The Audacity of God's Grace: 10 Strategies To Living Your Best Life Now (12 page)

Global average income is about $25 per person per day, or $9,000 per annum. In Nigeria, about half of our citizens live under $2 a day – on the threshold of poverty. Two-thirds of the population lives under or around $1.25 a day – in extreme poverty. This is because our [Nigeria’s] economic growth since Independence (1960) has bypassed the poor. Reviewing global Gini coefficients which measure income inequality within nations, Nigeria is one of the most unequal nations in Africa and the world. And like many other resource-rich nations, our [Nigeria’s] ‘enclave growth’ has not led to sustainable job opportunities. This means that our so-called economic growth only benefits a narrow band of Nigerians – whether under dictatorships or democratic rule. While the Nigerian economy grew, the incomes of the poor have not, even with the new minimum wage. This is especially true of the rural and urban poor who together, account for much of Nigerian poverty. At current rates, it is estimated that by 2015, Nigeria will have more poor people unlike India and China who have more than a billion people each. In contrast, China and India have lifted more than 600 million out of poverty in the last twenty years of economic growth. In fact, the World Bank includes Nigeria in the list of top 15 places with the highest incidence of poverty. Of the Nigeria’s 162 million people, 90 million live below the poverty level of $2 a day, despite billions of dollars in oil revenues. In 1980 only an estimated 27 percent of Nigerians lived in poverty. By 1990, it had grown to 70 percent. In 2010, over 58 percent of our population lived under extreme poverty—in the new poverty threshold of $1.25 a day.

Nigeria’s poor are in two distinct groups: the working and non-working population. Poverty is prevalent in both rural and urban areas, though large numbers of rural folk constantly migrate to urban areas in search of work. This is not unconnected to the fact that typical households in rural areas only cultivate 1 hectare of land annually which is only capable of producing about N80, 000 worth of food crops. From this, the household may earn N80, 000 ($500) or N219 per day, for a family of 6-7 people. Each member of that family lives on approximately N32-37 per day. Supplementary income from cattle, fishing or other wage labor, does not amount to much. The urban poor – mostly uneducated and unskilled migrants from rural poverty – only have their physical bodies as capital. Urban wages may be higher than the rural, (for the same kind of work, urban wage rate can be 50–100% higher), but workers sometimes end up poorer because most of their meager earnings is consumed by the higher costs of living. With the new minimum wage, the typical urban poor earns between N18, 000-20,000 (or N240, 000 annually). This translates to approximately N658 per day and in the smaller urban household of 4 would amount to N164 per person per day - less than the poverty line of N200 a day.

Of our [Nigeria’s] 90 million poor people, 60 million are dependents. This leaves approximately 30 million ‘working poor’ whose income has to be raised from the current level of less than N200 [$1.25] to at least, N700 [$4.25] daily. The family system remains the medium of transmission of sustenance for the unemployed. This is ineluctable for now. Illiteracy and poverty are related; twenty centuries after the development of scripts and the numeric systems, about 44% of our population still lack basic literacy and numeracy skills. Though no precise study exists, it is a reasonable guess that illiterates comprise the poorest income group. Unemployment is at the heart of Nigeria’s poverty. There are few activities in the rural areas that create jobs apart from labor intensive agriculture; even this is seasonal. The landless farm laborers have little to do in the off-season, unless they seek work in the urban areas. Inadequacy of basic amenities like clean water, education, and health care further compounds the matter. The poor have no access to low interest funds, business development services and formalization channels. And because government lacks functional and effective strategies to fight poverty, one of the richest countries in the world has some of the poorest people.

Any human being or global citizen with conscience who reviewed or scanned through the above troubling analyses can see how exploitative the Nigerian “religious” political class and the helpless docile “religious masses” that are in majority have had to endure together at the mercy of each other for so long. My challenge to you personally is to examine where you are today in your ‘religious level’ and economic capacity or well-being and people around you. I believe that God desire that you do better than being just a religious person because “the essence of Jesus coming to save was never to make you more religious, but to build lives and sustain transformative relationships.”

“the essence of Jesus coming to save was never to make you more religious, but to build lives and sustain transformative relationships.”

If anything, it was for this goal that caused Christ his life, as he left his heavenly splendor to become one of us—a citizen of the world in order to build lives and sustain transformative relationships. By this, we each were given impetus and have been reconciled back to God in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:18-19) to brighten our days and that of other people and not to destroy them! The question should be: Are you doing better today—with all the poor teaching syndrome promoted by being just a “religious” person or have you missed the point?

God’s Interest in Our Religious Life

As someone created in the image of God, God is not interested in your ability to become a religious fanatic or fundamentalist no matter which religion you identify with. On the contrary, God is interested in you because you belong to him. God is happy when you do well in material things, in re-building peoples’ lives and relationships, in helping the poor, and the less privilege and when you are doing well in your spiritual life too. It is your right as a child of the living God to take initiatives and inventiveness given through the freshness of the Holy Spirit who will lead you to take actions that offers healing, rebuilding hope. God is longing for people who will take responsibility, and think successfully since “all glory goes to God who has promised through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think because God can do abundantly and exceedingly far more than we can ever [bargain] or imagine (Eph. 2: 19-20 NLT). You can be liberated from a poor religious mindset or any limitation that psychologically subject your mindset into imprisonment and facilitate your inability to live your best life now.

The fact is that God is totally interested in your welfare. God wants you to excel. God will be happier when you live at your best and put smiles to the faces of those who hurt by the grace of God. You have been given dominion as we saw in Genesis chapters one through chapter three. Because, somehow you lost some of the dominion given to you by God who created you in his own image after the fall of Adam and Eve, the good news is that not all of that dominion was gone. At the crucifixion of Jesus at the cross, just before he died, we saw in the gospels that Jesus cried out loudly at the top of his voice that it is finished (John19:30). Part of the implications of that one of its kind cry restored our original dominion that God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost gave to each of us at creation. What we cannot live now is a supreme and perfect life, due to the fragmentation that sin has caused us. However, we are encouraged to strive for greatness, for we are assured that perfect life and the attainment thereon, while in the kingdom of God. Nevertheless, we can live our best everyday life as people created in God’s own image. Consequently, we can pursue an everyday life of joy, happiness, holiness, health, wealth, and have life necessities that will help us to live the best life there is right now by the grace and mercy of God! There is more that you can personally do with your life that you barely have scratched. Part of the problem as I stated before is that majority of the poor teachings syndrome and mentorship we received have shaped our lives, our mindset, and infected our life with the spirit of poverty which can genetically become generational and a curse indeed. The good news is that there is hope. Things can change.

You Can Overcome The Spirit Of Poverty

The spirit of poverty is a self-image or identity that creates a constant sense of lack. It makes people to underachieve and undermine their potentials. It can infect churches, individuals, communities, and even nations as we can see. The thriving ground where the spirit of poverty operates is on fear and falsity. It can control how you think, how you see circumstances, how you judge material or financial issues and how you draw conclusions. The spirit of poverty makes people who are under its control jealous of what other people possess or their progress in material well-being. To overcome the spirit of poverty, this is what I want you to know: until you learn to rejoice and celebrate in another person’s success, prosperity or progress, you will never be liberated by the spirit of poverty and you will never enjoy peace. When people are under the influence of the spirit of poverty, they are unable to give unstintingly, because they lack the capacity to freely release into other people’s lives and believe that when you cast your bread upon the waters, that after many days, it can return to you (Ecclesiastics 11:1-2). The spirit of poverty convinces people under its clutches to believe that not releasing is growth; not losing is winning, not dying is living, and not that failing is success. It kills the passion of giving away or releasing to those who you are better off or who even are better off than you are, since acquiring more and more becomes the pathway to prosperity. At the extreme, most people who are under the influence of the spirit of poverty become what I describe as User-friendly persons. These people are mostly liabilities wherever that are and may cause you the ability to live your best life now.

Limit Your association with User-friendly Persons

After
many years of leadership,
I got a superior knowledge and dealings of User-friendly individuals. My description
of a User-friendly individual is someone who uses false pretense to cheat, obtain material resources or short-term favor from friends, family members, organizations, or from the government. The major outstanding features of User-friendly persons whom I describe above are their ability to appear innocent or in most cases be like a ‘very religious’, yet, greedy, hypocritical person.

Typically, they operate like Chameleons. A User-friendly person specializes in sequestrations. The word “Sequestration” comes from a legal term meaning to take possession of property until a dispute over its rightful ownership is resolved. User-friendly people are instigators and backbiters; and can blackmail at will to look innocent or buy short term favor from their next victim. They like to control what belongs to others, and work very hard when they cannot get away with what they want and to subject you into wasting valuable resources and time on damage control. A User-friendly person is a bitter person. Many times, because of their bad mental attitude or outlook to life, when you are helping a User-friendly person, something deep inside them quickly informs them that you have an ulterior motive for helping them or that you are using them to gain something.

“If you employ a User-friendly person in your establishment, they are mostly the ones to cost you headache or steer rebellion and corrupt other team members.”

They are not usually great employees because they believe that you are using them; you are underpaying them, since they are the ones helping you. The employer is not helping them, they resolve. For a majority of single or married User-friendly individuals who are controlled by lustful or fleshy spirits, sometime they can be very determined to ensure that they seduce their victim sexually. If they start coveting a minister for instance, they may appear very religious and come for counseling or even prayer. A User-friendly individual possessed by lust can go far to device other avenues to lure a minister or individual into sex with them, and then hold their victim into captivity and extort more sex or money steadily from them. When they want to take another persons’ spouse, or partner, they may appear very “religious” or holy and become family friends or pretend to help the family. Lustfully, something inside their mind convinces them that they are the rightful owner of their target and that they are worthy of the man or woman they want to take custody of, or away from the other individual, and that the original rightful spouse does not deserve their partner. Their jealous mindsets have ruined homes, marriages, and ministries today.

On the other hand, User-friendly persons usually appear to be like a dove (while in reality they are more dangerous than a lion) when they need something from you. They will usually surrender to your leadership or authority when convenient for settlement or re-settlement of what they believe is their entitlement or to achieve a selfish end. They cannot be trusted with monetary matters. Majority of User-friendly individuals are always involved in dispute with a number of people over monetary issues.

Usually, many User-friendly persons that I have encountered are not givers, which is why they always lack. The spirit of poverty makes them unable to give unstintingly. You typically owe a User-friendly person something all the time. You always pay for or before service is rendered. If you don’t owe them in how you mistreated them, you owe them on how you are mistreating others. Usually, they like to brain-wash others to see how you are a terrible person. There is usually something they expect in return or something that has a manifest or dysfunctional purpose or proportion as to why they give when they do so. User-friendly persons are a very greedy group who competes very negatively. They are very determined and very high minded in negativity. The problem largely comes from their limited or shallow mindset, which has been developed over time—that immediate reward is beauty, giving out is losing, and not losing is winning.