Inviting Jesus into my life immediately opened me to the spirit world. It was as if someone turned on the light and suddenly, a world I never knew existed suddenly became visible to me. But there were complications. I was open to the positive spiritual, as well as the negative.
Spirit of Error
Once I was in an anointed environment, my left leg would shake visibly. This gave me some concern because I knew I was not the one shaking my leg. Then one day, an inner voice said to me: “Ask me anything you want, and I will answer you by shaking your leg. If the answer is yes, I will shake your leg. If the answer is no, I will not.”
And so began this amazing process whereby I would ask a question in my mind and the answer would be provided through my leg. Let us say, for example, I was looking for my wristwatch. I would ask my invisible friend: “Is it in the bedroom?” If the answer was yes, my left leg would move up and down. If the answer was no, there would be no movement. Once I got to the right room, I would use the same question-and-answer process to identify the precise location of the watch.
This was all very exciting until my invisible friend started giving me wrong answers. When I get to the place he identifies, the thing would not be there. And when I wondered why this was so, it would tell me: “You are not supposed to question the Holy Spirit, you are just supposed to obey.” After a while, I became totally confused.
Spirit of Truth
Then one day, the pastor of my church came to see me. He said the Lord revealed to him in a dream that the devil was laughing at me, saying he would drive me mad. He said the Lord would like me to fast for three days. If I did, he would explain to me what I needed to know.
I was very irritated by the pastor. I did not initially make a connection between his revelation and my “holy spirit.” I said to myself: “This is what was wrong with these pastors. They are always seeing idiotic visions about others, just in order to control their lives.” But I thank God that, in spite of my qualms, I decided to fast. I felt I would lose nothing by doing so.
The beginning of my fast coincided with a trip to Igbajo for the funeral of my sister-in-law’s mother. We had a driver, so I sat at the back of the car, reading my bible. Every time I looked up, I noticed he was driving too fast for my liking. I kept warning him that all the members of my family were with me in the car and that he should not go above one hundred kilometres per hour.
Then all of a sudden, the Lord took me out of the vehicle. Whether in the body or out of the body, I don’t know. But I was on top of the car looking down and I saw angels surrounding the car in formation and flying with us. Then just as quickly, I was back in the car, with the bible in my lap. From then on, I stopped bothering about the driver and simply concentrated on my reading. I am not saying a believer can drive at any speed he likes. I am just telling you about the grace I received from the Lord on that particular occasion.
Spirit of Revelation
When I came back from the funeral, on the third day of my fast, I was sitting in my study all by myself, when something absolutely mind-blowing happened. The power of God suddenly overshadowed the room like a cloud, and the Lord started to talk to me. What was so dramatic about this, and it has never happened to me since that time, is that the voice came from “heaven.” It did not come from within me. It came from somewhere in the ceiling.
The Lord told me to take a pen and write down what he was going to tell me. And there started from that day a recurring teaching from the Lord about the Kingdom of God. I have chosen to call this “kingdom dynamics.”
The Lord said to me: “Femi, there are two kingdoms, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness. Everybody you are ever going to meet will come from one of these two kingdoms. It is your responsibility to determine which kingdom the people you meet are from.
If the person is from the kingdom of your Father, you must determine why I want you to meet him. Every person you meet, you will meet for a reason, and you will meet by appointment. Nothing that will ever happen to you will be coincidental. Nothing will ever happen to you by happenstance. Everything that will happen in your life will happen for a reason. It is your responsibility to determine precisely what the reason is.”
As I wrote this down, I was covered with tears. I wept uncontrollably because I could not understand why God would give me such privileged information in a one-on-one tutorial. What did I do to deserve that kind of visitation? I was totally overwhelmed.
Jesus My Saviour
The same night, the Lord gave me a dream. I was driving a big car, like one of those long tail-finned American cars, and my son, Femi-Kevin, was with me. A lady came to my side of the car, knocked on the window and leaned forward as if she wanted to talk to me. I wound down the window, and the next thing I knew the car was gone.
I was now walking hand-in-hand with my son, full of joy and gladness, along Kingsway Road, Ikoyi, Lagos. I just knew Kingsway Road was the way of salvation. It did not matter that we were no longer in the big car.
Then the Lord shouted something in my ear. That shout was not in the dream but in my natural ear. It was as if he crouched beside me and shouted into my ear. He cried: “Matthew 13:13 to 16.” I opened my eyes and quickly got up, careful not to forget the bible citation. But I have never forgotten it. For one thing, it conclusively revealed the identity of my invisible Saviour. Through the scripture, Jesus said to me:
“Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says: ‘Hearing you will hear and shall not understand, and seeing you will see and not perceive; for the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them.’
But blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear.”
Credit: Femi Aribisala
*Missed part 1 and 2 of this essay, read it here: Answering the Call (1), By Femi Aribisala
Answering the Call (2), By Femi Aribisala