WHAT HE ORDERS, WHAT HE GETS

Hello hello🤗.

We never see this month oh, how far na? I hope you dey alright.

Welcome to today's gist. 

One particularly interesting thing that would always catch my attention on social media is the "What I ordered versus what I got" trend, especially when I see that the tailor has gone on their own cruise to sew wetin only dem sabi. Every time I see that, I'm always wondering "na to say 'I can't make this style' dey hard the tailor abi how?" Because when you see some of the things the people ranting on social media are given by their tailors, you'd just wonder what went wrong. The "what I got" outfits that really just off me are those outfits that now arrive in sizes either too big or too small. I feel like getting the style wrong is one thing, but getting the measurement wrong too? That's just unbothered incompetence and it really throws me off. 

I was reading. Isaiah 48 recently and something in verses 1 and 2 led me to think about this tailor situation. In these verses God 'indicts' the people of Israel; He told them how quick they were to take up His name and purport to swear allegiance by Him, however He knows that they do not do this from a place of sincerity or a desire for righteousness. As I read these verses, it felt like God was indicting me too, the primary question He asked me was whether my relationship with Him had to be on my terms, whether it made sense for me to pick the areas I want to live for, and honour, Him in while discarding the other areas. Before I could jump to accuse the Israelites of trying to use God, I had to first answer the question: whether I myself wasn't using Him. 

And that's how I found myself thinking about the tailor situation: God has given me the pattern, the style and model I ought to fashion my life after, in the person of Jesus. For me to be able to reproduce that style, I must follow every detail accordingly –no measurement difference, no pattern difference, I must follow to the latter. If I decide to worship God on my own terms, it becomes inevitable that I'll soon start making my own patterns to fashion my life after, and that would definitely not produce the design that God has ordered. 

So for every situation I find myself in, every decision I'm about to make, I must always go back to the drawing board and search for what Jesus did and then pattern my own decision to mirror Jesus. The acronym WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) becomes very instructive in this journey to patterning one's life after Jesus; God should find me at any given time, doing what Jesus would have done if He'd been in that position. 

Of course it's not easy! Some days I seem to want to make my own patterns and cut my clothe to sew wetin nobody send me sew, but I'm learning to lean on God more and have Him teach me to yield to His will every time. You too should join me!

May God never get what He didn't order from us in Jesus name, amen. 

See you next week!

Love,

Achenyo.