Last week, Nigerians witnessed a drama that took place at the National Assembly when some politicians defected from one party to another and less than 48 hours, some have begun to retrace their steps. This alignment and realignment of association has no doubt heated up the political space.
Though not a new phenomenon in politics, but I want to believe that there are some lessons we must learn when it comes to who we should associate with at any particular time.
Association is a very strong part of human life. The people you hang around with have a very strong determination on how your life will go. It also means the people at the helm of affairs in your life will obviously determine what happens to you. That is why it is often said that people get the kind of leaders they deserve.
Irrespective of how blessed you are and no matter what God plans to do in your life, you can speed it or destroy it by the people you move with, associate with or the people who control your life affairs.
These people have very strong influence and impact over your life. If you move with a particular kind of crowd, you are going to see it manifest in your life.
Now, in our nation today, what God wants to do will be determined by the desires of the people, no matter the association we choose to keep or disassociate ourselves from, there is always a purpose for anything.
Some times, we feel when we are part of some person’s life or a community or association, we find it difficult to pull out and that sometimes becomes our own undoing, because until you do that, God can not do what He intends to do. You need to get into the right group or association of people. Not until you get into the right gathering He may not do some things he wants to do in your life.
Therefore, association matters a lot. There was a man that Jesus Christ wanted to heal that was blind. The Bible said Jesus walked the man out of the city. He had to change the man’s association and his location in order to give the man the miracle.
Our Lord Jesus is God in the flesh. He would have been able to do the miracle anywhere; he could just heal the man, regardless of who was there. But he moved the man from the city, he took the man completely from where he was, the people he was with, in order for the miracle to be possible.
There are things that God cannot do for you or for your community or nation, until He successfully changes where you are or who you are with and this is very important even in our present political dispensation.
This understanding is very necessary, so that we don’t continue to pray and fast endlessly for a situation and at the end there are no answers, and we wonder why God is not doing what we expect.
The problem may just be that you are going with the wrong crowd of people in the name of one association or political party or whatever, and God need you out of them. He may just want you out of that circle for Him to do that which He wants to do.
While we commit our leaders into Gods hand in prayers, we need to understand that when there is a shaking or what seems to be a movement of sorts, it is a sign that there is something God wants to do and especially in this season when the election year is drawing close.
As a matter of fact, we should not in any way resist a change, if God is involved, you should let God move you from where you are, from whom you are with, the group of friends you associate with, so that he can do what he wants to do. God knows more than you.
This is by no means saying he wants to change you from your friends or association, there are some that must change and God moving you from certain people do not mean, that you are now quarrelling or enemies, no, God does not want you to be enemy with anybody.
He just wants to move you from certain places so that, some of the things you all do together, you will stop them. God can break their influence over your life, so that he can do what he needs to do.
In the book of Psalms, which is one of the biggest and important books in the Bible, look at the very words that opens the book? It says in Psalms 1:1 – “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the sit of the scornful.”
This is announcing the blessedness of the man who is not wrongly associated. This man here, one who is wrongly associated, look at the way his life was, he started by walking but because of the association he was keeping, he now went to the next step, stopped walking.
The truth is that sitting is a continuous posture; it is a contended posture, a stable posture. When you come to a place and you are now sitting, then you are trying to relax, but the man was walking and his life was progressing, his life was moving forward, until by association he now stood. He was no longer moving forward.
There are people that when you are sitting and God bring them into your life you stand up and start moving, life starts progressing. God want you to progress, He wants your life to make meaning. God want our nation to progress and does not want His people to suffer unnecessarily because of the wrong association we keep.
There are people God bring into our lives, we do not like them or well, they do not seem to meet our standards, but these may just be the kind of people necessary for this time of our lives to move us to the next level.
In all these alignments and realignment we should know that there is nothing as bad as having the wrong people around us or the wrong set of politicians who are only concerned about their interest and careless about the people they are suppose to serve.
They are ready to always go to where their bread will be buttered once their interest is no more been protected in their former association. These are shameless lot who want to remain in positions of authority by hook or crook.
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Eubaldus Enahoro is Deputy Editor with the Nigerian Observer
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