My struggle to let God guide my commitments

Exactly a year ago, I was still nursing the loss of my dad
but in the midst of that trying time, some great friends of mine insisted I go for our first Students’ Fire Conference which we’d been planning for Yei
before the demise of my father. This trip to Sudan cannot happen now I thought. My old man’s corpse was still in the morgue; getting around that to make a missions’ trip just seemed unreasonable and even insensitive.

But thank God for mentors with depth from personal experience.
I sent an “SOS email” to Uncle Tim Olonade, who has been a source of fatherly
guidance and leadership for a couple of years now. I needed immediate counsel on
what to do. Here was my first question to him among others:

“How
can I raise my emotions to engage this huge meeting (fire conference 2008);
with its unforeseen challenges? (The thing is this- when I think of planning to
make this trip, I’m not excited or happy about it. Neither am I delighted that
I’m postponing it for later.) I feel messed up inside… “

His reply:

Hi
Uche,

“Greetings
from Denver. Your mail has posed a major challenge in guidance. I have prayed
and weighed the options. It’s no easy answer.

On
emotional level, we are always distressed when we lose loved ones. So I can
understand. I made a decision many years ago, not to cancel any speaking
engagement due to burial ceremony. Then both of my parents died and I had
speaking engagements schedule and my decision was subjected to serious test on
each occasion. How did I survive? I went for both events and made the burial
look like I was planning a normal programme and speaking somewhere else
just happened in between. In your case, it’s like planning two emotionally
draining events. Don’t cancel either. If you survive them you made it for life…. do not sacrifice your ultimate at the altar of the immediate…”

That 2008 Fire Conference was great. Many of the students
who got saved during that conference are already leading smaller groups and
pressing on. It’s a privilege to have someone around to whom wisdom and counsel could be sort in moments of pain. Someone familiar with the nature of pain we’re dealing with or even deeper; someone whose faith in Jesus had grown through their own struggles and pains. It’s ever so refreshing to see the fruit of a good and godly counsel.

Our second Students’ Fire Conference tagged “Let the Fire
Fall”, comes up this weekend. My struggles with it has been huge but surmountable. A few of the ministers lined-up for this
conference here have been dealing with personal challenges from ill health to loss of loved
ones. Lack, in various forms stare us in the face. But the just shall live by faith. We’ve vowed to press on. 1000 students are expected to come. We may have a
crisis if this number is exceeded, but we beckon on the challenge with bold faith and totally prostrate
before the Lord Jesus as we seek His will.

Please kindly spend a few minutes in prayer with us:

1.     
We’ve had many evil outbreaks in Yei, from
Cholera, Typhoid, Meningitis etc; but now, we are asking for that incurable outbreak of the Holy Spirit.

2.   The
spirits of religion thrive in Southern Sudan, but now we seek radical conversions among the youth,
especially students.

 3.     
May God
find in this conference, a perfect platform to express Himself and be glorified.