DID PASTOR DECEIVE ME?

The meeting had just come to a close. The atmosphere of heaven still hung heavily in the air. Several were still sweating from the dance and jubilation that characterised the evening. Scores of attendees had just received their salvation while hundreds more, mainly church members, proudly congratulated one another for a job well done. The evangelical outreach was a huge success. Then the pastor, obviously impressed and jubilant, mounted the rostrum and began to give his vote of thanks. "Brothers and sisters, we cannot thank Buchi enough. What most of you may not know is that Buchi came with his team and ministered here tonight without asking for anything. We gave him zero money..." The crowd applauded. That seemed to have impressed them. The pastor continued: " We are going to surprise Buchi! The Spirit of God is saying something remarkable to me..." He leaned over and asked for my shoe size. Surprised, I told him. Then he turned to the congregation and announced: " He wears size 43. Let's embarrass him with shoes! Buchi, God is taking you places. He will bring you before kings and the mighty. The work of the Lord will take you to many nations far and near and you will be a great witness of Christ and His kingdom!" "Amen!!!", the crowd thundered. Men and brethren, let me not go into the details of how much I had left in my pocket and how I remunerated the members of my music band and got them home that night. I couldn't help imagining what my shoe rack would look like by the time this congregation was done with me. What a strange gift! What an usual honorarium! I also figured that those members of my band who were shoe-size 43 would benefit immensely from this impending harvest of shoes. Fast-forward to two weeks after the event, not a single shoe had come; whether used or brand new. Not even one leg, ... and not a call from the pastor. Should I call him? Aahh! It didn't sound like the right thing to do. Could he have lost my contact? No. He could call any of several people connected to me if he needed to reach me. Three weeks... Four weeks gone. I tried to autocratically ban my band members from asking for updates on the harvest of shoes. It didn't work. One of them in particular would mockingly imitate the pastor making the announcement: "let's embarrass him with shoes!" Now, if you're waiting to read that the pastor and his church members later brought me shoes, forget it. It didn't happen. What was this? A scam? Did the pastor lie to me? I prayed. My heart lightened. I moved on. Then came a rain of shoes which refused to stop. My friend in South Africa sent two pairs. Another acquaintance sent three pairs. Some fellow came to my office and said he got a present of two pairs of shoes but the person who gave him the gift missed his size and sent him size 43 shoes instead of size 45. He wanted to know if I'd like them 😁😂 I visited Birmingham, UK and as I was leaving to return to Nigeria, a young man who was driving me to Heathrow airport stopped over at a mall and began to pick shoes off the shelf as though they were going out of fashion. He had picked nine pairs before I reminded him we were running late to the airport. He frantically replied, "Deacon, please be picking so we can be faster." Whaaaat? The shoes he was picking were all for me! We left the shop with over a dozen pairs. He bought a suitcase for the shoes and paid for the excess luggage. I went to another city in Nigeria, Port Harcourt precisely, and a young man walked up to me with a pair of Louis Vuitton shoes and after handing them over to me, announced that God told him to buy me a pair of shoes EVERY MONTH UNTIL RAPTURE!! Let me stop here because I cannot recall all of them. The rain of shoes has not abated. Remarkably though, all these shoe gifts came, and have continued to come, from people who are unconnected to that pastor and his church members. How in the world do you explain this? My thoughts: when the pastor spoke, a prophet had spoken things into being. He created shoes with his words. His congregation may not have connected to it, but the word of power spoken into the air brought to pass that which it spoke about! Where the word of a king is, there is power! I have since called the pastor to share the testimony and to thank him.