Nigerian Pentecostal preacher, Jerry Eze, has narrated how God asked him to fast and pray while in secondary school years before he entered full time ministry.
Eze, founder and lead pastor of the Abuja-based Stream of Joy International church, said one day while as a Junior Secondary School (JSS) student, God told him to fast and go to church for 40 days after school.
He said he obeyed God and fasted and each day God spoke to him. He narrated that before the end of the fast, his mother would bring food to the church with which he would break with.
He added that his mother would accompany him home and sometimes would demand to know what God told him. He said at midnight, his mother would wake him up and ask that they should pray together over what God had told him.
He said, “The other day I just heard a flash of thought and I remembered. As a young person, I was in JSS 1 or JSS 2. One day I heard God tell me ‘I want you to go to church after school each day, you are going to do that for 40 days.’
“I told my mother that God told me I should go to church and be fasting and go to church for 40 days. And my mother asked me ‘where will you get the key to the Church.’ I said ‘I will ask them to give me the key.’ And she said ‘only you?’ I said ‘yes.’
“I went and told my former pastor’s wife. God bless her. I told her ‘God told me to come to church for 40 days.’ She prayed for me and gave me the key. And I came back from school. My journey was usually – I come back from school, I will go to market. I will now come back from school and head straight to the church… Only me in that big place. And then I will find a mat and stay near the door because I fasted from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.
“Once it was 4 p.m., I would hear a knock on the door. It’s my mother. She will bring me food to close the fast. She will stay with me until evening. She will close early from the market, buy me food and come and stay. When I finish and we are going back together sometimes she will ask me – ‘what did God tell you?’ And then I will finish what God told me. But every time I told her what God told me, I have only caused problems because when I go home and sleep, in the middle of the night my mother will wake me up. She will tell me that ‘the thing that God told you, let’s pray about it.’ She said once God tells you something you must pray about it. ‘That thing that God told you Let’s pray about it.’ That is how I kept on praying.”
The popular cleric, who said his mother followed his every step, noted that sometimes people only see that some things have been added to one’s life but do not know how they came about.
He said, “Sometimes people will see that some things have been added to you but they didn’t know that before now they were feasting on things that they did not know. People of God, it is called separation, it is called consecration. It is called God putting your life together. Let me tell you, there are things that you do, even heaven and earth will take notice that something like this was done on a day like this.”
The 42 years old attended Ibeku High School, Umuahia and later proceeded to Abia State University, South East Nigeria, where he graduated in history and international relations. He later studied for a postgraduate certificate in business administration at the Enugu State University of Technology (ESUT).
Eze was a communication specialist with the World Bank project for HIV/AIDS and the United Nations Population Fund before becoming a fulltime gospel minister.
