Dear Church, it is time to give our all to our God

I really should be in bed right now, and I hate being irresponsible with my bedtimes. However I felt this strong compulsion to type out this post just now.

[Also, further posts that I want to type out:
– Ways I believe I need to be accountable to my future husband: money, sex, use of time
– The secret to my youthfulness: I praise God! – I sincerely think that because of that, not only do I look young for my age, but my body is genuinely the body of someone much younger.
– Babies and children, yeah in one sense I have left it so long, in another – see post idea above! ]

So I have finally admitted “my big secret” to someone.  You know on this blog I often sit here essentially blowing my own trumpet, and simultaneously apologising in case I come across as bragging.
OK here is the truth which I have been closely guarding about myself for a very long time.  I have actually admitted it a number of different times, but perhaps now is the time to be fully forthright about it all moving forward.

I pray. A lot. I personally believe that as Christians our commitment to our faith should be such that it is essentially our career. I would be the first person to admit that this is deeply radical.

Here’s a thing: I was brought up as a Nigerian Christian, and Nigerians are very ambitious in terms of career, and my own Nigerian parents were also extremely ambitious in terms of faith. So without really questioning it or how it would work out I went through life expecting to achieve great things, or at least high levels of seniority, simultaneously in terms of my career and my faith. As an example off the top of my head, I’m sure I’ve recently been told the story of a man who is a top consultant in some medical field, and also a top pastor in his denomination, at the same time.

And I happily carried around some nebulous ideas about this in my head, until I got to university. It was while I was at university that I decided that I was going to give God my absolute all in life. (Best decision ever, really!)  Prior to university, even though I had been brought up in a very Christian household, I had never truly invested big time in prayer. I used to pray before then but in just a perfunctory way. While I was at uni, it occurred to me that a life of total sell-out to God required big investment of time in reading the Bible and prayer. And yet this was a very academic university with a big requirement for spending lots of time studying. I really struggled to articulate it to myself at the time (and even more so to my long-suffering Director of Studies – sorry Prof M!) but it was there at uni that for the first time I realised that there would be a very necessary clash between giving your all to God, and giving your all to your career just because there are only so many hours in the day.  If you give 10 hours to your career every day, then you simply cannot cultivate a strong prayer life on top of that, because there just are not enough hours in the day. Unfortunately this is an incontrovertible fact.  How I wish it were different, but it is not.

So lots of “exciting” things happened at university, there was lots of confusion and headscratching on my part. Here is another thing: remember that all other Christians in the world, including my own uber-Christian parents, are gunning for the importance of a big career.  So here I am with my Bible in one hand and my class timetables in the other, asking myself questions which no-one else seems to be asking.
Anyway, fast forward twenty plus years since I graduated, and long story short, I decided to make my faith my “career”. And you know what?  To be brutally candid that was the right decision. You know what?  I honestly believe that this is what it truly means to live a Christian life. But you know what else?  Absolutely no-one else thinks this way.

So to put it very simply, for most Christians, they spend most of their time servicing their jobs and their careers. Which means that they spend very little time in prayer and Bible reading. And oh my goodness, it shows.
These are the ways it shows:
– No power. In the Christian church of our days, as far as I know it, there is lots of shouting. Lots of glitz, lots of glamour, but very little genuine power, if any at all.
– No impact on society. Gone are the days when the Church would speak, and society would listen because of the undeniable power emanating from the Church. Now the Church is just considered one in a multitude of faith systems, and not even a particularly pertinent one at that. Well what did you expect Church?!
– No real understanding of the Bible from supposed Christians. Oh my goodness, the way supposed Christians somehow manage to completely massacre the meaning of the Bible, and Christian doctrine. You know I rant a lot about people on this blog. But you may be surprised to discover how much I actually restrain myself from saying what I could say.  The number of times I have had to tell myself: “Tosin, keep quiet!” Whatever the denomination is, however much they consider themselves to have deep knowledge of God, the churches the sermons –  everything is just filled with loads of spiritual error and/or misunderstanding.

OK Tosin, if we spend all our time praying and reading our Bible as you suggest, then how are we going to have money to support ourselves?  The candid answer to that question is that I am still working on it. However, the fact remains that I myself am extremely ambitious. I think that I can safely assure you that when you put God first, it is easier to somehow make time to adequately support yourself than it is to find time for a deep investment into God if you put your career first. God fires up my imagination, my creativity, my productivity. This is just a fact, and it has been a fact since I graduated from university. Despite my commitment to put God first I am somehow extremely prolific but I just have not made any money – yet! Ironically, I believe that the one ingredient that is currently missing for my financial success is intense, dedicated prayer. I myself barely understand how I manage to be so wildly productive and prolific, I myself could not explain to you how it works, other than to say “it’s God!”

But thus far, I have missed out the one most important way in which it shows (that Christians fail to invest any real time in their faith) – That is of course, in terms of Christlike character, or the glaring lack thereof in the Church. OK, so you know how it may come across that I am always bragging?  Well the candid truth is that I have spent many hours in the presence of God, presenting my character and my character flaws before Him.  And make no mistake about it, this is painful to do. But I try to be as sincere and as candid with God as I can be. So now the truth is that I have learned to catch character traits even as they quickly flash across my mind. And the candid truth is that by the grace of God I have worked on my character to the point where I can at least tell myself the truth about what is going on in my heart. Which seems to be far more than many Christians can do. You know what? I flatter myself that I can see through what is happening in most people’s hearts from their behaviour. So I can often tell why you are behaving how you are behaving – even if you cannot.  And let me tell you this:  as Christians you need to learn to tell yourselves the truth, and you need to learn to deal with what is in your heart. Honestly, this is the one thing that makes interacting with Christians so ridiculously painful for me.

You know, as I am writing this, I am remembering the erotica thing, and I am asking myself – again – why do I keep struggling with this thing? So this is one big area of failing that I still need to conquer by the grace of God. Another big area of failing is the anger that is stirred up in my heart by various experiences with these Christians.

I believe that this is how the early church was different from the church of our times.  If you read the Bible, and the account of the First Century Church, it seems like the early Christians literally spent all their time being Christians. And, if we are going to go there, if we as Christians are truly walking in the supernatural power of God, then for instance we would not need to be doctors, would we, if we could instead trust God for supernatural healing?

You know what? This is a radical thesis, and 20+ years later I am still ironing out many details. If you don’t want to give up your career, then that is fine. But this one thing I implore you. Please, please, please, take the time to take your Bible, open it up, bring your heart before God and work on your character. Please. Please. Deal with your racism. Deal with your sexism. Deal with your huge insecurities. You know that this is what God and the Bible are there for – to cleanse your heart. Please please invest time, like an hour a day to start with, perhaps going down later to 30 mins a day, just to invest in the pursuit of Christlike character.

If you want me to spell out my own time use, ordinarily speaking I spend an hour a day praising God. That is, simply singing songs. I’ll be candid that it can be easy to fall into the motions, take my mind off God, and basically mentally run through my to-do list during this time while my mouth is singing on autopilot. However, when I truly focus on God while praising Him that brings ridiculous levels of joy to my life. This is not why I do it, I do it to give God the praise that He deserves. However, this is the absolutely inevitable consequence of giving God this level of sincere praise. If you can’t imagine how this might work, then I invite you to try it for yourself – try half an hour if you cannot manage a whole hour.

I have also come to suspect recently that this is what has kept me so young, even relative to other Christians. You know, the first grey hair I found on my head was when I was only twelve years old. I pulled it out. As I write this I am in my early forties and I genuinely have never had even a single further grey hair on my head. Fact.  I have avoided many stressful things like having children, I have also avoided many other ageing things like drinking, smoking, taking drugs. However my life has been stressful in other ways, like so many late nights and yet I consistently look far younger than my true age.  You know, much younger guys often flirt with me, and (whisper) – sometimes naughty Tosin flirts right back!

You know, I am sure that praising God can reverse ageing, so somehow I am sure that someone who gives himself or herself to sincere praise of God will feel the years melt off. If you struggle to believe it, then try it! Give God some serious time of praise. Sincerely bring your heart before Him, pour out your heart in praise before Him. Do this consistently over some weeks and months.  The Bible says that the joy of the Lord is your strength (Nehemiah 8v10) and I believe that it actually has therapeutic power within your body.

Another time thing that I like to do, in candour I have not really done this for ages (years) – I like to spend a full hour reading the Bible every day. As I say, I have not done this for ages. But this is ordinarily my baseline, and hmm, when I was doing this I was not struggling with erotica…

At the very least, If you can, please try to squeeze out an hour of time daily to give to your faith, and I would suggest giving 30 mins in praise to God, and 15 mins in reading the Bible, and a further 15 mins in praying for your character.  You know whose life this will change first?  Yours. You know whose life this will fill with crazy joy and gratitude?  Yours!!!