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| Multi Billion Naira church headquarters project at Gbagada,LAGOS,NIGERIA |
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| Pastor Kumuyi ministering |
I listened to a recorded message delivered by the General Overseer of
Deeper Life Church worldwide. Deeper life which started in the early 70’s had by
1988 grown it’s congregation at the
headquarters church located in Lagos to 50,000, and now numbers 120,000 members,
making it the third largest Christian church in the world. Dr. Johan Combrinck
reports that the Deeper Life Bible Church not only has an attendance of 120,000
every Sunday, but has planted 500 churches in Lagos, 5,000 in the rest of
Nigeria (with an independent estimate of more than 800,000 members in Nigeria
alone), and 3,000 elsewhere (with missionaries to 40 countries of Africa) as the
movement missionary contribution.
The classic message I listened to is entitled ‘Why do leaders fail’. A part
of the message is really motivational and I believe it would help many people
to see that they too can achieve whatever they set their minds to achieve and
that failure is just a choice. One can decide to change whatever may be causing
the failure and then move to the realm of success.
He identified that the chief
cause of his failure right from Primary 1 to Class 4 in the secondary school
was ‘LAZINESS’. He did not ascribe his failure to spiritual forces as some
would have easily done. In his own word, he narrated his story thus‘In
those days, my father would beat me, the teachers would beat me as well. They
would abuse me and each time they did that, I kept asking myself ‘what kind of
trouble is this?’ ‘Why are they harassing my life this way?’ I knew nothing
about reading; all I knew was playing and sleeping. One day, one of our
teachers called me, responding to his call, I began to laugh and then he told
me this ‘why are you laughing, Kumuyi?’ ‘Geography you don’t know, Mathematics
you don’t know, Biology you don’t know and you still have the time to laugh in
your life’ He abused me thoroughly and called me ‘small dirty thing’. I was so
dull in my primary school days that they were just pushing me from one class to
the next till I managed to enter modern school. I tell you this, I was lazy
beyond description! To read, I didn’t know, I only knew how to play.
In the modern school, I was not interested in any subject except ‘the
use of water colors’ in spite of that ,they still promoted me on- trial to
secondary school .Even on getting to secondary, I was only growing worse, but
still they kept promoting me on-trial from
class 1 up to class 4.I was far below average, I was extremely dull and
failure in almost all the subjects was normal to me, to my father, to my teachers,
to my fellow students and to those who knew me. The only thing they saw in me was
failure and nothing but a bleak future. The teachers abused me verbally, discouraged
me and sometimes even cursed me. On one of my school’s report, a teacher wrote
‘‘if this boy can read, maybe he will do well’’ Yes, the teacher was right, I was
not reading at all. I was lazy and enjoyed it that way. I would not write notes,
I would deliberately sit at the far end of the class where the teacher would
not easily notice me, because I would never write any note while the teaching
went on.In a particular exam, I can still remember that in Geometry I scored 5%,
Algebra, less than 10%, Chemistry almost 0%,History,0% etc.
In 1960,On getting to Form 4, It was at that point that I received the
turning point for my life. We were on holiday.I sat down and talked to myself
thus ‘’Look at your age now and final exam is coming next year. Are you going to
continue to live your life like this? So I just changed completely. I collected
the notes of all the subjects from my class mates and updated mine. I sat down
and determined within myself that this thing that is causing failure in my life
would be dealt with. I was not a Christian then, but I just decided to change and
God helped me, I changed for the best. Having identified that the real cause
behind my failure was laziness, I was ready to kill it so I could live to be a success.
For the first time right from my primary school days up till form 4, I really
passed and got promoted to Form 5.I got promoted not on -trial but on merit! Why
did I make it that way? I cut of playing, I cut off playing drum and dancing in
the white garment church, the cherubim and seraphim church (the dancing got my
interest much more than my studies, so I
cut it off completely).We had the school certificate Examination that year and I
had one of the best results to the
amazement of many. When my father had no interest in obtaining a form for my
Higher School Certificate examinations, I obtained the Advanced Level form on
my own and began to study. For the HSC,I had A1 in Pure Mathematics and A3 in
Applied Mathematics. I then went to the University of Ibadan to study
Mathematics. Dear friend, the man who was once tagged a failure up till Class Four
graduated with the best result in the entire university of Ibadan. He obtained
First Class in Pure and Applied mathematics. I believe that we all have the
power within to sit down and think over our lives over and over again and
believe that we can change anything that may be causing failure in any aspect
of our lives.
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