Christ’s Ambassador

No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Mathew 11:27 

In the year 2005 Suzan and I decided to relocate our family from Gwagwalada to Bassa in the FCT Nigeria. We were under great stress at that period. I have been unemployed for five years and so we had to live on Suzan’s earnings as a contract flight announcer at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja. A relation was involved in an auto crash and sustained head injury. I had to stay with him in the hospital for 7 weeks as he recuperated and regained his memory. Tayo had to stay with neighbours whenever Suzan was on duty.  I lost my dad very recently. For no reason known to me, I was denied a job for which I was tested and interviewed and found to be qualified. Armed robbers raided the neighbourhood and I had to watch helplessly as they carted away whatever caught their fancy from our house. All these cascaded on us in a seamless flow. My self-esteem was at the lowest ebb. Not a few times, the wish to take a peaceful exit from this earth was expressed in my prayers.

We moved to Bassa a week after the robbery incidence. Our new house was a one-bedroom flat. Our first Sunday service was with a wonderful congregation of believers in the ECWA Goodnews Church. It was an indicator of God’s answer to our prayers for a peaceful place to stay. There was no clergy class but everybody was on duty to serve the Lord. It was wonderful and I felt like a traveler who had traversed the hot desert for days on end now offered a glass of cold water under the shade of a large oak tree. I told Suzan that the Lord had allowed us a space in Bassa and that night we used the story of Isaac and the well at Rehoboth to pray. Gen 26:22 We all had to make new friends and we adults were being very cautious.

Tayo’s approach was a different one. Despite the fact that he was only permitted to play with other kids near the house, he was very excited. Each time Tayo saw me peeping at them through the window, he never lost the opportunity to introduce me to his new friends “Henry! See my father” And each time he said this, the expression on his face was always that of glee and satisfaction that he had done something good. That influences his friends too. They would all rush to the window to see that wonderful daddy that Tayo was so proud of. The irony there was that I never felt like a worthy daddy in my mind. One, I had seen those kid’s fathers with their big statures, fashionable dresses and nice cars. I believe they were able to offer their family more than I did mine. I was thin with worries, looking older than my age with my premature grey hairs and clad in unfashionable clothes. Yet all these did not matter to young Tayo. “ Sule, come and see my father!” He would shout again when another kid joined them.While reflecting on on these issues one day, I realized that Tayo was being used by God to teach me a spiritual lesson. This was not the first time though that God had used him to ram some sense into my skull. Tayo could not help showing me to his world. He wanted his friends to know his father. Jobs, cars, dresses and big house did not matter to Tayo. What mattered was that he had wonderful parents who caredfor him. Period.

He was imitating Jesus Christ who spent all his life showing HIS Father to the world. (Eph 5:1) Jesus could never rest until he had done or said something that showed the world who God is. This same assignment he left with us his disciples. In Mark 8:38 he warned thus: If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.” And in Mt10: 28 he told the twelve, “Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven.”  The other kids didn’t know me, but Tayo made sure they knew all about me and Suzan within the few minutes they played together in a day. That would not stop him from telling them again the next day. He told them every folk tale I had told him and every song his mother ever taught him. Wasn’t this exactly what Jesus did in giving us a picture of His father and his kingdom?  This, we also ought to devote our lives to doing.

While I was busy feeling sorry for my, misfortunes, God used a 4-year old to remind me of the needful. While in that state, I could never see God’s purpose for my life. This is one of Jesus’ prayers: “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure. All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” Mt 11:25-27 Christ chose to reveal His father to us. We would know the father if we would just have the simple faith of little children. Christ suffered and died to save us so we may know the father and his eternal love.

What inhibits you today to join in the great commission? Is it your position, or power? Is your wealth or career hindering you? Is it poverty or low self-worth? Are you among the ‘wise and learned’ whose searching of hearts have blocked their vision of God’s kingdom? Are you buried in activities like Martha? Take your eyes off these hinderances and focus on Jesus who himself passed through worse temptations. He emptied himself and lived for God.Perhaps you think the great commission is meant for the clergy class? No. Christ did not die to give a few people jobs. He gave his life to save the world and we also are obliged to give our lives for the brethren 1Jn 3:16. Anywhere you may be at a given point in time, show God through your speech, your work, your conversation, your manners and your entire life style. Do it with love. This is a job that was passed over the heads of angels and given to mere mortals. Value it. Its simple, even a four-year old boy did it. You can. 

I took my attention away from the frustrations and plunged myself into evangelism, cutting odd jobs whenever I could get one. Neighbours nicknamed me Pastor. My family started a spiritual growth we have never known and a peace we have never imagined we could have. Tayo started schooling. Our relations and the church never failed to provide for us even without asking. It’s been wonderful. Two years later, precisely August 2007, I got an opportunity to work again in a corporate setting. I have never seen work as toil again. Rather, work is an opportunity to serve God with talents, skills, learning and other resources available.