ACCESS DENIED!

Hello there!

How are you doing today? Here's hoping you're doing well, and that you continue to desire God more each day. 

Welcome to today's gist. 

Something really funny happened to me on Sunday, but before I tell you about that, I want to tell you about the door to my room. When we got to school, my roommates and I found that the door to the room we were assigned was bad; the handle is broken and the only way to close or open it is to use the key, it's a tricky process attempting to close the door without the key and preventing the door from 'jamming' but over the last three months, I've pretty much mastered the process.  

So I woke up that morning morning and did a little bit of washing before I was to go to church. As I was done and wanted to go to dry my clothes outside, my mind told me to carry my room key as I was going but bearing in mind the fact that I felt like I'd mastered the art of carefully closing the door, I decided not to bother because I didn't want to stress myself with having to keep tabs with where the key would be while I was drying the clothes. 

As soon as I opened the door and stepped out, breeze blew the door shut. 

Guess what?

Nobody was in the room, my roommates had gone home for the weekend so as I locked myself out, nobody dey inside to help me open the door; I was locked out and my roommates, when they would come back, would be locked out too. I told myself "when God dey tell you something, you no go dey hear, see yourself".

Want to know what I did? 

I went to dry my clothes and as I was drying the clothes, I was praying and asking God to please forgive me and help me just open the door and I won't do it again. I finished drying my clothes and went to my room and….

It was still locked😂!

Nothing happened to the door, I pushed and pushed and pushed, but the door didn't budge one bit. I began to look for what to do about getting the door open. I finally found someone who had a metal ruler and attempted to get it through the side of the door to move the latch and open it, but it didn't enter. Finally, God gave me wisdom and I was able to insert something into the hole left by the broken handle, open the door and let myself in. 

When I went in, checked the time and it was 7:48am, the door banging incident happened at almost 6:40am, so I had been locked outside of my room and struggling to open the door for over an hour. I lost valuable time and couldn't make it for the 8am service that I would originally wanted to attend, so I settled for the 10am service. 

It seemed like such a small issue when it happened and it made a good story to tell me roommates when they got back, we all got a good laugh over it in fact. But as I continued to think on that incident, I realized something: God gave me an instruction and I disobeyed it. You know, it seemed trivial at the time, of no real consequence or importance, I mean it's really just removing a key from a keyhole –nothing special about it, but here's what I thought that made all the difference: it was an instruction from God. 

As I continued to think about, and repent of, my actions, I realized that this wasn't the first time I'd done something like that, trivialize an instruction from God and deem it being 'not that deep' enough to warrant obedience because nothing really spoil like that if I no do am. And really if you check am, nothing been too too spoil, I mean I eventually was able to open the door and get access into my room, but that is besides the point; the point wasn't about the importance, or lack thereof, of the instruction but about the fact that it was an instruction from God that I disobeyed. 

Too many times, God is laying instructions down in our hearts and we're disobeying them; maybe it's a thought to turn off your data, or speak to someone, or pray, or close a book, or maybe stop watching a movie, sometimes it's even as simple as removing a key from the keyhole before you close your door😅, no matter how trivial the instruction is, remind yourself that your obedience isn't dependent on the instruction but The Instructor, you don't obey because it makes sense but because God says to do it. 

And you know what, every time God nudges you like that in your heart and you obey, you'll find yourself all the better for it, yes there's spiritual blessings that come to you, but there's also physical repercussions to your decision to obey, or disobey, God. In my instance, I spent an hour running up and down 2 flights of stairs, knocking on doors and feeling extremely foolish, trying to open my door, I thought of all the things I would have done in that time if I had been obedient enough to just remove the key when God told me to, that one hour of madness altered the course of my day considerably, I was feeling the after effects of my disobedience till I slept that night and as I think of it now, I am conscious of the fact that God knew the breeze was coming when He told me to remove the key and who suffered for my disobedience? Me!

The final thing I realized was that, obeying God is never for His benefit as much as it is for mine, nothing do God if I decide to disobey am but you see me, plenty go do me, and e no go be good things oo. You know we have this tendency to delude ourselves into thinking that we're doing God a favour when we obey Him, the reverse is actually the case: God is doing you a favour by inviting you to come and work with Him so no mumu yourself oo! Obedience to God will always be for your good. 

I pray that God helps us to be sensitive to His nudging and to obey, no matter how seemingly unimportant the instruction is. 

NLS HOT GIST: We had our second 'Body of Benchers' dinner. This time around we didn't have any causalities, thank God! But the food, at least mine, wasn't anything to write home about. Anyway sha, I just dey console myself since say this na last week of the term be this. Next time we gist, I'll be away from this terrible place and the thought alone makes my heart sing with gladness because person don go through a lot for this place, in fact anybody wey you see wey dey Law School, hug the person –especially if the person dey Port Harcourt Campus. 

Well that is that about that as far as that is concerned, see you next week. 

Love,

Achenyo. 

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