The Vision

We moved house the other day.

As I rummaged through drawers unpacking and sorting through stuff, I found it. I wasn’t looking for it, I didn’t even know it was there, but somehow it fell out from the folder I had kept it in.

I sat cross-legged on the floor and opened it. I thought back to the day my sister Adaobi gave it to me. A beautiful, multi-coloured notebook. Small enough to fit in my purse, small enough for me to carry around with me to the ‘prayer garden’ in my college – a wooded area, aptly called ‘bush’ by us (the students) where anyone who wanted to could go and spend his/her free hours in prayer and meditation.

It was my journal.

Boy, it brought back memories; I remembered hours of groaning in the spirit, oblivious of the lizards and any other creeping creatures that scurried around. I remembered loving God and praying about my future in the solitude of the ‘bush’, and I remembered waiting in silence after I had prayed my pen poised over the paper of this precious book, waiting to write whatever I heard Him say to me. He always had something to say… always…

There I was, a 19 year old girl… my future ahead of me, many questions, many thoughts but one thing standing above them all, whatever course I took, I wanted my life to bring God glory, forever.

And so I wrote… I wrote all He told me like my life depended on it…

I flipped through some more. It was interesting to see how painstakingly I had documented the entries ‘5.31pm, 23^rd May 1998’ as if the time mattered as much as the entry, as if I didn’t want the intimate moment we had just shared to be forgotten…

Over the years, the journals changed. Ada continually supplied me with different journals. They progressed in beauty, and the more beautiful they were, the more I was inspired to write in them. I wanted to carry them with me everywhere because as my relationship with Him evolved, I found He didn’t have things to say only after those moments of prayer, He had something to say every time I stilled my heart to listen to Him.

Different entries, different seasons of my life…

There was the time I wasn’t sure whether to change from the college I was in to another… and I wrote… I stayed back because I knew He wanted me to.

There was the time my dad wanted me to redeploy instantly to another city in Nigeria for my National Youth Service program. I gently declined because I knew, and I wrote when He told me He wanted me to be there at the time, I was there for a reason and wasn’t moving an inch till He wanted me to…

There was also the time I got to that phase, the phase most girls get to – the phase of many callers, some more ‘eligible’ than the others; some sent straight from ‘the pit of hell’ to sway the unwary Christian girl, some sent as ‘time wasters’ seeming like the real deal but slowing you down from meeting the real ‘one’ God has for you – You know those blokes who want to take all your time when they know, and you know too that you have absolutely no future together – and I was able to back out because in between tears, near misses, painful ‘break-ups’ I wrote and He told me, ‘no, he isn’t the one, let him go…’

Oh, I didn’t always listen… I can tell you that honestly… But He was always right… He never contradicted His word. And He always gently ‘instructed me and led me in the way I should go’ through His written word in the Bible.

As I flipped through, I saw things He had told me about me that had taken place, but I also saw uncovered terrain, unfinished business, and uncharted territory. I wiped sweat from my brow. How? When? Where? What?

Then I remembered His word, I pulled out my bible and turned the pages to a verse I had read a couple of times:

“Write this.
Write what you see.
Write it out in big block letters
so that it can be read on the run.
This vision… is a witness
pointing to what’s coming.
It aches for the coming—it can hardly wait!
And it doesn’t lie.
If it seems slow in coming, wait.
It’s on its way. It will come right on time…”

(Habakkuk 2:2-3)

There it was, marked in my bible…

“… It can hardly wait. If it seems slow in coming, wait. It’s on its way. It will come right on time…”

That had me speaking in tongues for a bit; packing boxes could wait.

It will come right on time…

How comforting…

Comforting to know that He doesn’t lie. Comforting to know that though at times things seem slow in our world, and at times pictures we’ve seen clearly in our spirits, prophecies we’ve heard spoken over our lives, things we’ve written down seem so slow in coming, He already knew how we would start wondering about their authenticity when they didn’t happen fast enough and He said, ‘wait… they will come right on time.’

Have you been writing like me?

No? Then you need to start.

Have you been writing like me?

Yes? Then be sure that EVERY single vision you’ve written that lines up with His word WILL come right on time.

Now isn’t the time to give up on you, on your dreams, on His word to you.

Now is the perfect time to “write what you see… in big block letters so that you can read it on the run’

Now is the perfect time to have the pictures before you – the pictures of the sort of ministry He has told you He will use you to impact this world with, of the spouse He has told you about, of the books He has shown you will be written, of the ideas and solutions He has given to you that would impact this world, of the successes you are going to have in the business world, of the way your business, your idea will become a household name in nations – in front of you.

Because my dear, there are close substitutes, seeming real deals; things, people, opportunities, jobs that would look like it but when you go back to the picture, you’d spot the difference and pass…

Keep the vision before you, don’t let the embers die out, fan them back to life.

Pull out those old notebooks, flip through them. They will stir up something new in you.

And if you haven’t been writing, don’t wait one more day, ‘Write what you see. Write it out in big block letters so that it can be read on the run…”

Have the best weekend ever…!