Tunde adjusted his glasses as the glow from his laptop lit up his face. It was past midnight in his small room in Ibadan, but he didn’t notice. His headphones were on, his fingers moved quickly across the keyboard, and his heart raced as he battled through another level of his favorite game.
“Just one more round,” he muttered.
That was what he said an hour ago.
Earlier that evening, his mum had knocked on his door.
“Tunde, have you prayed tonight?”
“I will, Mum,” he replied quickly. But now, prayer felt far away, like something for “later.”
The next morning at church, his pastor preached about living for Christ in every area of life. Tunde sat quietly, his mind unsettled.
“You don’t have to run away from the world,” the pastor said, “but you must not let the world take over your heart.”
Those words stayed with him.
It’s not just you
Later that week, Tunde met his friend Sola at a small café near their school.
“You’ve been quiet these days,” Sola said, sipping his drink. “Everything okay?”
Tunde hesitated. “I’ve been thinking… about my hobbies, games, all of that. Sometimes I wonder if I’m doing too much. Like… am I drifting away from God?”
Sola nodded slowly. “I get that. I used to feel the same. But I realized something. I didn’t need to quit everything. I just needed wisdom.”
“Wisdom how?”
“Discernment,” Sola replied. “Not everything is bad, but not everything is good for you either. You have to choose what builds you up.”
That conversation hit differently.
That night, Tunde sat on his bed. For the first time in a while, he asked himself honest questions:
Does this bring me closer to God?
Or is it pulling me away?
He didn’t delete all his games. He didn’t throw away his interests. But he began to change how he engaged with them.
Some shows he stopped watching completely.
Some games, he reduced.
And some habits… he replaced them.
Instead of scrolling endlessly at night, he started reading a few verses of the Bible before bed.
At first, it felt awkward. Slow. Unnatural.
But slowly, something began to shift.
One evening, while scrolling through his social media page, someone on his page started ranting about life.
“Everything is just pointless,” the guy typed. “Nothing even matters.”
Normally, Tunde would have ignored it. But this time, he paused.
Then he typed back:
“It actually does matter. I used to feel that way too… but I found something that changed how I see life.”
The conversation went on. It wasn’t perfect. He didn’t quote scriptures like a preacher. But he shared honestly.
For the first time, Tunde realised his hobby could be a bridge.
But not everything changed overnight.
There were still days he slipped back into old habits. Nights he stayed up too long. Moments he felt stuck.
One night, he was frustrated and whispered,
“God, why do I keep going back to the same things?”
In his quiet room, a thought settled in his heart:
Change is a process.
He remembered something he had heard in church, about strongholds. Patterns that start with small lies:
“I can’t change.”
“This is just who I am.”
“I need this to feel okay.”
Tunde realized those thoughts had been living in his mind for a long time.
So he began to fight differently.
He wrote down scriptures and stuck them on his wall.
He started a small gratitude journal. He writes just three things every day.
He replaced some habits:
- Gaming all night → gaming with limits
- Endless scrolling → short devotionals
- Isolation → spending time with Christian friends
After some months, Tunde wasn’t perfect, but he was different.
More aware.
More intentional.
More grounded.
At a youth fellowship one evening, a younger boy asked him,
“Bro, is it bad to like anime and games as a Christian?”
Tunde smiled.
“No,” he said. “It’s not bad. Just don’t let it control you. Let God lead you, even in the things you enjoy.”
The boy nodded thoughtfully.
As Tunde walked home that night, the cool evening breeze brushing against his face, he realised something powerful:
Following Jesus didn’t mean losing himself. It means finding the right way to live, even in the things he loved.
And for the first time in a long while, he felt free.
