Hello Friends,
I recently had an interview with a Nigerian news outlet where some interesting questions were asked. I am sharing the questions and answers with you because I believe they will help enlighten and explain some misconceptions people have about me and what I am about. Please read, and share this piece so that others can also benefit from it.
Blessings!
Pst. Sunday Adelaja
For The Love Of God, Church and Nation
Question 12:
Sir, the impression here is that you are having challenges with your personal ministry that is why you have taken on the ministry of criticism. How will you react to this?
Well, if any minister or pastor doesn’t have problems, crises and trials in ministry, I will rather run away from that kind of minister because it is not a complement not to have problems in ministry. It is rather a sign of danger. If everything is good in your ministry as a minster of the Lord Jesus Christ, then you have been compromised. You are no more a minister of the Lord Jesus Christ because the bible says, you cannot be a friend of God and be a friend of the world. If you are really a friend of God, the world will always fight you. You would be going from one fight to the other, attack to the other. Jesus Christ himself said, “Woe unto you, if everybody will speak well about you”. No. You have to be in crisis permanently like Jesus himself who was always in a fight when he was on earth. The same thing with any minister that wants to live a godly life must be persecuted. That is the norm.
If you look at the ministry of Apostle Paul, you will see the same thing. In 1 Corinthians 4;11-13
“To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. 12 We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it;13 when we are slandered, we answer kindly. We have become the scum of the earth, the garbage of the world—right up to this moment.”
So this is the way the gospel is supposed to be but in Nigeria, we almost don’t know what it means to suffer for Christ anymore, we don’t know what it means to suffer for the gospel anymore. We have been accepted by the world and we have become the same as the world. So, we now see it as strange when anyone is going through a challenge or any crisis or persecution. Jesus said we should rejoice when we face persecutions. Persecution should be the norm for Christian ministers but today it is almost the norm not to persecuted as a pastor or church because we have become the same thing as the world.
We have become darkness; we are no more shining as the light. We have become comfortable in darkness which is why darkness is not disturbing us. This is another problem with the Nigerian church. So, to say that It is because I have attacks and challenges in my ministry, that is why I am now criticizing others is to be naïve. With that logic, let’s assume that I have crisis in ministry, if anybody has crisis and is concerned about it, what would be natural thing for him to do? Of course, the natural thing for him to do is to be looking for ways to get himself out of the crisis. If somebody is in crisis, he will only be self-engulfed in his own crisis, he will not have time for another person. He will rather say I have enough personal problems.
So, if they say that it is because I have crisis and that is why I am creating other crisis by criticizing people who could do me more harm than good, then why should I do that? It is not normal. If I were driven by crisis, I would be headed to seeking for solutions and not to put my nose into another man’s business whatsoever.
So, it is not logical that my problems are making me to look for more problems. No! I am doing what I am doing and starting a campaign to correct the evils of the Nigerian church because of my love for God, the church of the Lord Jesus Christ in Nigeria, Africa and all over the world. I am disregarding my own problem. I am closing my eyes at my own challenges and going to do what is very risky for meб whereby I am having to sacrifice everything that I have and doing something that is costing more than any human could imagine so that I will please God.
It is because of my love for God and for his church that I am doing what I am doing, not because I am in crisis and I want other people to have crisis.
How will that help me to get out of my own crisis if that is the reason? No! To think like that is to be very myopic.
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, CHURCH AND NATION
By Pastor Sunday Adelaja
