A 44-year-old South African based Nigerian woman, Mrs Ohiwe-ei Unuigbe and her husband, have welcomed their first child after 9 years of marriage. They got married when she was 35 and her husband, 39. Continue to read the testimony below...
My birthday testimony
It is my birthday today, February the 14th 2017. I would like to testify of the miracle God did in my family just before this day. Early October last year, my wife and I had our first baby, a boy. His names are Ovbioise Chukwuemezikam Unuigbe. I had kept this testimony until today. There are different aspects to it.
We waited for 9 years after marriage. We married in 2007 when I was 39 and my wife was 35. Obviously we did not marry as early as we would both want to due to errors caused by circumstances, including ignorance.
If you are a
“spiritual Christian”, you will understand what I am about to say. In about
1995 / 1996 (I am not too sure of the exact year), I had been posted in Benin
from the Akenzua Parish (branch) of our church, the Redeemed Christian Church
of God to the GRA to support the planting of a new parish.
While there, I
represented the parish as a youth leader in the State Youth Fire Conference
held in Warri, Delta State. Then Edo and Delta were one state by RCCG
classification and that is what is now called Province. It was one of the
nights during that programme that I had a very clear revelation of a lady to be
my wife.
The youth leaders
of parishes where accommodated two in a room each and I was with my very close
friend who is now an Area pastor.
I did not tell him
about the dream, neither did I tell my pastor, Pastor Matthew Sule. For two
reasons, I did not want to marry this sister. One was that I still had the
Ordinary National Diploma then and I considered that marrying then would keep
me at that level. While I was hoping to continue my education, I did not want
to keep a sister waiting for too long.
The second reason
was that the lady in question was from a tribe in Edo State (my home state),
from which my own people do not marry. We heard and held negative “myths” about
them. It was passed down over the years.
So I abandoned the
dream! Strange enough, I and the lady got very close as the posting from
Akenzua to the GRA brought us together. She was very pretty, well behaved and a
committed Christian.
We trusted each
other as workers in the RCCG then. As much as I liked her and had strong
feelings for her, I never opened my mouth to express anything about it to her.
In 1997, she got married to someone else but not before she had said to me,
“Bro Ohi, I have to marry this year” and I replied, “Have you found somebody?”.
When she made that comment my mind missed and it was like losing a big
opportunity! This was a big error!
I eventually went
to school, resigned my job with FIRS, got the Bachelors and the Masters degrees
and by the time I married it was 10 years after this lady had married.
The lessons here
are:
i. When you refuse
God’s instruction on issues as marriage, it takes a whole cycle and His mercy
to pick it up again. Mine was 1997 and 2007.
ii. Never refuse a person connected to you by the will of God for reasons of where she or he comes from or for any other reason.
I met my wife
eventually in Lagos in 2005. She too had similar issue. While in the
university, she had a man, a medical student, (she was a Chemical Engineering
student) who supported her financially and they had planned to marry.
But upon graduating
and when the man asked for her hand in marriage, her people, not her, declared
he was Osu (the set of people “forbidden” in Igbo land in Nigeria). So she was
sent from Enugu to live with a relation in Lagos. I only discovered this when
things were going out of hand after we had been married and had no children for
some years.
WE BEGAN TO ASK
EACH OTHER QUESTIONS. Eventually, we did restitution.
There are many
other points to the experience of our waiting for the fruit of the womb. This
space will not contain then for now. We shall put them in a book. We hope to
also get platforms to practically share our experiences. I have discovered that
“your experience is your ministry”.
I would conclude by
sharing the following highlights:
1. We had some
anchor scriptures to pray with as our case moved towards “logical
impossibility” – Exodus 23:25-26, Psalms 92:12-15 and many others. We also
walked with them. We prayed, we fasted, we gave all the commitment we could, we
asked ourselves questions, we studied spiritual and medical books on pregnancy
and infertility, we fought all round. But in all, we obtained victory by the
mercy of God!
2. Never reject God’s
leading for any reason. The family of a Christian is the people in the house of
God who are children of God. Not the Biological tribes.
3. Fight for the
fulfillment of God’s word in any area of your life that is not holding true to
the word of God. The fight begins from inside of you!
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