Simon was a young man who loved God when he met me. We met through prayers, on the invitation of a very good friend of mine. He stood next to me that day. When we formed a circle and held hands to pray, he held my hands. My hands went cold, and he also started sweating in his palms while we prayed. He held tight. He prayed hard while squeezing my hand. At some point, I lost focus on the prayers and thought about how he held my hands.

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That very day, after the prayer session, he took my number, and we started talking and praying from there. He was able to see things. Everything he told me was going to happen happened in one way or another.

He prophesied about my dad’s death. He said we should pray about it, but each day when we prayed, he said the cloud thickened, meaning nothing was changing about my dad’s situation. I hadn’t seen my dad in years. He divorced my mom and married another woman, but he never stopped being my father. He provided and cared for me until I grew up.

Simon hadn’t even met my dad when he made that prophecy. I took him to meet him. I told my dad Simon was a pastor. He prayed with my dad for several minutes. A year later, I asked if he saw any change. He shook his head. My dad had a heart attack and died on an ordinary evening when he had returned from his shop.

He cried with me as though my dad was his dad too. He asked God why. “We prayed. We fasted. Why did you still take his life away?” Of course, there was no answer. He was with me throughout the funeral. I introduced him to my mom as my husband. When my mom asked what he did for a living, he said he was a pastor. Meanwhile, he didn’t even have a single person he called a church member.

The anointing on him was so great that I believed everything he said to me, and none of what he said was a lie. When he asked me to be his wife, I said yes instantly. We got married and started a church together. Those who knew him from the prayer group joined his church. When my friends had issues, I directed them to him. He prayed with them and told them what to do to change the situation in life. When they followed through, they got the results they needed.

The church grew like wildfire through word of mouth. We started from a classroom. Two years later, the class became so small. We rented the top of a storey building. A year later, it became so small. At this point, we needed elders to help manage the church. He asked me to resign from work to help the ministry fully. I promised I was going to do that, but the love I had for the job and my colleagues didn’t allow me to resign.

The elders of the church did a marvelous job. They got us a bigger place and started talking about acquiring a piece of land and starting to build our own church auditorium.

Maybe it was due to too much joy. Or my husband got complacent. I don’t know how to describe the beginning, but he started drinking wine. Different bottles of wine every day. He called them sweet wines that didn’t intoxicate. I saw 7% on the bottles. He said it wasn’t anything. Slowly, he went into hard wines and liquor. He took them when he was expecting no one.

I talked against it. I prayed against it, but I believed him too much, so when he said God approved of it, I stopped talking about it. He said he saw a lot of mysterious things during prayers, and they disturbed his sleep. He could hear the voices of angels. They sang in his ears all night, so sleeping was hard. He needed something to help him.

Some elders saw a change in him, and they spoke to me about it. We had a board meeting where these elders expressed their disappointment in him for drinking. He told them the same thing, “I see so many dark things. I’m just a human whom God shows dark mysteries. I can’t handle the things I see. I need help.”

He started drinking before church. He would hide the bottles from me, but he couldn’t hide his breath and mannerisms when he got drunk. He could preach until we took the microphone from him. He would dance and sweat all over. He wouldn’t want to close the church for the congregation to go home. The church saw it or smelled it on his breath.

There was gossip hanging around the church, which we sought to dispel, but for how long? To make it worse, he stopped seeing things. What he prophesied didn’t happen. What he thought he saw during prayers wasn’t exactly what he saw, so he gave a lot of wrong and scary prophecies. The church started falling until now, we are left with just a handful of members.

Some Sundays, he’s too shy to go to church because only a few people will turn up. I went to church with him one day, and the people there were not up to ten. While we were praying, he stepped out and didn’t come back again. I led the church until closing.

The death of the church is killing him. He prays and sees nothing. God has abandoned him. When our rent is due in the next few months, we won’t be able to renew. We will lose the church grounds, and that will be the end of the church. He cries at night and drinks in the morning. He prays and nothing happens. He needs a pastor to pray for him, but he won’t bring himself down to do it.

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I suggested he start looking for a job in the meantime while he rebuilds. He says no. We rely heavily on my salary now. We have two children who are in schools we can’t currently afford. We’ll change their schools to lower ones, but it doesn’t change our life’s story. He needs help, both spiritually and physically, but he won’t seek it, so we suffer.

I’m not leaving him. I know where I met him, and I’m determined to take him back there, but my strength keeps waning. My resolve chips away little by little each passing day. What can I do to help a man who helped everyone but now can’t help himself? He’s lost everything, including himself. How do I help him?

—Annet     

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