There was an unbeliever who challenged my life as a Christian. While in the university many years ago, a panel was set up before which every student was asked to appear with the originals of their certificates. The first time this order was given, everybody laughed it off as a huge joke. They could not imagine how anyone could come to the university without a certificate.

However, by the next morning, the lecture room was almost bare of students. This was unbelievable. It means that so many students actually did not have the required papers to be in the university. Then there was this man who got into the university at the age of thirty-two and by age thirty-six, he had gotten to his final year. Then, because everyone who came into the university with a forged certificate had ran away, he too ran away. He had a false certificate but he never gave up. At age of thirty-six, he went back to sit for the secondary school certificate examination he had escaped from and by the time he was thirty-eight, he was back again in year one in the university and by forty-one or two, he got the degree. This man is now doing impressively well in the society.

To a majority of human beings however, an end would have been put to their efforts at that point when the man ran away from the university, and there are so many reasons to give up one of which is the question: “How can it be heard that I will come and sit in the class again?”

That would have definitely paralysed the man’s destiny. This reasoning has pulled a lot of people in the valley of defeat.

Sometimes, when some people are advised to go and repeat their exams in the same school, it sounds repulsive to them to sit down with their juniors, thus remaining in that valley of defeat. This can be very sad.

The story of that man challenged me even as a Christian. His fighting spirit was something else. We need to wake up from the slumber of allowing the enemy to just dump us in the valley and remaining there.

Sometimes, when some people are given some Scriptures to memorise, even at the age of forty-eight, they would say that their brain is not good enough to hold any Scripture. This is the evidence of defeat.