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Hype will kill a Christian one of these days. Meters across from where I live, a renowned health and wealth preacher is often exciting his congregation about the coming week!

In his audience, you can picture a young corporate woman trying to get up the ambition ladder at her workplace; her Versace bag, just like her WhatsApp status, always has flyers with the man of God. You guessed it; she last read the Bible when the “Apostle” quoted it out of context.

For some reason, in this ambience of exciting slogans, ‘breakthroughs and victories’ one-line platitudes rule the hour—

“Child of God, you must win; your victory is coming; suffering is not your portion; you need to understand your destiny.”

And so, the disappointed keep going back for one more “dose”: even when the following week looks like a trailer running through your life, you mutter to yourself, “This difficulty can’t be God’s will; I am a child of God; I am not supposed to struggle; I will confess positive.”

Sunday in, Sunday out, with manipulated Bible verses, the “Apostles” urge their desperate congregations to pronounce favors at work, wives by the end of the year, and new cars at the end of the fasting season.

“You are never meant to ‘struggle’—meanwhile, life keeps singing a different tune. The landlady texts; Yaka runs out (again); you discover he’s been cheating. The kids wreck your life. Even (now insensitive) MTN Momo Pay now sends the debt reminder.

Hurting marriages are promised they will be loved more (even if no biblical conflict resolution between couples is encouraged), debts are “cancelled in Jesus name” (with neither a call to self-control, financial discipline, or hard work), and diseases are “cast in the wilderness.” – by his stripes we are healed- (with no understanding that Isaiah 53 is speaking to a “sin as sickness”)

In other corporate gatherings, the appeal is towards what elites care about: job offers, visas, and promotions. More suave priests speaking to more elite audiences promise takeovers in the marketplace; questionable theologies like “7 mountains of influence” are cited with out-of-context references to Daniel, as human greed and worldliness are baptized to serve the self.

In the end, you have well-intentioned yet malnourished and biblically illiterate Christians who want to know the Lord yet are preoccupied with Jesus as a personal consultant rather than a king. They will show up midweek, rant about the man of God on their social media, and continue to go on to wrestle the fallen world bare-handed, loud about God’s kindnesses in their life but mute about the suffering that (mostly) touches all of us under the sun.

God never designed us to only relate to him when the piano is loudest. Sure, he shook the mountain and parted seas when he came down in Exodus, yet many biblical stories are not thrilling mountaintop experiences. especially the crucifixion one.

There is Elijah waiting for the small, still voice, little David getting called out of shepherding fields, Ruth gleaning in gardens, and the carpenter boy Jesus in a temple. Ask Jesus’ disciples; they eventually faced the wrath of Rome even after they had seen Elijah and Moses on the mountaintop live! Or Apostle Paul, who speaks of “third heaven revelations” yet later goes hungry and naked.

Sure, suffering and ordinary living are not glorious, but under God, they are valuable. We remain at peace with normal life, understanding that any faith that puts your emotions in the driving seat is a faith in yourself, rather than a sovereign God.

Life’s seeming lows are consistent with God’s designs to form and shape us through difficult people, miscarriages, heartbreaks, and “delayed seasons (as commonly referred to). We are confident that “neither life nor death can separate us from the love of God” (Rom 8:28), which means some level of “death,” including the final one, will come anyway, yet still leave us fine.

Because, come to think of it, God never parts seas every day; he never did, and he still doesn’t. (or when he does, he parts them slowly over a lifetime, according to his timetable)

And his promise remains: we shall remain fine forever, only in Christ.