One morning in January, I couldn’t help but reminisce on the journey that got me where I am now. Somehow, I remembered one thing I used to do when I was growing up; it was so silly. I really don’t know why but the best heading I could find is ‘Who are you deceiving ?’ . I hope it does justice to the article!
I spent 6 years of my life in a boarding high school approximately 645 kilometres from home (I had to check Google Maps, lol). Early on, I learnt to hop on and off aeroplanes cause I definitely couldn’t go by road to such a far destination with the insecurity issues in Nigeria.
For me, it was always an adventure because I hated going to school but loved travelling. Can you imagine seeing your parents only after 3 months 3 times in a year ? It was always so heart wrenching for me but I survived.
All of that is not what I want you to dwell on, it was only to keep you up to date with the point I am driving at.
Every time I went home, a major highlight for me was getting my phone back . If you’ve never spent more than 60 days without a phone, you might not really understand . Nonetheless, I was always thrilled to spend time with my phone.
Now, the thing about having a phone is that it’s quite distracting. If you don’t check the time, you might as well spend 2 hours just scrolling through (well, there’s no time for that, now that you have responsibilities).
The Real Test
It was fun then to skip sleeping at night and press your phone for unending hours. Later on, the real test was proving to my Mum that you were asleep not on your phone, the whole night. You had to avoid doing any sluggish things that would implicate you, if not say bye to the phone!
Let’s imagine this scenario: Your mum comes to check on you by 5 am and she expects you to be asleep, definitely; The only problem is that you aren’t asleep. Immediately you hear the door handle creak, you’re going under the blanket and your phone on the bedside table just because. You’re hoping she doesn’t realise that you aren’t asleep; When she does leave, you think ‘I have succeeded’.
This used to be my typical scenario for many nights during my holiday. Previously, my 15 year old self would be so proud that she could get away with this but now, I feel so childish to have ever done this.
Certainly, the person I thought I was deceiving was my Mum but now, I know I have been deceiving myself all along. My mum will always know if you slept or not, the signs were there but I believed I successfully deceived her.
Deceiving God?
Have you ever had a feeling that someone is deceiving you? I rarely get such feelings but when I do, it’s always true. The truth is that there’s a lot of pretence in the world; the home, church, on social media, among leaders , and the likes.
The pretence that is out of place is thinking that you can deceive God. There are so many practical examples of people in the Bible who taught they could deceive God and paid dearly for it.
An example is the story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5:1-11; Both sold their property and decided to keep a part of the profit for themselves. No one asked them for it, they decided on their own to give it to God. Well, they tried to deceive God and they paid for it with their lives.
Referring to the short story of how I thought I was deceiving my mum, the only person you can deceive is yourself. God sees and knows all things, all He wants from you is the truth. No matter how bitter, the truth will always be better than a lie.
The deceit on Social Media
It’s a spontaneous thing for young people to want to post the little and sometimes big events of life. Sometimes, I do it too especially when I want to draw your attention to something. The one thing I can’t understand is blatantly lying to gain followers and thinking you can deceive your ‘followers’.
Before Instagram became wise and removed the number of likes from a picture, you could say it was definitely on another level. Social media is a hot bed for deceit; what you expose yourself to on there determines a whole lot of things.
It’s important that you don’t set expectations based on what you see there because you may deceive yourself. Many people don’t live at such high standards which they portray. It’s just for Social Media!
I can say one thing I hope you got from this article, but what would be the point? You most certainly have at least one lesson to take away. Thank you for taking time out to read this article!
Read the previous article: Better late than never: God’s love language
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