Posts tagged Christians.

What’s my name?

The Christian Faith 2 Comments

That’s straightforward guys.

My name is Deborah.

Deborah Ibukunoluwa Adebayo. Read this page detailing more about me.

I have a lesson to share with you as regards my name.

Debby(as I’d rather call it henceforth) was a judge and prophetess in the scriptures. Her story is contained in Judges 4 &5.

She was happily married to Lapidoth (I know of this happiness, guys. She informed me). And she judged under the palm of Deborah.

Mama Debby was a nation lover, a patriotic, loyal and strong woman. She was desperate to solve challenges and lead the people nearer where they ought to be. This desperation, as it always does, led her to her calling where she solved disputes as the chief judge, and also told the people the mind of God as a prophetess.

But mama didn’t loose sight of the truth in the midst of this. There was something holding it all together.

Debby made God’s business her business and God made her business his business. She could’ve gotten carried away with the pressing case of Rachael whose husband wanted to put her away or the case of Nathaniel who flagrantly disobeyed the instructions of God, and in being carried away by that, she could’ve ignored God’s new demand at the battle field.

She started out heeding the call to help at a local level and quashing the comfort of staying back at home doing the chores(I wrote why chores are good in this post) while discussing the men who weren’t at battle. She took up God’s work and God seeing her heart, took up her work – her desire to see a nation whole again.

The lord will take up the national matter on your heart, not to worry. You, my friend, just take up his work.

And when the call comes to go on higher, don’t be carried away emotionally (or logically) with the urgency of the work on ground (cue Nathaniel and Rachael).

Helping Nathaniel and Rachael were very much in line of God’s will for her but her extreme passion to help had a possibility of getting in the way and hindering the real deliverance of Israel.

“Make God’s business your business and God will make your business his business.”

AFAQ (Anticipated Frequently Asked Questions). I know guys, I know.

1. Hey Debby, are you certain national matters were on her heart?

Yes dear, I am certain. God finds it hard to speak to a person on things their heart are not attuned to. That’s because they won’t hear. You hear God clearly on a situation of which you are waiting and hoping and praying.

2. Debby, I have issues detecting whether God is giving me a higher assignment. I don’t seem to hear him.

Okay, pray that your ears will be open. You can make a daily declaration to that effect, it serves to put you in a place where you are conscious of your desire to hear God. Also, reduce the distracting noise around you, okay? Cut down on assignments God didn’t ask you to take up. Apologize if you have to but draw back from busyness that’s not productive. Importantly, Read the scriptures.

3. Deb, this is not a question. You do have a beautiful name.

Well thank you reader, I’m over here smiling.

No matter how pressing your current assignment or heart preoccupation is, God’s business should be number one. God should be number one.

Toodles guys, till next time.

Don’t forget to drop a comment and share.

I remain Debby.

P.S: I’m totally glad to write on here again after three weeks. ? I hope to send out a newsletter soon telling you some things?.

Dear Mentee || The HolyGhost and Sleep

Dear Mentee Educative 7 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.

'Ambitious Millennial Christian' Kara

The Christian Faith 7 Comments

Kara as a case study, is a new feature on the blog in 2019. She’s decided to help us in analyzing some matters; she does this by sheer honesty about her life. You’ll be hearing a lot about her ?.
Today, Kara is an ambitious millennial Christian. She has good drive about her professional life. She’s in stride to ensure a good plan up till her retirement years. Kara is a a Christian: she loves the Lord and fellowships at a good bible-believing church. Finally, Kara is a millennial.
Dear Kara is prone to facing a problem that some other ambitious millennial Christians are facing today: using her mind, rather than the Bible, to judge.
She’s curious and often ready to learn; she’s an adherent to the blog post – blow your own mind. For this reason, she reads blogs, books, listens to podcasts and watches documentaries. She’s so used to this that it’s imbibed into her daily routine; she either listens while in transit to work, during her lunch break or as she’s falling asleep. Her mind is growing fertile. We are proud of Kara; she has a growing intellect, emotional perspective and a strengthening will.
Physically: Kara eats well ( we’re so proud of her). Kara goes a notch higher by posting all her healthy eating pictures online (for now, let’s ignore how this is a subtle attempt on her part to flaunt her good outings)
Kara’s body and soul are bouncing. What’s left? Her spirit.
On the mornings Kara doesn’t wake up late, she observes her quiet time. Kara remembers to listen to a message from her bible-believing church every once in a while – once a week. She’s not chanced to go for her mid-week service (except when on leave from work) but she goes on Sundays.
What that does to dear K is make her mind and body more fertile than her spirit. Imagine the daily nourishment on one hand and the average unpredictable nourishment on the other hand.
Consequently, she over-rationalizes homosexuality as a Christian, she permits a level of lasciviousness. She creates ‘Modern Christianity’. Her perspective is but a subjective 21st century skewed lenses.
Kara has an open mind, as it is said, to many matters. She considers the many possible sides and she gives varying worldviews a chance. The trouble here is: Kara’s bible isn’t as open as her mind is.

She judges everything on the basis of her experiences and understanding instead of judging her experiences and understanding on the basis of an unchanging God.
The solution is hidden in the whole exposition. Kara, feed your mind(knowledge-lover? Tick). Feed your body (fit-fam eater? Tick)
Above all, seek God’s Kingdom first and everything would be added unto you(Matthew 6:33).

“For we fix our attention not on things that are seen, but on things that are unseen. What can be seen lasts only for a time, but what cannot be seen lasts forever. 2 Corinthians 4:18″

Change your priority Kara.

This post, as all others, is subject to copyright.
Engage with me on social media. There’s more interaction outside of the blog:
Instagram: @debbyhub @debbyadebayo_
Twitter: @debbyadebayo_
Facebook: DebbyHub Blog
With abundant love,
Debby
Do leave your comments below, we’re interested in learning.

The danger of the single story perspective of your life

Educative Life Diary 19 Comments

The single story.
It was the holiday season. The sun had set and evening calm descended upon the neighbourhood. The campus boys in the compound behind weren’t playing obnoxiously loud music. There hadn’t been any football matches during the day either; football matches that often sent their ball flying into our compound which, depending on the mood of our dogs, were licked, deflated or ignored.
My mum and elder sister were the only ones in the house with me. We were at the dinning table, probably one of those days when mum had just gotten back and we were gisting while she ate her dinner. It was a slow evening so I hadn’t told Emil to switch on the generator yet.
The soft glow from the solar-powered lamp illuminated the white walls.
The subject of our conversation must’ve flowed around perspectives for I ran upstairs to fetch my mini-laptop.
I remember setting it down on the table and clicking on Chimamanda’s Ted talk – “The danger of the single story.” – for both of them to watch.
I remember the pride that soared in my heart as Chimamanda’s steady and knowing voice filled the silence in the house.
Chimamanda’s talk on the single story is acclaimed one of the most-widely watched ted talks on youtube with 3.7 million views.
What was she saying in that talk?
How do I summarise that brilliance into a few lines here? I’d rather quote excerpts and urge you to watch the video here:

“I come from a conventional middle-class Nigerian family, and so we had, as was the norm, live-in domestic help who would often come from nearby rural villages. So the year I turned eight, we got a new houseboy. His name was Fide. The only thing my mother told us about him was that his family was very poor. And when I didn’t finish my dinner, my mother would say, finish your food, don’t you know people like Fide’s family have nothing? So I felt enormous pity for Fide’s family.
But one Saturday, we went to his village to visit, and his mother showed us a beautifully patterned basket, made of dyed raffia, that his brother had made. I was startled. All I had heard about them was how poor they were, so that it had become impossible for me to see them as anything else but poor. Their poverty was my single story of them.”

She also tells of her previous single story opinion of Mexicans.
Also, her roommates disposition to her when she was 19 and new in the U.S.

“If I had not grown up in Nigeria, and if all I knew about Africa were from popular images, then I too would think that Africa was a place of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals and incomprehensible people fighting senseless wars, dying of poverty and AIDS, unable to speak for themselves, and waiting to be saved by a kind, white foreigner. I would see Africans in the same way that I as a child had seen Fide’s family“

”…all of these stories make me who I am but to insist on only these negative stories is to flatten my experience and overlook the many other stories that form me. The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue but they are incomplete, they make one story become the only story”

Why am I bringing this up?
It’s easy for anyone on my campus fellowship who knows me as a spirit-filled sister to think all that there is to me is something fellowship-related once I’m through with classes. It’s easy for them to think I have no opinion on politics or assume I don’t read novels. assumptions.
It’s easy for someone to view the president of my fellowship as spiritkoko and not know that he likes football, a whole lot at that, or that the P.R.O of the fellowship has a sister who models in the U.S. I’m just painting a picture. We have lives, full lives. Those lives are often viewed through the lenses of sister and brother sososo, that’s okay once your lenses admit that generally, everyone is an human being and Jesus is happy about that.
Not the single story of ”I only see X in fellowship, and X is a student, therefore brother X is made up of classes and fellowship time”.
Single story. The danger of this single story is that brother X starts to live an insecure and people-conscious life.

“…The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue but they are incomplete, they make one story become the only story”

Essentially, you must know everyone is a person and persons are subject to idiosyncrasies and a full world of ideas and passions. That your prayer secretary may be nursing the ambition to be the next governor of Oyo state(and it might not make him any less spiritual than if he’d been hoping to be the next missionary). Everyone is a person and Jesus loves them like that, Jesus planted a huge number of those passions in their hearts and Jesus is happy to see them bloom. Jesus doesn’t think they should only pray in fellowship. Jesus supports your vice-president going to the gym.
I believe when you accept it about yourself, you’re able to accept it about others too. Then you’ll stop feeling quite ashamed when someone you’ve mentored spiritually discovers you do something other than study and pray. I was self-conscious for a while until God helped me out of it.
Or worse still, you’ll stop feeling ashamed when someone knows a member of your family isn’t born again. I mean, what? Shame?
Dear friend, live, breathe, bloom, blossom. You’re more than one perspective. The single story is just that, – single.
Tell your own story. Be your own person. Own your story.

”so that is how to create a single story, show a people as one thing, as only one thing over and over again, and that is what they become”.

What do you think? Care to share?

Freedom and light,
Debby

Beating Addictions; How to get out of despondency.

Life Diary The Christian Faith 12 Comments
  1. The loss of hope or confidence;despair or dejection.
  2. A feeling of depression ordisheartenment.



In this Christian race, how can we help each other? Scripture says to encourage one another while it is called today.
I genuinely want to help.
Addictions make you sink yet it’s cuts across almost everybody in one area or the other. Who would’ve thought self control to be a life saver? But it is.
That’s because it’s a fruit of the spirit. Galatians 5:22.

But the spirit produces Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, faithfulness, Humility, and Self-Control. There is no law against things such as these.

When you’re unable to apply self-control to that thing you do, you get addicted. Even to the littlest of things.
Addictions are almost always crippling and that’s because day 1, you make up your mind to beat/stop it but it doesn’t work. Day 2, you have a firmer resolve but in spite of it, you fall, even harder. Day 3, ahem. Day 4, why?! By day 5, the depression sets in.
If with all that effort, it doesn’t go away, what can deliver you? And you ask this not as one who’s never experienced the tremendous power of God. You have. That’s why you called on him for this addiction but no result.
You’re choking on the addiction. You’re losing your sense of what is right and wrong. You may randomly even wonder if the Christian life is for you or for some other fire guys. The walls are fast closing in.
When I despaired once, the scripture I kept replaying in my mind was :
Psalm 34: 6 (English Standard Version)

This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him and saved him out of all his troubles

I just knew- I just did, – that if I cried, he would hear me because its written in the scriptures. That was it. It was written, so I believed. It was my only hope.
So what do you often do when you despair?
Let your heart cry out to him and hold on to that rope of hope. Just hold on. Hold.
Ecclesiastes 9: 4 (New Living Translation)

There is hope only for the living. As they say, “It’s better to be a live dog than a dead lion!”

See? God’s word is the hope we have to find hope in the worst of times.
Sometimes its an eclipse; that’s why its all dark. His word says joy comes in the morning. It will surely come. Has his word said it? That’s all. Confess the word of God that you’ve read. Reach out to a friend to pray with/for you. Just open your mouth and speak to God about how awful everything is.
It will rain.You can be certain of that. And you would be stronger for it when you rise. Your faith would’ve built up some muscles.
Let your heart reach out to him. Hold on to your hope.
Ps 36: 4(New Living Translation)

In my desperation I prayed, and the LORD listened; he saved me from all my troubles.

And my e-mail address is always open for discussions.

What has been your story on losing or finding hope? Struggling with addictions?
Hope and Light,
Debby.

2018 Life Update (2)

Life Diary

Currently at: A picnic organized by the youths of my church to commemorate our fellowship’s anniversary.
Thinking: about maturity. If I say it has nothing to do with age, that would be extreme. But age doesn’t define maturity at all.
Eating: nothing at the moment. I just ate rice though. One more thing, guys, I love oats and considering the whole world has been saying it’s one of the healthiest meals you can eat, I’m pumped. One thing though, I need interesting ways of preparing my oats. I’ve seen too many good pictures of awesome oats on the internet. So I want berries and almond nuts and other fruits. Enough of plain oats and milk.
Pondering on: the situation of Nigerian youths. Hmm. My thoughts on this one needs processing before its made into a blog post. This space wouldn’t take it.
Reading: too many things. I just abandoned one book on accents ( you say potato). It didn’t turn out to be what I expected – it has too much details on the phonetic symbols. Its oral English all over again and guys, that’s water under the bridge. Secondary school issues. If you want to teach me on accents, make it interesting please.
Another book I’m on is “The fall of babylon“. “Mere Christianity” by C.S Lewis too. Those are the books im reading amidst several articles.
Wanting: new friends. I’d really love to meet new minds. Help me. Emphasis: new minds.
Listening to: Reckless love. You just may be dissapointing the blog family if you’ve still not listened to this song. I referred to this song in my last life update. It’s real. I may start up a play list segment on the blog to let you know the songs I’m loving – still a probability.
Encouraging you to: Develop yourself. No one will do it for you.
For another encouragement, watch this video. It’s just seven minutes, thirty one seconds and I think it would do you nothing but good!
Guys, while you’re here, read old blog posts. ?
Love you.
Debby.