AJAMAH OLUWASEUN: DREAMS, ABILITIES AND PURPOSE

As I sat waiting for the torrent rain to subside, I remembered my mum picking up the umbrella, my school bag and my food flask. The next moment, we were heading down the stairs and then she slipped… Her fall made a loud thud as she  hit her head on the concrete stairs… For a moment, all I did was lie down there in the rain with her, crying and shaking her, ‘Mummy wake up, mummy wake up’…but she almost didn’t.

That event left a big impression upon my heart that I must become the Husband who will love and honor his wife; that father who will serve as a model to his children and that man who will pray and protect his family in godliness.

Growing up with dreams is a tale I love to tell. At some point I wanted to be a pilot and then a  journalist; I had also flirted with the idea of combining soccer with being a Hollywood superstar. I loved the glamour of being watched and loved by millions of people.

Later in my High School days I got involved in debate and liked oration. My teachers began to suggest I will make a good lawyer, my friends thought I should be an on-air personality. My pastors wanted me to go into drama ministry. Their suggestions were not isolated from the fact that I could do almost anything I picked interest in with passion and zeal. I could venture into any of these paths and make a name for myself.

However, nothing brought me more satisfaction than sitting down with a downcast classmate or friend, listening to their worries and encouraging them. It was enough for me to see that a friend who was crying begins to smile after talking with him.

I would walk into a junior class to challenge them on the greatness on their inside. I used to host programs as the Vice President and later President of the press club of my secondary school. I also anchored several other programmes in school and in church. It looked like media was the  way to go on one hand yet, deep down inside, I knew I also had the gift of encouragement, loved to put smile on everyone’s face, I wanted to speak courage and greatness to people. Luckily, that was a season when motivational speakers were just coming up in Nigeria and I thought I was going to be one.

One faithful day in my penultimate year in Secondary school, as I thought about the idea of becoming a motivational speaker, a voice said within me “What power will back up your words? What will your message be about? Can there be a messenger without a message?”

Fast forward to 2012. I was a 200l student of law at the University of Ilorin and I had just given my life to Christ but I still had no idea what exactly God will have me do. A month after the encounter with Christ, I went for a retreat of fellowship executives of the Christian Law Students’ Fellowship of  Nigeria (CLASFON) with a big burden in my heart. It was only the second session of activity on that faithful day, a man walked in to teach on stewardship.

I honestly did not understand anything he said but he spoke with so great authority and passion. I said to myself ‘I can see myself in this man, this is what I want to do.’ God had answered my prayers and He confirmed it in that meeting.

That is what you will do in life, telling the world of the Love of Christ and the power of his salvation.

That is the message: ‘Salvation’ and that encounter with Christ was the ‘Authority’ missing in my words.

From then everything changed. I spent another three months under that man’s pupillage, where he thought me continuously from the scriptures.
It was then I had light from Isaiah 61:1-4
and Isaiah 50:4. It was then I began to understand the mandate of God, using my lips and words to touch generations, reaching out to people who have lost hope in themselves by directing them to Christ the giver of life and hope.

That passion I felt when my mum laid lifeless in the rain that day has birthed a compassion for people from broken homes; young people especially ladies who had been abused by parents, relatives and friend; disappointed and pained by life’s circumstances. 

The message is love, peace, forgiveness, hope and Righteousness. Daily, lines are falling upon lines, a little of this and that, the picture is getting clearer. I am a work in progress.

So from that little child determined to rewrite the history of his family, to that boy with many gifts. Today, I am who I am by Grace: A young man determined to write a story in his generation.