My calendar alerted me about the iPhone 16 Winner-aversary! I have developed a culture of memorials: naming the days a significant miracle happened with the title of that miracle, and prompting them to resound yearly. This helps me look back and remember what God did, so that my faith is reinforced for whatever I could be believing for in the present.
Today, 2 years ago, Kampala’s most popular fast food restaurant, Cafe Javas, announced me one of the five winners of the iPhone 16 from the Independence Challenge. It had just been released approximately four weeks prior. I wrote about how I won it here.
Six days later, a whole team from Javas arrived to deliver the cool gadget along with them a plethora of pizzas, masala chips, and juices! My local home folk couldn’t contain the enthusiasm. From the announcing, people who had taken years without talking to me remembered my number!
I had just testified about receiving an iPhone 13 Pro earlier in April. Many niblings and cousins booked it. At church, I was being looked at with a different eye! Random people in public spaces asked if I was that kid that won the iPhone 16! But that wasn’t the end of the story.
God had told me I would win the iPhone — but I had to sell it!
You see, I had withdrawn lots out of my savings to buy the current, and also to help with my graduation project! Architecture was the most expensive course at Kyambogo University. Making the model of a stadium, plus corrections, plus printing all wound up into about 2.5 million! Meanwhile, I hadn’t cleared that semester’s tuition, let alone the graduation and clearance fees. Let’s not get started with the graduation suit!
God had heard my plight. And had sent an answer! But as surely as tests exist, here I was: thinking twice about selling the iPhone! If you know God, you know that obeying Him is usually wise.
The celebrity status slowly got to me; and even my fellow christians told me not to sell the trophy! That’s when conflict entered the chat! God went quiet. The noises deafened and drowned me. Graduation time drew close! I continued asking God for a way out, as if He hadn’t told me what to do.
I remembered Lot’s wife! I remembered Sarah telling Abraham to lie with Hagar. I remembered Moses striking the rock! I remembered the cost of disobeying.
I quickly sold it to the guy who sold me the iPhone13Pro. I cleared my tuition, cleared graduation fees, went for suit fitting, and I left the institution behind me. I know some of my colleagues who didn’t graduate because of financial constraints, and here was this God being so kind to me — being my present help.
I am a firm believer in God providing before the crisis emerges. He answers before we call. (Isa 65:24) Hagar wept in the wilderness, and God opened her eyes to see the well that had been there the whole time. Abraham, after Isaac had been spared, saw a lamb trapped in the thicket by the horns. You have trusted God. Do kindly obey to the end what He asks you to do.
If He asks you to borrow as many vessels, borrow as many. If He asks you to cast your nets again O Peter, even if you toiled all night, you better do as the master of fish has commanded. Trust and obey — to the end!
He won’t ask you to do much more than you can handle. Being a lover of photographs, when I tested the 13 pro to the 16, the zoom of the former was much better than the new phone. Due to that, all form attachment was severed & I easily let it go. They both had the same storage space. He made the new appear inferior, which helped sieve out the counsel and pressure from about. So helping my obedience.
The better news even is, He will work in you, both to will and to do whichever task He asks of you. Go on ahead and obey, my dear.
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Isaiah 1:19 If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land:
