When the spiritual authorities of the world admonish those of us who have chosen to follow the road that leads to God to refrain from sin no matter the temptation that nudges us to submit to compromise, some of us hardly bother to adhere to such counseling. We fail to comply because many of us may not be aware of the spiritual harm that may come our way if we fall. But some of us are definitely aware of the physical, psychological, economic and other harm that we may suffer as a direct result of our sinful acts. Take for example the warning against sexual immorality. None of us mature adults who violate the seventh commandment against polluting our bodies and marriages with illicit affairs with other people’s partners cannot say the spiritual peril that can come against us for doing so.
But most of us would agree without much preaching or persuasion that any man who is an unrepentant rocker of life and a womanizer will be perennially broke. We cannot enjoy financial stability because pursuing strange women, no matter how steady your source of income, will hemorrhage your pockets. When the Bible and other Holy Books warn us, especially the men, against having strange women elegantly known as side chicks apart from our wives, they do so because apart from the spiritual harm that buffets us, they do so because they are aware of the immediate and direct havoc that violation brings to our economic stability.
God has desired that we stick to the legitimate wife/wives he gives to us because he knows that the devil has put in women the destructive ability to bore holes in the pockets of men when those men are not the ones God has legitimized for them. Men may think that they are superior in reasoning to women but the so-called weaker sex have the superior ability to cause them so much harm that they cannot imagine.
I do not know what the spiritual benefits of humility are but I can say for sure what the physical ones are. Thirty years ago, I got the prompting of God to begin a house in Calabar the capital of CRS. That was the second house of my life. I cannot remember how much money I had gathered for this project. Whatever it was, it definitely was not much at all because I can remember that I began the project with one bag of cement.
I had a Bettle then which was my private, official and business car. I began the project with one bag of cement. I used some empty four litres containers to fetch water and put in the bonnet of the Bettle car for use in the moulding of the blocks. For the project, I had ordered some three or four tipper loads of sharp sand. I had engaged a man called Uwem a professional cement blocks moulder and neighbour I used to see in my neighbourhood who moulds blocks for those who wanted to build their personal houses.
Uwem and I started work one early morning Monday. I stood around seeing how Uwen was doing his work. In no time, he was done with moulding that one bag of cement into about 32 blocks. When he was done with it, Uwem asked me, ‘’sir, when again will I come to mould the next set of blocks?’’ I answered him, ‘’by the grace of God, it shall be next month’’.
By the end of that next month, I again invited Uwem for another set of moulding. This time around, it was not two bags of cement. No, it was three bags. It occurred to me that I was not progressing in arithmetic progression. Unknown to me but now apparent for me and even Uwem to see clearly, Jehovah Jireh, the God of Multiplication, had come into my project,
Another month end, Uwem was once again invited to my site for another round of moulding, this time around, a second hand water tank had been bought for storage of a larger quantity of water for use in the moulding process because more bags of cement were to be moulded for more quantities of blocks. When God comes into anything that any man who acts in his will is doing, his presence will cause much to be achieved, and once again when Uwem came to the end of the day’s work and he was paid for his labour, he asked the inevitable question he has come to be known for asking, he posed the inevitable: ‘’sir, when shall the next time I will come again for the work?’’ I answered in my usual format: ‘’by the grace of God, next month. He stood for a moment and responded in a mocking tone: ‘’Sir, this your house is by the grace of God’s house’’. An unconscious prophetic remark had been made. From then henceforth, I the receiver of the uttered unconscious prophecy adopted that name for the yet to be completed house.
And God fully entered into the construction of that house. I began to enjoy inesplicable supply of money and materials for the construction of the work. Some house professional workers too started dropping in unsolicited and offering some useful professional opinions and pieces of advice until the house was eventually completed to the glory of God’s name, leaving me with singing and offering praises and thanksgiving to God who made it happened.
A few days ago I paid a visit to the location of this Grace of God’s house. I broke into joy and started singing songs of joy and rejoicing. I started quoting scriptures such as: ‘’Do not despise your days of early beginnings. I did not begin with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of Naira, I began with one bag of cement and a few Naira to pay the workman for his labour. I had absolute trust that the Lord God of Heaven will help me through and today, my faith had wrought me a beautiful house to behold.
That is my benefit of humility and trust in God. If you begin small and are faithful and unafraid but confident and thankful of God’s support, the God of multiplication will come into your venture and you will begin to witness significant progress until you eventually complete it for the glory of God and the praises of men some of whom may have mocked your early but decisive beginnings.
