It was holiday time and I was at Ovim, sitting down in my room with great excitement, waiting for her. She seemed late in coming, not really by the count of the hour, but driven by my anxiety. My comfort rested on the popular adage that, ‘Whoever is waiting for a visitor in his house, is never tired of waiting’. We had been exchanging love letters and I was her ‘My Joe’, and she, ‘My Nne’. At last, she arrived. We exchanged pleasantries, but not as deep as we were expressing in our mails. That was in 1960. I did not know the Lord Jesus till twelve years later. I knew nothing about girls.
After a while, she took the Drum magazine, a very popular magazine at that time, I kept on my table and glanced through it. What interested us, the growing youths, was the ‘Dolly Column’, where Dolly, a correspondent, would detail questions people asked her about their relationships with the opposite sex and her response to them. A smile flickered across Nne’s face and it died immediately. She then read aloud one of the questions a lady asked Dolly concerning her boyfriend, who would visit her always, but would not express any desire to sleep with her. Turning to me, as if she saw herself in that predicament, she said, “Your type”. There was ominous silence. I felt savaged, confused, lacerated…
Though dead right, her comment was a slap on my ego. If a rabbit wadded into a lion’s den, could it still live after saying, “Weak animals like you with teeth but you cannot bite?” She was slightly taller, but I, being older and a star footballer and an athlete, had what was needed to wrestle her down on my bed and anything could happen! Imagine, saying that I did not know what to do with her! If Ben, Emma, or Felix, heard it, would they not trash the spurious story, just to fit into their mould, I told them about Joy in Queens School? It was not that I did not like Nne, I did, and who would not, with all her beauty? It was the fear of the consequence, if she had her way that kept me cool until she left. Fear has its limit, it was Jesus that I needed really for the salvation of my soul.
Husbands have been dispatched to the graves and some to years of incarceration by their wives. “A tenant for life, you are not ashamed of yourself,” some wives have told their husbands, when they quarrelled. The men would feel a twinge in their heart, and for hours on end, they will reflect on that, recalling their mates, who are landlords. They will not remember, unfortunately, those of them, who are still tenants like them, until their minds are made up. “Who dies twice?” They ask themselves. Not long after, they can handle expertly, guns of various types. Not long after, they are smoking marijuana. Not long after, they begin to swim in money, a prelude to becoming landlords, without visible means of livelihood! Their wives might even forget the injection they gave that changed them. One day, they may be jailed or paraded for robbery. One day, they may be shot!
The simplest way to force a man to fight is to call him a woman. He will do his uttermost to defend himself so as to prove that he is a man. In effect, it was what Nne branded me, that I was not a man! That was the fate of two brothers, when they were slugging it out. One of them brought out his gun, just to frighten his brother and no more! His brother laughed at him to scorn, and in a mocking tone, said, “See you, carrying a gun without bullets”. Uncle could not restrain his anger. He pulled the trigger and everywhere was quiet. One man was dead, his brother! He could not believe that it was in real life. His regret could not raise the dust. In recompense, he was paid back with his coins at the gallows!
Some months ago, I wrote how the Jewish leaders told the Lord Jesus to come down from the cross so that they would believe him. It was the devil that made them to say so. If He did, man would have been doomed eternally, as there would have been no salvation. That was Satan’s target. He plants his agents around us, to be urging us to do evil things. It was not Nne really, who was inducing me to commit sexual sin with her, when she said, “Your type”. It was the devil. He wanted me to demonstrate to her that I was different from the guy, who did not know what to do with his girlfriend. He was also responsible for the death of the two brothers above.
To avoid fighting the wrong battle, we must recognize the antics of the devil. We fight the wrong battle most of the time, believing that someone has wronged us, leaving the actual culprit, the devil. It is after the fight that we discover, sometimes, that the problem still lingers and may come out in another form. Its end will come if we know the brain behind it and deal with it. This will be so, if we are God’s children, for we cannot fight the devil when we are still serving him.
The Bible warns us about what to see or not. Our eyes then become our enemy if they take delight in seeing what we should not. That was why the Lord Jesus said that if our hand will make us to sin against God that we should cut it off, otherwise, our whole body will be thrown into hell fire. The same rule applies to our legs, if they delight in going to places God forbids us from going. If we are looking for our enemy, we may not need then to go far. Most of the time, we are our enemies. Is it not us, who compel our legs to go to the wrong places and our eyes to be watching immoral videos?
We should be careful when praying that our enemies should die, since sometimes, we are our enemies! If God answers this prayer, which many people delight in praying, they may not be alive today. We must know, who our enemy is. The enemy of God is our enemy, and God’s friend, is our friend. A friend of God will be saying good things about Him and will also be doing good things to please Him. A friend will restrain us from committing sin, while an enemy will induce us to do so. Pride may make us to dance to the devil’s tune. Let us refrain from obeying the demands of our flesh.
If I had obeyed Nne’s bidding, it might have led to pregnancy and the end of my schooling. I might also have contacted venereal disease. The devil blindfolds us from the consequences of what he urges us to do. Like me, Nne is now born-again. A grandma, I was her guest some years ago and as we were discussing merrily, I wondered if she still remembered that incident of fifty years ago. I did, and why not, when I still remember when I was sucking! I ministered to her, prayed with her, and thanked God in my heart that she did not have her way during that her august visit in 1960!
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