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Popular ABUJA Based Pastor, ENO EBELE JERRY
One of the Speakers at the just concluded 2023 ARISE Women Conference convened by the elegant and enigmatic Siju Iluyomade, was Pastor Eno Ebele Jerry, a popular Abuja based pastor who has become one of the most followed and respected female pastors in the land. She has built an enviable reputation for herself, not just as revered preacher, but also as a burning and shining light to many women out there. She also represents different things to different people. She is a transformational catalyst, a quintessential speaker, a dynamic preacher, and very significantly, the female voice that roars on the widely acclaimed Global prayer platform New Season Prophetic Prayers and Declarations(NSPPD) alongside her husband Pastor Jerry Eze popularly known for the slogan What God cannot Do Does Not Exist.
Pastor Eno, as she is fondly called, currently sits as the Resident Pastor of Streams of Joy Umuahia, an expression of their burgeoning ministry, Streams of Joy International. Also working at the heart of her life’s assignment, she actively supports women to pursue their God-ordained destinies through mentoring, coaching, and leadership at The Women on Fire Network, an organization dedicated to empowering and raising pastor’s wives, women in ministry, and women on fire for God. Since the inception of the Women of Fire network in 2020, she has held several Pastors’ Wives and Women in Ministry Conferences all over Nigeria and continues to serve thousands of members all over the world as far as the United Kingdom, United States, United Arab Emirates, South Africa, and Canada.
A perfect example of a Polymath, Pastor Eno also holds an MBA in Entrepreneurial Management from the Entrepreneurship Institute Australia, a Masters in International Human Resource Management from the University of Greenwich London, and is currently concluding her PhD in Human Resources Management. With extensive years in management, She consults for multinational companies, mega-churches, and several non-profit organizations. She is the Lead Consultant, M.D, and CEO of Jeno Management Solutions, a Human Resource Company. She is the Author of the bestselling books – “I Almost Ruined My Marriage, My True Life Story” and “The Proverbs 31 Woman in Contemporary Times,” with over one million copies sold physically and virtually on her website, www.enojerry.com. Her teachings on becoming the best versions of ourselves, building godly marriages and relationships have gone viral with so many testimonies of life transformations. She is greatly applauded for Her uncommon authenticity and openness with her personal life experiences and her clear and practical message of hope and empowerment through the instrumentality of Prayer. Her deep desire to light this same prayer Fire in the hearts of many is evident even through her weekly Thursday midnight prayers, where she leads thousands in deep moments of encounter. Pastor Eno is a perfect blend of Fire and Finesse. Her unique style of ministry cuts across several generations and transcends gender barriers. Worthy of note is her beaming signature smiles that continue to bring healing to many.
At the 15th edition of the ARISE Women Conference where she and several accomplished women spoke to the multitudes of women present, Pastor Eno stunned everyone when she opened up about the turbulence she went through in the early years of her marriage and how she almost ruined her own marriage herself. According to her, she was largely the reason why her marriage was on the verge of total collapse. Hear her story:
“At some point in my life, I prayed to God, believing that one day, I would be swept off my feet by my prince charming. I remember praying at a young age to be married to a man that loves God and has the fear of God in him. I knew what I wanted, or at best, I thought I knew what I wanted. Most times, we wish and pray for things without understanding that our wishes aren’t as simple as they seem and may probably have their implications. To pray for a prince charming, you need to be a princess beauty. The prince charming also has expectations of his bride and you need to fit that mould. Without knowing it, I carried a lot of baggage into my marriage. This load of baggage was capable of ruining my marriage. Wait a minute, did I say capable of ruining my marriage? Scratch that. This load of baggage almost ruined my marriage. In Proverbs 14: 1, the Bible says, “a wise woman builds her home but a foolish woman tears it down with her hands”.
Did you notice what the Bible says in that Scripture? The foolish woman does not need any kind of help pulling down her home. She can do it all by herself. Her own actions or inaction are enough to completely ruin her home. At some point in my life, I was this foolish woman. I know this probably sounds shocking but ‘foolish’ was what I was at that time. Sadly, there abound many foolish women who have destroyed their marriages and homes. Some others are in the process of destroying their marriages. Some marriages are being endured rather than enjoyed. Some married people are struggling to put the pieces of their homes together while some feel that it can’t be put back together again. It is unfortunate that some women are completely at a loss of what to do to save their ailing marriages. Some others who know what to do to save their homes allow pride stop them from doing it.
My journey in the early years of marriage was quite painful and enduring. Nothing I knew seemed to make sense anymore. All the seemingly harmless habits I got away with in the course of my life as a single became a challenge in marriage. When you marry a near-perfect man like I did, your flaws become so glaring. The sad truth is that before I got married, I never considered these habits as flaws. Have you ever found yourself saying things like: “This is how I have always been and people accepted and liked me”? Have you also found yourself saying to your spouse, “Hey, you met me like this; why is this now a big deal”? Oh, I said this a thousand and one times. I just couldn’t understand how anyone will want me to change. Who I was had taken me so many years to become, so why was I supposed to change just because I got married. Hmmm, that was a difficult one for me to crack. In this book, I will be sharing my journey so far, what I had to learn in the process and who I have become through my experiences.
In the first seven years of myy marriage, I was an angry person, I was a bitter person, I was stubborn, I was highly opinionated. I was also very direspectful. When you put all of these together, you can imagine whaty the home looks like. The only mercy I had was that my husband was a man of peace, so when I’m giving trouble, there’s someone trying tp use peace to reduce the tension. But some of us are married to men who are equally trouble makers. So, you are looking for trouble, he is also looking for trouble, sop when the two of you hit your heads together, you know what happens. That is where the enemy wants to put us in our marriage. From the beginning in Genesis, he came for our marriage, he came for our relationships. (At this point, she raised a prayer point, saying, oh, Lord, whatever is in me or in my spouse, that is causing confusion, causing problems, disunity in my marrige, today I command you to pack your load, get out of my marriage.)
I pray for you, you will not use your hand to ruin your home. Your husband will not use his hands to ruin your home.
“The journey to a better me was a very tough one. I have memories of countless times I cried myself to sleep. I tried hard to be a better person. I prayed, I fasted yet I kept making the same mistakes. I just couldn’t stop myself from being angry, shouting and being disrespectful to my husband.”
I got married at a young age. I was 19 when I met my husband, we went out for 5 years before we got married. The home I came from had a role to play with the way I was. I grew up in a home where you see your parents fight and I never knew that my mom was hot tempered.
It was after I wrote the book and I was telling her what I wrote because they saw it on Facebook; they were like, “what did she do?” My mom now called me on the phone, even my dad called me. My mom called me on the phone and I started telling her the contents of the book. She said, “well, it is really true. If it is going to help another family. Actually, in those days, I used to be very hot tempered.”
I never knew my mom was hot tempered, as children we just saw them fighting and thought that was how it was supposed to be.
My change started from the place of understanding (Proverbs 4:7). Understanding was where my own change came from because I just discovered that really all these things that I was doing was actually wrong. I came to that point where I saw a bigger picture of where God was taking me to, like my purpose in life. In order to fulfill whatever, it is, whether it is in marriage, having a peaceful home, there are emotional baggage that you shouldn’t carry into the marriage. Those were the things that I had to let go.
I prayed about it and kept asking God to help me. My husband was very helpful. I think if people had spouses whether husbands or wives like my husband, I think marriages would actually fulfill heaven on earth, if you want the heaven on earth kind of marriage. I stretched him but he was still there for me. He never went out to report me, because my Dad didn’t know all this until I wrote the book. He never badmouthed me nor talked about it.
He would always call me and tell me ways to handle anger.
He would say, “If you are angry, don’t speak. Learn how not to speak in anger.”
My facial expression: I started monitoring my face when I was angry.
You can’t just pray alone, we have to do practical things. So after you finish praying then the grace is available.
PRACTICAL STEPS
Listening effectively: even if you don’t understand what is being said, just say, “okay, give me some time to process it”. You don’t have to give a response per time.
Pride: It is still linked to anger. It is important to know what causes you to get angry. The root cause of the anger. For different people, it will be different things but a lot of time, it is pride. Most times when we get angry, we get angry because we think ‘this person shouldn’t talk to me like this’, ‘I shouldn’t be talked to like this’, ‘I shouldn’t be treated this way’. It is what you think or feel about yourself that you show.
When you come to that point whereby, ‘people can talk to me anyhow’, ‘they can treat me anyhow.’
You are not trying to be the one that is right. You are not trying to be the one that is correct. So anyhow, if you want to talk to me anyhow, so your ego just calms down.
Once you get to the point, you will see that it is easier for people to do things and you don’t get upset.
These were the practical things.
“Every wise woman buildeth her house: but the foolish plucketh it down with her hands.” – Proverbs 14:1.
– WALE LAWAL
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