A preacher once said in his sermon that the intensity of attacks we get from adversaries is an indication that we are actually standing on the right path to our break through.
It is most often, at that stage all we need is tenacity and to be more focused on our goals because all they want to achieve is to distract us.
Take for example, a football match, the attack goes to the man with the ball and the attack becomes stronger when we are taking the ball to the goal post.
Now, in Edo state, we are all witness to the steady progress going on in all sectors of governance of the state and the reorientation that it is not business as usual for government funds to be shared to politicians but used for the people.
As the 2020 governorship election draws near, there have been alignment and realignment of associations in the political space. Those who have pitched themselves against the incumbent governor of Edo state, Mr. Godwin Obaseki have been coming up with flimsy excuses to condemn the giant strides of the administration apparently to distract the governor.
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.
Those we associate with are a very strong part of our human life. The people we hang around with have a very strong influence on how our life will go. It also means that the kind of people at the helm of affairs in our life will obviously determine what happens to us. That is why it is often said that people get the kind of leaders they deserve.
Irrespective of how blessed we are and no matter what God plans to do in our life, we can speed it or destroy it by the people we move with, associate with or the people who control our life affairs.
These people have very strong influence and impact over our life. If we move with a particular kind of crowd, we are going to see it manifest in our life.
In Edo state today, the focus of the administration is people oriented and for those who think other wise want a stereo type system of ‘lets share the money; They forget that what God wants to do will be determined by the desires of the people.
Some times, we feel when we are part of some person’s life we find it difficult to pull out and that becomes our own undoing, because until we do that, God can not do what He intends to do. We need to get into the right group or association of people who are objective in their criticisms and actions.
Therefore, whom we associate with matters a lot. There was a man that Jesus Christ wanted to heal that was blind. The Bible says 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.
I am of the opinion that if God wants to change a situation, He filters the bad from the good before his purpose manifests.
If 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 us or for our community, state or nation, until He successfully changes where we are or who we 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 we are going with the wrong crowd of people in the name of one association or political party or whatever, and God need us out of them. He may just want us 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, we should let God move us from where we are, from whom we are with, the group of friends we are associating with, so that He can do what He wants to do. God knows more than everyone of us.
There are some that must change and God moving us from certain people do not mean that we are now quarrelling or enemies, No; God does not want us to be enemies with anybody.
He just wants to move us from certain places so that, some of the things we all do together, we will stop them. God can break their influence over our lives, 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 stands in the way of sinners, nor sit in the sit of the scornful.”
The truth is that we do not need every body in the name of one association or political party because 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 us to progress. While there are others, when they are with us, they stop our progress. But when we are focused, they try to distract us with unnecessary criticisms. But if we remain focus and not be distracted we will see that God wants our life to make meaning. God want our state and nation to progress and does not want His people to continually suffer unnecessarily in the hands of enemies of progress because of the wrong association they keep.
As some politicians heat up the polity, 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 interests 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 interests are no more been protected. These are shameless lot who want to remain in corridors of authority by hook or crook for ever.
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Eubaldus Enahoro is Ag. Editor with The NIGERIAN OBSERVER
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