This is the third part of a four-part series where I am documenting the journey and lessons learnt from building The Comms Avenue vision with God. You can read the second part here.
Every time someone says to me, “Adedoyin, you inspire me. I want to be like you. I want to follow your path,” I immediately say in my head, “Are you really sure about that?” It’s like when James and John asked Jesus to guarantee that they would be seated by His left and right side in heaven and He said to them, “You don’t know what you are asking.”
I say this because there are many, many moments in the ‘valley’ which people do not get to see. Sometimes behind the glorious wins are seasons of deep travail and distress. I’ve had several valley moments that have brought me to the point of quitting so many times. That I did not throw in the towel is by the grace of God and the people who continue to stand with me in the place of prayer and intercession.
After a year of running The Comms Avenue vision, I started to get really tired. I was giving everything I had and nothing seemed to be coming back to me (or so I thought). I wasn’t where I wanted to be in my personal life and the sacrifice started to get to me as the vision kept getting bigger and bigger.
Remember, when God spoke to me about The Comms Avenue in 2020, all I knew was that it was a community for Communications professionals. I did not know how big the community would become. I didn’t know we would have chapters going strong in several countries – including those I had never been to before. Essentially, I didn’t realise how much this building work would cost me.
When He instructed us to go into different cities across the continent, we tried to do it in the way we knew how but it didn’t work. I remember calling my sister-friends two days before our trip to Ghana in tears. It was too late to cancel the event and we had no idea how we were going to buy a ticket to get us there. I was tired. I was frustrated. These beautiful ladies prayed over me and reminded me that I just had to believe that God would come through.
He did come through. After that call, someone sent me enough money to get a Covid test done. And so, in faith I went to get the test done the next morning. By the time I got home later in the day, the ticket had been purchased. It was truly a miracle.
The same thing happened months later when I was to go to Rwanda and then Kenya. I believed and prayed but there was no provision. I remember asking God, “Why do I have to go through all of this?” I slept on a Saturday night not knowing how I’d get to Kigali the next day. I was one of the hosts for the Africa Comms Week event which was starting on Monday so I needed to be there on Monday morning at the very latest.
I woke up on Sunday morning and I felt it was irresponsible for me not to inform the organiser of the event about the challenges I was facing. After all, they’d need to start thinking about someone who would take over my role. I sent a message but I did tell them that I was still believing God for a miracle to happen. I joined a prayer watch and just listened to others as they prayed. I felt too weary to pray. At the end of the prayer, the person leading the prayer suddenly said, “Adedoyin, do you have any prayer point?”
Look, sometimes I just marvel at the way the Holy Spirit can snitch on you! Lol. I remember saying something like, “Well, I am supposed to be in Rwanda today. I don’t know how I am going to get there. I don’t have enough money for a round trip to Rwanda or Kenya.” With that, the person prayed. By the end of the prayer call, I felt a nudge in my spirit to go on RwandAir’s website to check how much a return ticket to Rwanda would cost. I realised that I could purchase the return ticket because overnight someone had sent that exact amount. When I couldn’t pay for the ticket online, I reached out to a travel agency that someone had talked about on IG. This was around 11am and the flight was at 3pm.
When I reached out to the travel agency, their auto-response was that I would receive feedback by 3pm. At this point, my friends were just praying non-stop. Then the travel agency responded about 15 minutes later and within 20 minutes, the ticket was purchased. I rushed to my room to put all my clothes into my suitcase. I should add here that the day before, I had gone to get my Covid test done and I went to do my hair too! I always say to God, “Whatever is in my power, as long as it is in my power, I will do it.” So I decided to take all the steps I needed to take to travel even though I had no clue how things would play out.
Anyway, by 1pm I was at the airport. I remember sending a message to the event organiser and she screamed. God did make a way. I couldn’t go to Kenya during that trip but we didn’t cancel the event. God did another miracle because the event truly exceeded our expectations.
I have many more stories from the valley moment but I do not want this post to be too long. But I will highlight this one – keeping my heart from offencs. I had heard it said before that the people you are called to serve will test you the most and it is so true. Remember Moses and the Israelites? I also got to a point where I went to God and said like Moses did, “Abba, did I give birth to these people? How can I carry the burden of all these people?”
One incident that particularly struck me happened right at the end of one of the batches of our mentoring programme. Despite all we gave and all we did, one mentee sent me a message that was deeply hurtful. Over the years, I have learnt how to pray over my heart and pray for people who hurt me because the spirit of offense is one of the tactics the enemy uses to sow tares into a field that is being cultivated. After the conversation, I knelt down, I released the pain in prayer and I prayed for the person too. There have been other incidents like that where God made me understand that I could not give room for offence to fester.
Again, going through and navigating the valley moments has been by the grace of God. There have been lonely moments in this journey of building but I am grateful for the people that God sends at a timely moment to share a word of encouragement. Just like my friend S did yesterday when he called and said, “I just want to say well done” and other words that truly touched me. Or one of our mentors who sent a message on LinkedIn telling me never to give up on The Comms Avenue vision when I was actually crying out of frustration. Her message was so timely. Truly God sees, hears and knows exactly what we need.
So, what are the lessons from part three:
- You need a support system when you are building. I do not know how I would have made it through this journey without my sister-friends and prayer partners. There are times I have felt very weak and my friends would pray me out of those seasons. I cannot tell you how much this has helped me, particularly over the last four years.
- Encourage yourself in the Lord. Sometimes, you may need to go through the valley moments alone. Others may not be able to fully understand what you are going through or feeling. But God does. Run to Him and hide in His grace and mercy.
- Never give room for the spirit of offense to fester. The people you are sacrificing for will take you for granted; they may even say not so nice things to you. If that happens, remember why you are sent. Remember what and why you are building.
- Have faith in God! I don’t know how best to say this but your faith is important if you want to see supernatural results. You can’t afford to wait around until everything has fallen into place. There are times God will lead you to walk on water and you must be convinced that you will not drown, even when you feel like you are drowing. Yes, that may not make sense but my experience has been this – God will never allow you to drown.
- It’s ok to cry. It’s ok to tell God that you feel disappointed but please, always remember His faithfulness. Remember how much He loves you. Truly, all things will work together for good.
See you tomorrow for the fourth and final part of this series!
