I felt extremely disconnected from the Lord in the past few weeks. I wasn’t praying much, listening to messages or reading my Bible. I was occupied with different things especially my exams, and I even started sliding into sins. The most significant of them all, was grumbling and complaining.
I struggled with grumbling and complaining a lot during this time, and it grew into a huge problem. My roommate kept saying that I was sighing randomly all the time. Either I was complaining about something my classmates said, something a lecturer did, not having money, absence of electricity, or most of all, my boss in Lagos that had not paid me yet for the month of October and this was already half way into the month of November.
Today I believe, was the worst episode – I kept on complaining about not being paid. My boss had requested for my account number earlier in the morning and was yet to pay many hours later. Needless to say, I was unhappy because I had no money and to make it worse, my boss was still harassing me about returning to work. Ha! I went from unhappy to absolutely livid. I started talking, sighing, murmuring, frowning, and even being quiet. If there was any way to show displeasure, I did it today.
According to our roster for duties, it was my turn to wash plates in the room today. In this mood, the devil had conveniently made it so that the plates had piled up from the day before and virtually everything was dirty. My roommate used another pot and two plates right before I wanted to wash. I began to pout and sigh again wondering “Who did I offend?”
At that moment, my neighbours who never seemed to have anything to talk about other than National news and the many woes of Nigeria, chose this time to come over and chatter away as usual. At this point, I was dying inside and wishing somebody would hit me just so I would have a legitimate reason to hit them back.
I started washing the plates while sighing the whole time. Next thing, by a funny chance, I decided to sing. The song that hit my lips was a Memory Verse sung from Philippians 4:6 by God’s Lighthouse Music Team (GMT)- “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God.” As I began to sing, I became convicted and began to feel guilty. As I washed on, I began to think of all the grumbling I had done throughout the day and realised how wrong I actually was to be so ungrateful.
At that moment, as I continued to sing, I switched the Memory Verse sung from Isaiah 43:2 – “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow you; when you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned; nor shall the flames scorch you.” I started giving God thanks for the fact that even without money, He had provided my needs – I had food to cook and eat, there was electricity to cool my drinking water, and my exams had been going well. I repented of all the grumbling and immediately began to sing louder and smile and laugh. I finished washing all the plates, and went inside to sip garri (Granulated Cassava) with peanut which I just bought. Indeed, it tasted so sweet in my mouth and I thanked the Lord for it!
This was how the Lord delivered me from the spirit of murmuring and restored my joy. Glory to God.
