Deacon Lemia Nkwelah: Sharing God with others

The loss of my parents and my beautiful baby within five months in the early 2002 left me battered and bruised. Did God really love me? I struggled with loneliness in a family full of caring and loving siblings. I felt forsaken even though I knew God was present.

For four years, I refused to worship. Then something happened. I picked a Bible in a rubbish tip at the back garden of a house I had moved into. Funny my heart sank. It felt like God had been thrown out of this house. I took the Bible inside and cleaned it up. It became a permanent feature on my dining table.

At first, I thought it symbolised they way I had thrown God out of my life in the last few years. As time went on, it became clear that it was the other way round. God had followed me and was present with me in the rubbish hip where I had thrown myself. Now, God was bringing the prodigal daughter back home.

Lately, I have reflected on Jeremiah 18. Like the clay in the Potter's hand so am I in God's hands. Jeremiah says that the pot which the potter was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands and so the potter shaped it into another vessel and in the form that seemed best for Him. In all my flaws, and my weaknesses God is working in me and in the process, He is re-positioning me in His field.

My desire is to minister to the broken who are in the forgotten parts of this community and world. My calling rises from a deep and personal experience of a broken me. I believe there is hope for any sorry situation and nobody is irredeemable. It is my desire to spread the Word that the Potter is at work, moulding us to shapes that He desires for His purposes.

We are already marred; and yet marred in the Potters hands. Many times when trouble breaks we feel lonely, lost, unloved, unworthy and more. The story of my life is a testimony of God's everlasting presence and his ability to transform any situation as long as we believe.

The President of Conference, the Rev'd Mickey Youngson spoke of the radical nature of God's grace at Conference 2018. She went on to say, “It goes beyond what is only fair, to a prodigious reckless generosity. It is prevenient grace, which flows from the Lover's desire to see the beloved flourish, to be whole and to live in delight.”