I recently finished reading Kemi Fred-Adetiba’s ‘Woman you are fire‘ book. One word for it; Refreshing. If you’re able to get your hands on it, please do. She talked about truths that we probably all already know but it was refreshing because she really fleshed out these truths and brought understanding that is capable of setting you on fire as you flip through the pages. I finished it in 2 sittings cause I couldn’t afford to drop it once I started and I probably would have finished at first sitting but I think I slept off the night before.

There’s a profound statement she makes in one of the chapters in the book, she was talking about how our understanding before prayer is really important and she made reference to Hannah’s story in the bible. Hannah had been asking God for a child, all she wanted was to silence the taunting of her co-wife, who had many children already. So every year she will come and ask God for a son hoping that God will grant her this request. One year when she came back, I believe with enlightenment from God, she prayed the same prayers she had been praying for years, but this time she told God, “Give me a son and i’ll give him back to you, he’ll serve in your house all the days of his life“, and bammm… Son comes probably 9 months later.

In Kemi’s book, she put it like this ; “Hannah wanted a son, but God wanted a Priest“, It is okay if you have not caught it, i’ll expatiate further.

God could have given Hannah a son in her first year of marriage, wouldn’t have been a big deal at all, yet God chose to delay opening Hannah’s womb until she asked from the understanding of the kingdom so that the fruit was not about silencing her taunters or just being called ‘mum’, but actually aligning with heaven’s desire and manifestation of  a Priest in that time. Remember it was Samuel, this same Son that ended up anointing both Saul and David as Kings of Israel.

This was what God saw from heaven, A priest who would do the Lord’s work, but in the years before Hannah received Samuel, all she was seeing was ‘A son to silence her enemy’.

Kemi made several mind blowing points in Woman you are fire, but in the entire book, this point stood out to me the most.

When there’s no divine understanding backing our request, heaven is not obliged to answer, heaven honours only what it has orchestrated. Hannah waited years, got to this understanding that it was not about her want for a child, but about a need for a Priest in the Lord’s house.

Some of us need to sit and double check our prayer requests, whats their origin? whats their motive? whats the result it brings at the end? Is it all about us or is there that divine understanding of what the request could contribute to the kingdom?

God is building His kingdom, we’re a part of this kingdom and so everything birth from us, literally and figuratively MUST also be concerned about this Kingdom we are all building. For some of us, it is not that God is ignoring our prayer requests or punishing us for some evil we have done, it is simply a case of God waiting till you catch the divine understanding of why He should release what you’ve asked for.

It is my prayer for all of us that we are enlightened with the perspective of the kingdom in every request we make to heaven.