By Chika Abanobi
The youth wing of the End-time Move Missions aka the Holy Ghost School has admonished youths on how to handle peer pressures, inordinate materialistic quests, sexual pressures, laziness, procrastination, etc.
This was the focus of this year’s “Youth Retreat” held on Sunday, September 29, 2024, at the group’s Retreat Ground located at 3-5, Matthew Ojo St. White House Bus Stop, off Governor’s Road, Ikotun, Lagos.
The organisers said that this was necessitated by the challenges that youths, especially the “gen-z” generation – a social lingo that describes the generation that was born into the Internet and smartphones world – are facing in these areas.
Attendance and exciting moments
The programme was attended by youths drawn from various parts of Lagos and some parts of Ogun State
It featured exciting sessions like praise-and-worship in which youths were seen executing some of their generational dance steps, prayer sessions for the youths and Nigeria, testimonies and drama skits that touched on issues affecting youths – forgiveness, marriage, yahoo-yahoo (business fraudulence), lesbianism, homosexuality and masturbation.
But other aspects of the Retreat programme which handed down something to participants to chew and to take home are the sermons and interactive session. While the three people – two youths and one adult – who preached sermons, drew their references from the Bible to drive home their points, the six discussants, comprising young adult men and women, who participated in the interactive session discussed, practical personal examples and experiences, on some challenges that the “gen-zees” experience
Guidance from the interactive session
During the session, one of the discussants told the story of how, as a secondary student, she was blackmailed into becoming a “gatekeeper”/lookout for two female school friends who used to engage in lesbian acts. But she stopped doing so when she became introduced to an intimate fellowship with the Holy Spirit through the help of End-time Move Missions people.
Another who spoke on the need to be focused in life revealed how her decision to set her sights on donning the youth corper’s uniform helped her resist the temptation to be intimate as a spinster, with the opposite sex. This focus, she added, helped her remain chaste until she got married. Besides, her mum’s strong warning drummed into her about the consequences of giving birth to a baby outside of wedlock, also helped. “If you become careless like other young women were, I may help you take care of the baby that you give birth to,” she quoted her mum as saying, “but you may have to live with the consequences of your shameful action for the rest of your life.” That strident warning from a concerned mum, she confessed, helped put in check the raging puberty hormone of a young woman eager to hit it off with boys.
But then she was also quick to admit that, with the onset of the Internet which makes naked scenes and porn sites easily available at the punch of key, young women, these days, are faced with greater sexual pressures than she faced in her own day. All the same, she believes that, with the help of the power of the Holy Spirit, they can overcome and live an overcoming life, no matter the pressures that may be brought to bear on them in the world in which they live.
Asked to state her greatest regret in life, another female discussant wished her mother had taught her more about sex, about the workings of her body, and about how to handle the pressures that come with its development. But because she didn’t, out of the unfounded fear of “teaching children bad things”, she had to learn them from her peers. But it wasn’t what she would have liked to know that they taught her but the negative aspects of using her body.
Like other speakers, she also confessed that the pressures of being taught wrong things are more now than it was in her own days. For that reason, she implored Christian mothers to wake up to their duties and responsibilities and teach their female children some things they need to know while their minds are still impressionable. Otherwise, if they don’t, their female children will learn them from either their friends or the Internet.
Other areas the discussants talked about include laziness and procrastination among youths. Making his view known on the issue, one of them, a male speaker said that youths will need to overcome the two vices by assigning timelines to given tasks both at home and at school. Some of the discussants also spoke about how they handled being focused in life during their teenage years and how it can be handled now among the “gen-z” generation that always have their eyes glued to their smartphones, 24/7 and, because of that, finds it difficult to execute tasks on time.
Purpose and pictures of priests
Being focused in life is to know the reason why we are here on earth was what Miss Sophia Ezechukwugoziri, from Isashi, Lagos, harped on, before the interactive session came up.
In her message titled “The Priestly Generation,” she called on the youths to see themselves as kept alive by God, not to be like celebrities and social media influencers, good as those may be, but to influence youths like themselves into cultivating an intimate relationship with the person of the Holy Spirit.
Quoting from scriptures like Exodus 32: 26-29; Judges 17:13; 1 Kings 12:31; Revelation 1:6; 5:10 and 1 Peter 2:9, to show that the concept of priesthood has changed from what it was in the Old Testament when only the Levites were made priests, she said that in the New Testament which stretches to the “gen-z” generation, every youth in a covenant, intimate relationship with the Lord, is a priest. But to carry out, in speech and character, that priestly role, which is, to reconcile man with God or to stand in the gap between man and God, the youths must know their purpose in life.
“We didn’t just come here through biological means, as complex and complicated as the process is,” she insists. “There’s a reason God created us. Even though societal pressures and expectations may make us think that being a celebrity or a social media influencer with many followers to count on, is the reason we are here, the truth is, that God’s purpose in creating us goes beyond being a celebrity or a societal influencer.”
“It is a sheer waste of time and life”, she added, for a youth to model his or her life on those of celebrities or influencers they met on social media, because, everybody is not created to fulfill the same purpose in life. And, if they end up living someone else’s life because of societal trends, they would have missed their purpose in life.
At the end of her message, she prayed that social media and trending issues that can derail Christian youths from following God’s perfect will for their lives and from subjecting themselves to the dictates of the Holy Spirit will not make them lose sight of why they are on earth at this time.
Custodians and mentors of young minds
The second message delivered by Mr. Emmanuel Okpalaike, from Ikotun, Lagos, followed the same line of thought. Mr. Okpalaike who spoke on “The Secret of the Chamberlains” used scripture passages like Hebrews 6:12; Esther 2:15; John 14:16 and Isaiah 26:3 to buttress his points. Noting that the duties of the chamberlains, in the olden days, were to chaperon, to be custodians, and to mentor young minds under their care, he likened them today to people like our parents, spiritual leaders, and mentors.
Arguing that their secrets lie in prompt obedience to their instructions by those under their care, he said that youths must likewise cultivate similar obedience, first to the person of the Holy Spirit, and next to Him, their parents who have been struggling and doing everything they can, to take care of them. Lastly, they will need to obey their spiritual leaders, guides or pastors.
Talking about the role of the father as a chamberlain, he said: “If your father can send you to school, put food on the table for you and your siblings, clothe, take care of you whenever you are sick, then believe it or not, he has achieved much in life than you are willing to credit him with, even if he does not end up like Alhaji Aliko Dangote or Elon Musk.”
He explained that intimacy with the person of the Holy Spirit, and not just exuberant involvement in religious activities taking place in one’s church, is the key to doing exploits for the Lord in the priestly generation.
The power room of life’s achievements
Bro. Tony Umeh, the current overall leader of the End-time Move Missions made similar remarks in a short admonition he gave before the Retreat wound up. He noted that, without the power of the Holy Spirit, active and operating in one’s life, the youths cannot do, by sheer will-power, all that they had been taught.
He added that the power he is talking about is not what can be experienced by talking or sermonizing, or by mere wish as some people think. He asserted that people today who are influential in life operate with certain levels of power which could be demonic, economic/financial, political, or spiritual power.
To succeed in life, he warns, “It is either you are in a secret place, cultivating the power of the Holy Spirit in an intimate relationship with Him or you are in secret power that has nothing to do with Him.” In as much as it is good to be talented as a youth, he said, life is not all about being gifted or talented.
He averred: “Without power backing you up, you may not go far in life, your talent notwithstanding. In fact, others with power may overtake you. For you to fulfill your purpose in life, you need to be in a place of power. And, this is the aim of the End-time Move Missions or the Holy Ghost School: to introduce you to that place of power. And, believe me, it is not in the church but in your closet at home.”
