unisouthwest

Things have been agog these past weeks at the bridget316 corridor. From New York to Lagos to London to Milan to Rio de Janeiro to Toronto, then back to New York. Whew, what a journey and the beat goes on!

If you were like me, you too would have had a hectic week especially in our age of social media, tablets, mobile phones, on-the-go relationships and or lack thereof. Oh life is goody!

During my journey these past three weeks, I sampled the opinions of my Nigerian peoples that I encountered in various parts of the world, and my Londoner females come up short when it comes to how they view, value, use or assimilate the spoken WORD of their male counterparts.

I wonder if their proximity to Nigeria has anything to do with how they reason; because their outlook on relationship between man and woman resonates with the archaic belief that a man cannot be trusted when it comes to being faithful to one woman. Or could it be the result of pure lack of integrity that grips the Nigerian culture? My London sisters hardly agree that man can say anything worth believing, and argue that I do not know a man that has integrity. I submit that most of the men that I know have integrity, and you can take their word to the bank! But then, I mainly interact with men who live in societies where credibility determines altitude, so they know the value of letting their word be bond!

One scripture that stuck to me this week is “But let your ‘Yes be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ For whatever is more than these is from the evil one” Matthew 5:37 (NKJV)

No matter how long a man has been in sin, once he repents and turns from his wicked ways, the Bible says “old things have passed away, behold ALL things have become new”. (2 Cor. 5:17) It is therefore not my job to refuse to accept what the ‘new’ creation says which I clearly see in his actions as sincerity. However, if the naysayers refuse to accept that bad people can make a change, then it is their problem and not mine nor even the man’s.

You cannot be living a lie yourself, and also have the audacity to question any man’s “NEW” character, no matter how well you think you knew them in the past!

In my interactions it dawned on me that our people do not quite understand that the Word of the God whom they call often carelessly and post about so much on Facebook is sovereign, and that many life’s obstacles, our actions and their resulting effects as well as the consequences are as a result of the RESOLVE that was made first in the garden of Eden, then in Gethsemane. In both scenes the SPOKEN WORD made the difference between life and eternal guilt!

In one, the creator as to the fate of humanity made a pronouncement after the fall, while the death that paid the price for man was accepted as ‘WORD’ in the latter.

So what makes women resign to this false fate that “a man cannot be faithful to one woman.” I believe it is due to laziness resulting from inability to exercise the authority given by God to demand truth from our men and or our spouses.

I also reviewed a few literatures that speak to the perpetual poverty of the African continent even though we are most endowed with natural resources; I came to the conclusion that our people lack the integrity to either mean what they say or worst still become apathetic because accountability is too lofty an action for the wicked.

This mindset is a tragedy, because if we get stuck in the frame of “once a liar, always a liar; then we will be raising the next generation to never take words seriously nor demand integrity!

When I first came to America in the early 90s, I was trained that when a woman says “NO” to sex, no matter at whatever point during intercourse, the civilized thing to do is for the intercourse to STOP. Anything beyond that is RAPE!

So why is it so easy for people to have a mindset that women MUST NOT trust what a man says? Yet we cry wolf when our politician loot the treasury and divert what is meant for our development to their personal gain, if we’ve already accepted the ‘no good comes from any man mentality.

If you are a Christian, TRUTH MUST reside in you. Just confessing that one is a Christian is not enough; you must allow the spirit of Christ, which is the spirit of truth to LIVE in you.

Never give up on truth; it is the only thing that prevails after all else have been defeated. Christ is TRUTH; Christ NEVER fails, so truth will never fail.

I ‘googled’ the meaning of the word “NO” and love what I found as the synonyms below:

“Absolutely not, most certainly not, of course not, under no circumstances, by no means, not at all, negative, never, not really.

When you have indulged in a particular activity for far too long, and God says to you, “Enough is enough”, you stand the chance of PUBLIC DISGRACE if you insist on doing things your own way.

You must accept that the word NO means exactly what it is. Our children are watching and learning integrity or lack thereof by how we handle simple “YES or NO” or what part of “THOUGH SHALL NOT” do you not understand?

We must be careful, because a Yoruba proverb says, “No matter how far falsehood has travelled, it must eventually be overtaken by truth”!

Beloved, be attentive to the times, and never give up the fight. VICTORY awaits TRUTH!