war instrument.

This book goes far to come close. Here’s why: It presents gay-torching Christians (arsonists), hateful Christians who will tear off the clothes on the neck of lesbians who are found out and kill them.

It presents a frenzied mother who casts demons out of her daughter for being a lesbian. Fast forward fourteen years and a failed heterosexual marriage, it presents the same spiritual mother saying:

“God who created you, must have known what he did. Enough is enough”

Overall this book works to evoke empathy especially as its written in 1st person P.O.V. It also drops proverbs like this one:

“if you set off on a witch hunt, you will find a witch. When you find her, she will be dressed like any other person. But to you, her skin will glow in stripes of white and black. You will see her broom and you will hear her witch cry and you will feel the effects of her spells on you.
No matter how unlike a witch she is, there she will be, a witch before your eyes”

An unobservant Christian will probably begin to give room to thoughts like: “But its their human right to decide their own sexuality after all, why bother them?”
The book is a patient and descriptive read for the first two parts, the rest hurries through a bit. In the Epilogue, Ndidi, Ijeoma’s lover says her prophecy concerning Nigeria being a place where love is allowed between all sexes and tribes.
This book is written as a response to the laws passed by President Jonathan in 2014 which criminalized same-sex relationship.

In conclusion, for literature? it does well. For my sentiments and beliefs? I fault it every line of the way. I say it does well for literature because if it were to be another cause for which I stand, I’d have thought she made her case sufficiently well for a novel. But this – the issue of homosexuality, I do not stand for it both logically and spiritually. It is fundamentally wrong.

Books and Truth,

Debby

BOOK REVIEW || Crazy Rich Asians

Book Reviews 4 Comments

Heyyy guys. Hello. Today I’m reviewing a book long over due. I have so many books left unreviewed, please help me. Enjoy.

This is how it went: I loved the book. Then I didn’t love it anymore. I even started to hate it. And now, reading it again after many months, I love the book again.

I love the book outside of the general buzz of it and outside of my dislike for its irrelevant series continuation (my opinion). The book did just well with only the first book but then Kevin Kwan went ahead to stretch it into a trilogy (China Rich Girlfriend & Rich People’s Problems). The second was averagely okay for me because I was already enjoying the Asian escapism I got from the first book. The third would’ve just bored me so I skipped it altogether.

Not withstanding, I would always recommend it for a pleasurable holiday read.
My review in a sentence: CRAZY RCH ASIANS DEALS WITH ASIANS WHO ARE RICH AND CRAZY.
My review in full:
Rachel Chu(A Prof of economic development) meets Nicholas Young(Prof of history and law) and they fall in love in New York. But Nicholas’ family aren’t in New York, they’re in Asia(Singapore) where it gets crazy.

Its two years into their relationship and Nick coaxes Rachel to travel home with him for his best friend’s wedding and there she meets the craze. The book takes us on a ride along with Rachel through Nick’s stupendously rich and quiet elitist family. The wealth and snobbery of the Singaporeans gets Rachel Chu’s head spinning. Would she stand the anger and jealousy thrown at her from all around or will she balk?

The Singapore where they live, is akin to a big village where everyone is in everyone’s business. Take Eleanor for instance:

“To Eleanor, every single person occupied a specific space in the elaborately constructed social universe in her mind. Like most of the women in her world, Eleanor could meet another Asian anywhere in the world- say, over dim sum at royal chia in London, or shopping over in the lingerie department of David Jones in Sydney – and within thirty seconds of learning their name and where they lived, she would implement her social algorithm and calculate precisely where they stood in constellation based on who their family was, who else they were related to, what their approximate net worth might be, how the fortune was derived, and what family scandals might have occurred within the past fifty years.”

The gossip in this book is lit – everyone has (interesting, scandalous) background story you’ll have to know of.
The book presents Singaporeans who can figuratively die over food; eating five times a day and arguing about the best food spots. We’re introduced to other characters like Astrid,Charlie Wu, Peik Lin etc.

At a point you just might get tired of the wealth description. There are articles in a house (ceramics) worth thirty million dollars, every jewelry is scrutinized to the last detail, the clothes they put on are from the next season.

“Forbes only reports on the assets they can verify, and these rich Asians are so secretive about their holdings. The richest families are always richer by billions than what Forbes estimates”

I think for those who are unaware, you also get to learn secrets like this:

“let me share a secret with you, Nick. As much as a girl might protest, you can never go wrong buying her a designer dress or a killer pair of shoes”

And simple songs like this:

“it only takes a spark,
To get the fire going.
And soon all those around,
Can warm up in its glowing.
That’s how it is with God’s love,
Once you’ve experienced it.
You want to sing,
Its like fresh spring,
You want to pass it on”

Likes
I must tell you the truth – dialogue in this book is fun!

I like the fact that the book also picks up quickly.

Dislike
The characters come off as so many at the beginning, and they’re unfamiliar Chinese names so it gets difficult to hold on sometimes. You’ll however get the hang of it later.

This book is in essence – Rich entitled delusional Chinese families 101; which in spite of its light humour strokes subjects such as family bond, identity, self-worth and belonging. It is cool for what its worth and helps transport you to Asia. I generously rate it a 4 stars in its own right.

P.S: I’ve seen the movie adaptation and I think its wack.

Have you read this book? Have you seen the movie? Are you interested in reading it? If you’ve read it, are you like everyone else who likes Astrid?

Love and books,
Debby.