Africans are the most religious people in the world. And Nigerians are the most religious Africans. And the Yoruba people are the most religious Nigerians. I’m African, I’m Nigerian and I’m a ‘Yoruban’, so believe me, I know what I’m talking about.
In my few years, I’ve heard numerous testimonies being shared. However, it’s sad that just a few of these ascribe the glory to God. In this part of the world, the testifiers either give glory to pastors of their churches or the devil. In fact, many times, you’d hear testifiers say:
‘Praise the God of our pastor….’ (Isn’t He your God too?), or even
‘I shouted Jesus and nothing happened, but everything got better when I called pastor…’ (That you are miserable, is the understatement of the year!)
However, giving praise to the devil has become so rampant in our churches here. Of course, it’s never done directly. Nobody would shout on the pulpit, ‘Praise the living devil’ without being hauled out for a deliverance session. But when someone’s given 10 minutes to share a testimony and the individual goes on to use over 9 minutes to tell us how wickedly cunning the devil is. This person doesn’t even mention God or His Might once! I can tell you, that’s tantamount to praising satan. I can’t fathom why this phenomenon is rampant in this part of the world. Maybe it’s the harsh economic conditions, the first-hand poverty and the general mentality. Whatever the reason, I’m sure of one thing: The devil has no power and shouldn’t be praised. The guy shouldn’t even be mentioned at all. We are meant to package the best form of insult for him, which is simply not acknowledging him at all.
The Israelites and the Philistines faced-off for war in I Samuel 17. Goliath, the giant Philistine champion, dared the Israelites to send a man to fight him. What struck me most was how the Israelites were able to know the giant’s exact height and the materials that was used to make his wargear. They even got an accurate weight of all his wargear. Commendable, considering that they did all these from a far distance! But enter David, who failed to recognize Goliath as a threat. To him, Goliath was just mere statistics, a trophy waiting to be added to his previous collection of a bear and a lion. David made God his focus and everything else fell into perspective. God responded by adding more victories to David’s belt. This is the same approach we should adopt when sharing our testimonies. Don’t tell how big your challenges were or how mighty the devil was. Instead, let’s know how big God is; how great and diverse His numerous wonders are.
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