What Do You Carry?

WHAT DO YOU CARRY INSIDE OF YOU?

IN THE SECRET

Written by Banjo Isaiah

Preamble

While I was serving my fatherland in faraway North-East Nigeria, Adamawa state to be precise, I was privileged to serve with the Nigeria Christian Corpers’ Fellowship as the State Evangelism Secretary in the year 2010/2011. On one of our visits to the Zones (Local Governments) to conduct an interview for the Zonal Executives, we got to a particular place and interviewed quite a large number of people.

A certain brother came in, we asked him several questions and this brother was ‘sound’ and answered most questions correctly. There were about five of us conducting the interview, but I did not ask a question from him because I had great trouble in my spirit with his person. He sounded so convincingly good. He was a perfect match for the office of the Zonal Coordinator and all my co-executive would have consented to him being the next Coordinator.

Finally, I felt led in my spirit to request for his phone. He reluctantly released it. I checked through the music store and was amazed at what I saw. Several worldly songs filled the lists. As if that was not enough, I checked through his pictures and saw some disturbing images and video of nude persons. And to crown it all, the pictures and videos were not downloaded but recorded live. This took us aback and we had to start another round of counselling, through which we discovered that he was just pretending to be born again. We led him to Christ, and of course, he did not get the position of the Zonal Coordinator. Afterwards, in our visitations to other places, it became our practice to check prospective executives’ phones to give us a clue of who they are. Some even use a password for their phones, picture gallery, WhatsApp and other social media because of the things they are hiding from the public gaze.

Introduction

Your outward look and appearance may be deceiving, huge, gigantic, spiritual. The performance of acrobatic skills and gestures but the heart condition is just like a loaf of bread, tiny and inconsequential.

A man is perceived as being a real and substantive threat to his opposition not by noise making without substance, but by operating in an undeniable greater force and exhibiting a strong will even in a seemingly calm, quiet attitude.

A Yoruba proverb roughly translates to mean “a ram that retreats is not lazy. The retreat is to garner enough strength and energy for impactful damage to its opposition and contender in order to overcome”.

Likewise, it is with a man who goes on a retreat into his ‘personal space’ or war room to garner strength. He does this by going back to his source of strength which is God Almighty to recharge his battery level for optimal impact in the world he lives.

Many so-called Christians have replaced retreat for recreation and fitness exercise. The church has become a place where talents and skills are been showcased, whereas, their secret places are not been well utilized to recharge their batteries but only to embark upon illicit atrocities. There should be a re-evaluation.

Physical appearance – artificial looks, beauty, comeliness, shapes, contours, enlargements, cosmetic and dressing prowess should NEVER be the real definition of the true self of a man. A man should be defined by the content of his hearts and character towards God and towards mankind, just like Martin Luther King Jnr. said,

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character”.

However, what men judge in this present time is mainly physical look and not the strength of character. Show me a man who loves God and I will show you a man who is truly handsome (inside out).

Imagine a sugar-coated, milky, crispy, chocolate icy cake with the inside is full of maggots and worms. So many believers ‘have a form of godliness but deny the power thereof’. Only God knows the state and condition of the heart of man. The heart is well hidden from sight. No man can see what the heart processes. Only God knows the intents of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12)

That is why it is easy to make the costly error of judging a man by his physical appearance. In fact, it is inherently human nature to judge through the physical appearance.

Can you imagine that even a prophet of God, Samuel, whom God always backed the words of his mouth to come to pass that none of his words ever fall to the ground (1 Samuel 3:19) was almost deceived by the physical when God asked him to go and anoint a king from the sons of Jesse after rejecting Saul.