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By Vera Wisdom-Bassey
Rev Biodun Israel Adeyewa and his wife, Mobolaji both attend Foursquare Gospel Church. They have been married for 32years now, and are blessed with three children.
Rev Adeyewa, a former photo-journalist with the defunct Concord Press, is a Zonal Superintendent of the church in Ishaga-Ilasamaja, Lagos. His wife, Mrs Mobolaji Olubusola Adeyewa, retired as a director with Batch Freeman Secondary School, Mushin, Lagos.
In this interview, the couple recalls how they met and how God has been instrumental to the success of their marital journey in the past 32 years.
Sir, what kind of a wife were you looking out for?
Rev Biodun: A God-fearing wife. A child of God. When I started as a youth back then at the Shomolu church, we called ourselves the Singles Prayer Ministry. We had a prayer team where all the singles met then. We were many and I was the coordinator. I had been praying that God would lead me to my wife, but there were many sisters around me. I discovered that every sister that was born-again could be a good wife but might not be the best for your ministry. Then there was a sister I was running after to marry, but it came to a point I had to pray again. I was sincere. I pray that our youths these days will be sincere in praying for a life partner for themselves and to God. I asked God to give me the best for myself and my ministry.
I discovered from the word of God that God gave Adam a helpmate. God is all-knowing. He knows the future. We don’t know anything. It is a journey that I had never entered, but I saw what happened in the family I came from. While praying, I received the scripture that the lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. I was praying one day and God said, that sister, that sister.
My wife has always been with me in the prayer ministry, but I never looked in her direction. I never looked at her in that way. Both of us used to visit other members, but I was looking in another direction, until God now opened my eyes. So I said, so this sister is as beautiful as this? Then I made up my mind to talk to her. That was how it started. The day I proposed to her, I was not feeling fine.
How did you propose to her?
Rev Biodun: That day, since we normally held our prayer meeting before going to our different sections of work in the department, I was not feeling fine but because of her I went to church that day. I called her aside and told her, “Sister I want to see you.” I asked her to pray that I believed God that she would be my wife, that God led me.
Madam Mobolaji: Actually, I had been expecting his proposal because I received first from God that he would be my husband. I had been praying to God that I wanted a child of God to be my husband. But he never looked in my direction. I kept on praying and I kept hearing that he was my husband. I told God I was a girl, I could not go to him to inform him that he was my husband, the one God was leading me to marry.
My actions did not speak about what God had spoken to me. I just pretended that I did not know that he was meant to be my husband. We kept working together. At times, we fasted, visited some of our singles, people we had not seen for a long time. We would go together.
During one of the festive periods, in the morning, he called me and said ‘Sister Bola, I would like to see you after the service.’ Already, I had come to the conclusion that God answers prayers. But after Sunday School, I called him, Brother Biodun – because we called ourselves by name – I said, ‘Brother Biodun, what do you have for me?’ And he said, ‘I believe you’re my wife, go and pray about it.’ I said, ‘Did you see anything?’ Because I wanted to be sure that it was from God.
he said yes, he had the assurance, that when he was praying , he was hearing ‘Sister Bola, Sister Bola.’
When you gave him the answer, how did your parents react?
Madam Mobolaji: My daddy was a prophet. He was not a pastor. We children were attending a gospel church, while my father was an Anglican.
When I told my parents that a brother had proposed, they said they would like to see the brother. It was then I invited him home and my father was happy and he interviewed him; my mother was also happy about the relationship.
My father was so happy he made an agbada for the wedding. And anytime, my father did not see us for a while, he would walk from his house to our house and say I just came to see you to know how you are doing fine. My father loved my husband so much.
So what has ensured the success of this union?
Rev Biodun: The success has been due to God, knowing God and his will and principles for the home, knowing God intimately and living to please him. God is the author of the home and has the blueprint of homes, and he has been helping us to follow the blueprint of marriage. You know, we are from different backgrounds but there is the love of God. If you love God, you will love your wife, if you want to please God. If I have any problem with anybody, I will not be able to pray. So, I would not want anything to stand between me and my God without reconciling with that person.
Before then we attended the intending couples’ counselling in 1992, for one year. Many of the things we were taught there, we put into practice, by the help of the Holy Spirit.
When we started praying together, God spoke to us, and anything he said we would write it down. When God spoke to me, I might be walking along the street, God would be speaking to me, ‘Biodun I will use you.’ But then, I would be crying, asking God, why me, that I didn’t know how to speak grammar, and then God gave me Bible passages like Isaiah chapter 8:11-13; 61,verse 1 to the end. God called me to be a repairer and restorer. And when we met, my wife told me that God revealed to her that she should be cleaning cobwebs, God gave us a ministry, apart from being husband and wife, God had a plan for us and that was the number one thing – to serve him together. Work for him, starting from our home, which is the first point. If there is peace at home, there will be peace in the community and the nation. The reason we are having problems in the nation today is because the homes children come from, there is no one to teach them the way of the Lord. and no parents to show good examples to them. So it has been God and God alone who has been behind the success of our marriage, and knowing God intimately: God is the foundation of homes and the author and sustainer of homes. I was raised in a Muslim home, a polygamous home. My father had two wives and one thing I discovered at that time was the kind of lives they lived and the competition they engaged in. That was when I gave my life to Christ. I discovered that they were living below God’s expectations. And I did not want that kind of marriage or home for myself. It was like a generational curse or intentional problem, which affected those in the past in the family and even my siblings who were ahead of me, but one of my brothers, Professor Debo Adeyewa, who gave his life to Christ before me, never experienced such things in his home.
Back then, while he was in Ile-Ife, he would encourage me to come down to Ile-Ife to attend a cantata. By then I was not yet born-again, but I encountered the Lord Jesus.
His marriage was stable, good, there was cooperation in his home, progress. After God, the next thing to stick to as very important is your home, your marriage.
If you have a ministry, and you do not have a home, you do not have a ministry, because the first church members of your congregation are members of your home. So if you have not discipled them, you have not done well. You are just a hypocrite.
So, when I discovered this, I earnestly prayed to God that I did not want what happened to my brothers to happen to me. Because of that, the first book I bought after being born-again was “Choosing a Life Partner,” which was sold for N2:00, written by Paul Ginado. Another one, which talked about marriage as the topic, where the author said, “I have made my choice, never again will I look for another woman to please me, but to please that one I have chosen.” There is only one choice for a Christian to marry, instead of looking for another alternative, work out with the one you have chosen.
Madam, why did you think he was God’s choice for you?
Madam Mobolaji: I did not want to miss it in marriage, because I had waited long for a life partner. My younger ones were all married, except our last born in the family. I told God, ‘I have come so far, I want you to give me my own husband. Before then, I had been watching him and I knew he loved God, he was involved in many of the work in the church.
He was a very vibrant brother and we had been working together and praying and rendering service to God. He had never discussed anything concerning marriage with me. But when God told me that he was my husband, I started praying, and I insisted I wanted confirmation from God that he was my own.
What are the pitfalls you’ve avoided all these years?
Rev Biodun: Unforgiveness. The first problem we had was lack of communication, because my wife could talk and talk. My wife would be talking and I would not reply, but I was not the type that talked much. So, communication in marriage matters. Another thing, no matter how we quarrel, we will not allow it to see the next day. The Bible says we must not let our quarrel see the next day; we may be annoyed but it must not lead to sin. Not quickly settling issues is another thing, if one is burning, the other one has to keep quiet. That is how God has been helping us, loving one another, seeing her as my half. ‘Can two walk together unless they agree?
Some of my siblings now follow in my footsteps. By giving their lives to Christ today, they are enjoying their marriage. Those who are not born-again, their marriage is nothing to write home about. Christ is the foundation of marriage. We must make marriage work. We must just make it work because iron sharpeneth iron, there must be agreement. Anytime we agree on something, it works for us, even in childbearing, we agree on the set of children we want and it works. Initially, we had two children and my wife stopped. But my wife wanted to have one more, she couldn’t conceive. One day, she said to me, “I know why I have not conceived is because you did not agree with me; that is why I have not conceived.” Until I agreed with her that was when God gave us Samuel, our third child.
Also, we don’t allow anybody to come between us – whether brother or sister, our parents, our best friends. I told my children, when they were growing up, if you offend my wife, you have offended me. Even in their school, when you asked them their parents’ name, they would say, “My Dear.” What of your mother’s name, they would also say, “My Dear.” Because that is what we call ourselves. That togetherness is there.
It was under Baba Oshibanjo’s ministration that I gave my life to Christ at Shomolu church. He explained how marriage works. ‘Husband and wife, you are joined together to be one. When you give birth to your first born, you can put that child on your right hand, don’t put your children in-between, because if you do, you are causing problem in the marriage. But when you remain together, you remain unbroken. That oneness must be showcased any day, anytime. Let the world know, and the church. Be open to one another. I know how much my wife is earning. We may not have a joint account but anything I can take care of, I do it. If there is anything in her family, the father will say let Biodun come, and anytime anything spoils in their home, the father will wait until I come. So, it has been like that. He’d say, ‘Biodun will fix it.’
Madam, what other things would you say make a marriage successful?
Madam Mobolaji: Another thing is submission. Also humble yourself before your husband. I see my husband as my pastor, my father, my brother. Whatever I cannot do to another pastor, I can’t do it to him. There was an incident, for the first time, I talked to my husband roughly on the road while he was driving. I lost my peace. I cried until I was able to apologise to him, on the statement that I made. And I always watch the way I speak to him, I see him as a man of God, and he always says he is sorry when he offends you.
When someone is offended, who apologises first?
Rev Biodun: When you say your wife, bone of you bone, flesh of your flesh, can you divide your flesh? God said you are one. So, your woman is not inferior, the one that carries your womb, she has the capacity to reproduce. If you cannot injure yourself, why should you injure your wife? If you cannot talk down on yourself, why should you talk down on your wife? See God in your wife and she sees God in you. God brought us together for a purpose, companionship, relationship that we lost in Adam, and when we become born-again, God restores it back. You cannot walk together unless you agree.
We should know that God never gives us a finished product. Your husband is not a finished product, but a raw material. It now depends on you, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to bring out the godliness in you, in your marriage. We are in the process, we are not finished products. God is working in us. Most times, when people hit our car, my wife would say, “Dear, let them go.” And she would say, what if tomorrow we go to their area to preach, and they should say that is the pastor that hit my car? So, we always listen to each other. We respect one another. We work together and that is how God has been helping us. See your wife as a raw material, not a finished product. See what your partner is doing as your own. Support him. Make your children love God as you do, as you raise godly children together.
What is your advice to intending couples?
Rev Biodun: God is the owner of heaven and earth. He laid the foundation of the home. He has a pattern and principles, and also the Holy Spirit is our partner in this journey. He is the only one in this economy that we look unto. ‘I look unto the hills, where cometh my help? My help cometh from God. ‘Our hope is in God. If you put your hope on the economy, government, situations, you will miss it. We need faith in God. For you to have a godly home, you must know God. The life God wants us to follow is in Christ Jesus. The truth is in God. In this economy, let us not look unto government because, if we do, we will see impossibility and discouragement. In the time of Abraham, there was famine but God prospered him. When a woman supports her husband in ministry, there is a record of memory that God keeps for us in the ministry.
