Relationships that Matter (3)

/ Adewumi Oni / Leave a comment

Another relationship you must give attention to after God and your family is relationship with destiny helpers.

Who are destiny helpers?
Destiny helpers are people who will help you to reach your full potential through teaching, mentoring, financing, leveraging, connections, counsel or prayers. These include your teachers, mentors, spiritual guides, supervisors, colleagues and even friends.

We often appreciate only those who are valuable to us,  while sometimes destiny helpers don’t appear like they have anything to offer you. You therefore need to be patient, humble and sensitive to people around you, in order to discern those who are destiny helpers. As a rule of thumb, don’t despise anyone. Everyone has something of value, if you are sensitive enough, you will gain something. Destiny helpers will give you advice that will take you from a negative position to a positive position. Sometimes it is just an hint on how to go about an assignment. Some other times they offer tangible help in form of money, materials or even gifts. Please do all you can to keep them.

There are different junctions in every body’s life, and your ability to take the right turn at each junction sometimes depends on the people (destiny helpers) in your life. Many have made wrong choices and decisions because they either lacked or disdained their destiny helpers. ‘Destiny itself is like a wonderful wide tapestry in which every thread is guided by an unspeakably tender hand, placed beside another thread and held and carried by a hundred others.’  –  Rainer Maria Rilke.

Develop, grow, nurture and strengthen your relationship with your destiny helpers. You cannot make it alone. You need people.

God bless us all.

Good morning!

Relationships that Matter (2)

/ Adewumi Oni / Leave a comment

The next most important relationship you need to maintain, after your relationship with God, is your relationship with your family.

Family can be Nuclear or Extended. Both are important, but you must tend your Nuclear family very well. A nuclear family is made up of father, mother and children, while extended family covers all other relations.

Your family is your first back up when things go wrong. They are your pillars. You must take time and care to cultivate your relationship with your family. ‘The only rock I know that stays steady, the only institution I know that works, is the family.’  –  Lee Iacocca. When everybody deserts you, the only people that will be left are your family members. This means you also have to be there for your family members during thick and thin. Be committed to them.

Sometimes you may have difficult family members, and dealing with them may be stressful, but you need them just like they need you. So you need patience, wisdom and a lot of tolerance to manage such difficult ones. Honor your parents and take care of them. Love and respect your spouse. Don’t give them any reason to doubt your commitment to them. Friends may leave when the going gets tough, but it is not easy for family to leave. Blood is thicker than water, as the saying goes.

Nothing hurts more than being deserted by family members when one is experiencing difficulties. It means you also must watch the seeds you are sowing, because it will surely come back to you. Cherish your family and they will always be there for you.

God bless us all.

Good morning!

Relationship That Matters (1)

/ Adewumi Oni / Leave a comment

No man can reach his full potentials or fulfill destiny without the right people in his life. Jesus Christ needed John the Baptist to baptise him before he could commence his three year ministry. Moses would not have recorded much success without the help of Aaron and Joshua. We are creatures of relationships and we function effectively when we find the right relationships.

It is therefore important to know the right relationships so that our journey on earth will be smoother and so that we can make heaven at last. In the next few days, we will be discussing relationships that matter. We will examine one today and continue tomorrow.

1. Relationship with God: Dear friends, it will be a total and colossal waste of time and heaven’s resources if you journey through the world without a perfect relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. For you to have access to God, you need to accept His Son, Jesus Christ as your Lord and Personal Saviour. “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” Acts 4:12. “For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.” Acts 17:28.

Without God, you cannot go far in life. He made you for a purpose and doing anything outside that purpose will only lead to frustration. It is important you have God as your Father through our Lord Jesus Christ. This relationship is the most important and the foundation for every other relationship to thrive.

Do not be deceived by science and its various theories of the evolution of man. God exists. He was, He is and He remains forever. If you don’t have a relationship with Him here on earth, you can’t live with Him in heaven. The place prepared for those who refused to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord is Hell, and it is a place of eternal punishment.

I therefore advise you today to accept Jesus if you have not. If you have, obey him more, and follow his leading through the Holy Spirit. God is functioning in this dispensation through His Spirit, known as the Holy Spirit. If you don’t have Christ, you can’t have the Holy Spirit. Your relationship with God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ) and God the Spirit (Holy Spirit) should be of more value to you than all the treasures of Life. Accept Jesus today.

God bless us all.

Good morning!

Are You Really Serious About Your Dream?

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As we take on the eight month of year, it is important for us all to be reminded that we are already approaching the middle of the second half of year, and before you know it, once September sets in, the year starts running out fast. The question is what have you done with the past seven months? Have you just been paying lip-service to your goals? What steps have you taken so far?

Are you really serious about making it? If you are, I expect that by now you should have some bruises from failed attempts. By now you should have some stories to tell and lessons to help you as you forge ahead. You should have one or two success stories too. Even if you have not recorded any success, you should have learnt some lessons. Generals are made on the battlefield not on the drawing board. Move your plans out of the drawing board today.

Understand this, just as the clock ticks away every second, so our lives tick away, so don’t think you all the time.
If you are serious about your dream, you will be willing to pay the price. You will be willing to burn the candles. You will be willing to keep vigils, reading and studying while others are sleeping. You will spend less time watching Soap Operas and devote more time to your dream. You will deny yourself of certain pleasures in order to cope with the pressure of your dream. You won’t give up when others do.

If you are truly serious about your dream, you will be willing to pay any price for it. So, are you really serious?

Happy New Month and God bless us all.

Good morning!

You Can Rewrite Your Story

/ Adewumi Oni / Leave a comment

It may interest you to know that what you will become in life is not so much a function of what happens TO you, but more of what happens IN you. Nothing limits a man more than his mind. You are what you think. Regardless of your place of birth, background, qualification, skills, or talents, if you cannot see yourself making it with your inner mind, you cannot make it in reality.

You can rewrite your story by reprogramming your mind from expecting negativity, from expecting failure and defeat. Train your mind to always look at the positive side of life. Fill your mind with the promises of God. Meditate on His words. His thoughts are good and peaceful. Jer. 29:11. Stop thinking God is haunting and punishing you. His mercies are everlasting.

After capturing the vision in your mind, begin to take steps towards your vision. Don’t worry about the size of your steps, they may be little or shaky at the beginning, but they will grow to become bigger and confident. Don’t wait for every condition to be perfect. If you observe the wind before sowing, you will never sow.

Get out of the rut. You are not destined to fail. Even if you have failed, try again. Most successes come after many failed attempts. You have a choice to either succeed or fail. So choose success today.

God bless us all.

Good morning!

Great Societies Require Conscious Efforts

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Nothing good comes easy. You cannot become great by mere wishful thinking. If you desire greatness, you must work and strive towards it. In the same vein, great societies or nations don’t just become great overnight. They invest time, resources, values and people to become and remain great.

Nations like the US, Canada, Britain, are places we all consider great because of the way they have structured their national lives. There are systems and institutions in place, and both are working. The African continent is unfortunately still very far behind. We lack systems and institutions, and where they exist, they are ridden with corruption.

One of the main reasons for the pitiable and dismal state of the African States is the neglect of our societal values, and this starts from the home. The home is the smallest unit of any society and a society is an amalgamation of homes, while a nation is made up of societies. If our homes are functioning well, then our society and nation will function well.

We have lost it at the home front. Today, instead of encouraging our children to be studious and work hard for anything they want to become, we pamper them and take them to special centres during examination. We complain when teachers flog our kids, as if cane kills. We indulge our children with iPads, iPhones, and ieverything, without imbuing in them the spirit of working and savings to achieve one’s goals.

How come the generation that trekked miles without sandals to school produced better leaders than the chaffeur-driven generation? How come our post independent leaders were mostly in their thirties when they assume leadership positions while our  ‘thirty year olds’ are still tied to their mother’s apron? Such a shame. Our youths now prefer near naked garments, while the youths of the sixties struggled to cover their nakedness.

Where do we go from here? How do we reverse the moral decadence that has permeated every part of our national and continental lives? What is the way forward?

First, we need to come up with National values that will form the foundation for the spirit and letters of our Constitutions. We lack common values that form the basis of relating and transacting. As religious as we claim to be, our words and actions are far from being godly, sometimes near demonic.

Two, homes must be reactivated. Most homes are in comma, or at best dysfunctional. As parents and guardians, we must begin to train our children well. Stop raising weak children, who eat and litter the streets with their sweet or biscuit wraps. Let your children know it is wrong to pee anywhere in the public. Cultivate in them the habit of working and saving during vacations, rather than ‘Disneylanding’. Disney land was made by the sweat of some people, let us produce our own.

Lastly, we must reawaken our enterprising and competitive spirits. The days of free money are gone. Oil money is vanishing. Communal spirit, inter-tribal or inter-ethnic competitions or contests need to be reintroduced. Literary and Debate Societies, where are thou?

It is time to wake up this slumbering giant. We have all it takes to excel and excel we must!

God bless us all.

Good morning!

Stop Waiting for An Airborne Plane

/ Adewumi Oni / Leave a comment

“After decades of talk, we finally began to wean ourselves off foreign oil, and doubled our production of clean energy.” –  President Barack Obama, Speech at 2016 DNC. This is very instructive for my country’s government and other national governments who are running economies relying on a single commodity.

For Nigeria and other oil producing countries, we need to wake up to the reality that the world is moving away from oil. The world is moving to cheaper and cleaner forms of energy. Rather than moaning over depletion of oil revenue, let us shift our focus and energy on diversifying our economies.

It is equally instructive for us in our individual lives, that we should not stay glued to one idea, one line of income or  one cash cow. The world is evolving rapidly, tastes, fashion, lifestyle choices are changing rapidly. So if you don’t want to be left behind you need to embrace the change. Have you been recording low sales, low patronage, low income, it may just be time to switch to the innovative gear. It may be time to change your product or service, or market or sales channel, or even strategy.

Don’t stay glued to an unhealthy relationship, except if you are married. If you are married and you are having issues with your spouse, sit down together and work it out, seek help together, if need be. If you are not married yet and you are going through emotional and physical abuse, yet you are still waiting for your partner to change, it may be like waiting for a plane that has taken off!

As a believer, be receptive to the nudging of the Holy Spirit as a believer. Peter never expected that he will be asked to preach to the Gentiles, Paul did and he recorded more Epistles and acts than Peter.

Stop waiting for a plane that is already airborne.

God bless us all.

Good morning!

Just Before We Round Up

/ Adewumi Oni / Leave a comment

After concluding the series yesterday, one of my mentors reminded me of the importance of three expressions in marriage, and I consider it important to share this before we move on to another topic.

A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a picture of silver. Proverbs 25:11. When you speak right, your words will bring life. Words are powerful. They can kill and they can restore life. Certain words carry great potency, especially in Marriage.

One of such expressions is ‘I love you’. Most men are guilty of forgetting this expression after a few years in marriage. We are primarily the guilty party as men, myself inclusive. We often hide under the excuse that ‘but she knows I love her, even if I don’t say it’. Another excuse is that ‘if I keep telling her everyday, it might get into her head.’ We also feign ‘busy-ness’ saying ‘I am thinking of how to make money here’. Listen, these are all excuses. There is nothing wives desire more than to be told by their husbands that they are loved. It gives them sense of safety and security. They reciprocate this back in many ways. Don’t just act out love, say  ‘I love you’ to your wife regularly.

Another expression is ‘Thank you’. This is very difficult for some people to say. Maybe it is pride, sense of ingratitude, or dissatisfaction, whatever the reason, you must do away with it. Always appreciate your spouse with the words ‘Thank you’. Thank him for the gifts, for the money provided, no matter how small. Thank him for helping in house chores. Thank your wife after every meal. Thank her for looking after the home. Thank her for being a mother to you all. Just be appreciative. Show your appreciation with words, actions and gifts.

Finally, saying ‘I am sorry’ can save you a whole lot of headache. We already discussed this in the series. Learn to accept and admit when you are wrong, and apologize sincerely. Sometimes, even when you are right, you may need to admit the wrong, for peace sake. Apply wisdom.

God bless us all.

Good morning!

Reasons Why Marriages Fail (7)

/ Adewumi Oni / Leave a comment

Today we will be concluding on this series and I sincerely do hope that it has been helpful and we have all learnt one thing or the other. It is important we have healthy and wholesome Marriages, because they birth great society.

Another reason for failure in Marriages is sex. This comes in various forms, it could be too much libido on one spouse, too little libido, turning down sex overtures by spouses, poor sexual performance and so on. The good news is that there is none of these sexual conditions that cannot be remedied with medication, change in lifestyle and even practice. Again, it boils down to communication. Identify the issues and find a solution together. You can’t keep jumping from marriage to marriage in search of the best sexual partner, that is simply ridiculous! Stay with your spouse and solve the problem together. When you vowed to love him or her with your body, you have ceded full ownership of your body, so stop denying him or her of sex. It is your spouse’s right to ask for sex.

Yet another reason for failure in Marriages is Finance. Also this could be in several forms, poor financial management skill, impetuous spending, extravagance, non disclosure of income, secret savings account and so on. The rule is be opened to your spouse. Let your wife know your financial capacity, otherwise she will be demanding beyond your capacity. Plan your budget together, it helps against frivolous spending. Give each other some leeway in individual finances. If you can have a joint account, fine, but it is not compulsory. Woman, stop wanting to be like the Joneses. Their income may be more than yours, so don’t overburden your husband. Be of help to your husband. Support him financially, even if he doesn’t ask. He will appreciate you more.

Lastly, inability to say ‘Sorry’ when one party errs has broken many homes. The simple act of admitting you are wrong, repenting and apologizing genuinely can save you a world of trouble. Don’t be too proud or arrogant to admit being wrong. You will destroy your home if you are always insisting on being right. Frankly, even when you are right, you sometimes have to accept fault and apologize so that peace will reign. Only fools insist on being right all of the time. Don’t be one.

God bless us all.

Good morning!

Reasons Why Marriages Fail (6)

/ Adewumi Oni / Leave a comment

You can make your marriage an exception from the growing number of divorces. It all depends on you.

Another major reason why marriages fail is lack of conscious effort or laziness on the part of the couple. It may interest you to know that marriage is work, serious work. And like every serious work, you have got to work at it.

When the passion becomes lukewarm, you have to work to raise the temperature again. You have to constantly do things that will keep the spark in your marriage. Go out together. See movies together. Get on a vacation trip together. Just keep doing things that will make your marriage spicy. Naturally you will tend to become bored, you must fight this natural tendency by being innovative.

Make your home a Palace as a wife. Keep your home clean and tidy. Let your man always look forward to being home. Cook varieties. It is not about the money, there are a lot of delicacies that don’t require huge money.

As a husband, take care of your family’s needs. He who cannot take care of his own is worse than an infidel. Don’t leave your spouse at the mercy of your neighbors. Protect her. Defend her. Be her no 2 advocate after Jesus. Don’t ever condemn her in the public, even if she is wrong. Nothing hurts more than that.

Please understand this, marriage is one of those areas of Life where you can’t afford to be lazy. Either as a man or woman, you can’t afford laziness in your marriage, otherwise it will fail.

Pressures of life can crush any marriage, if permitted. When you have been pummeled and bruised by the day’s job, don’t transfer the aggression on your spouse at home. If you could keep mum when your boss was shouting unjustly at you, more than ever, you shouldn’t shout back at your spouse. In a gentle way, let your spouse know what you have been through, so that your spouse can manage your mood well. Don’t assume that you alone went through stuffs. And don’t assume that he should know you are angry. So you have got to talk. This takes us to another reason.

Marriages fail because couples don’t communicate. Couples assume a lot, and most of the time, wrongly. You assume the reason he doesn’t call you during the day is because someone has caught his attention or that he doesn’t care any longer. Meanwhile your man is trying to save his job by meeting crazy deadlines. He is thinking you should understand, without telling you anything about his job. You are thinking he no longer cares. Both of you are thinking and assuming and no one is talking!

This happens a lot in different scenarios and widen the gap between couple until they become strangers to each other. You must constantly communicate both verbally, in writing (text, chats, or even letters) physically and emotionally. If you communicate physically, you will quickly know when something is going wrong with the health of your spouse. You will quickly notice the lines on his or her face, the emaciated look will be quickly noticed. Many spouses have died of terminal diseases without the partners knowing until they passed on. This should not be.

Share your thoughts. Rub minds on issues. Discuss your plans. Clear doubts and suspicions. Don’t leave any wound festering. When you disagree, always ensure you reconcile and reach an agreement.

Amos 3:3. ‘Can two walk together, except they be agreed?’

God bless us all.

Good morning!