Scientists once placed a transparent glass barrier inside an aquarium.
On one side was a fierce pike, and on the other side were several smaller fish swimming freely.
When the hungry pike saw the smaller fish, it immediately rushed forward to attack.
Bang. It slammed straight into the glass and bounced back.
Confused, the pike kept trying again and again, but every attempt ended the same way.
The repeated collisions injured its head and knocked off some of its scales. Eventually, the pike became frightened and retreated to a corner of the tank.
After some time, the scientists quietly removed the glass barrier. The smaller fish now swam freely throughout the aquarium, even brushing against the pike’s mouth.
But the pike never tried to eat them again.
Even though it was hungry, it refused to attack. In its mind, the invisible wall was still there.
A few days later, the pike reportedly died of starvation, surrounded by food. This phenomenon is often referred to as the Pike Effect or Pike Syndrome.
It’s often used as a metaphor for how repeated failure can create invisible limits in the mind.
There are several examples of how this experiment is also valid in the lives of a lot of people, especially because much of the success and failure human beings record in life is as a result of their convictions and mindset
Experiences decide for many of us whether to forge ahead or give up on certain quests
Much of the battle we fight in life is internal, a battle of the mind, but many of us assume these battles are external due to the pike effect
You write an exam four or five times, and suddenly you assume you are not cut out to pass the exam without some sort of external help
So you go for deliverance or sow seed or accuse a strong man from your village or a witch from your past or something similar of being responsible for your woes
This is mostly not necessarily so.
An example is a woman who was struggling with diabetes, heart palpitation and hypertension.
The woman was born a muslim and her father was a herbalist before she gave her life to Jesus, and she has stayed consistent in her followership of Jesus from that time till now
One day, she reached out to me and said that as she was praying, she saw a snake crawling up her leg in a dream
She said she believed this to be the consequence of the rituals and concoctions she ate as a child while she was an unbeliever
This was the Pike effect in action
The scriptures say, “If any man or woman be in Christ, the past has passed away; behold, all things are become new.”
By this woman’s experience, not all things didn’t become new, as forty years after she gave her life to Jesus, a snake from her childhood experience still had the temerity to attack her
I told her this dream she had was a lie, and praying against it instead of changing her mindset will be an affirmation of the wrong belief system in operation in her mind, and I will not be a party to that.
It is either you believe the infallible word of God and align your experiences with it, or you negate the word of God by affirming experiences that are of the flesh and are seeking to disprove the truth of the gospel.
I am born of the Word, I am born of God, and the Word of God is Alive and At Work in me exclusively! No other experience or feeling or message from a fake prophet or anybody can persuade me otherwise.
The second experience is one I have always had reservations about sharing, but I am not in this to be popular; I preach the gospel because it is the TRUTH.
Some years ago, a policy was introduced in the church where I worked as a PA.
They called it “Healing Hands”, and the policy stated that every province in the ministry could send one extremely sick person who needed healing to the headquarters of the ministry for the general overseer to pray for the person
This policy was a nightmare for all the provincial ministers, as they have so many sick people whom they feel they ought to send to the General Overseer to pray for, and pastors have to come to the provincial headquarters to prove why the sick person in their church pr family should be the one to be nominated.
A pastor in the province where I worked suddenly screamed out while sleeping, and he woke up paralysed
He didn’t have any health challenges before this time, apart from the sudden death of his wife about three months before this time
He had been a very diligent minister of the gospel who emigrated to Nigeria from Equatorial Guinea and had been consistent in his walk with the Lord
His sickness was a shock to the whole province, and a lot of pastors felt he should be the one the province would nominate for the Healing Hands ministry
There was, however, a long list of sick people before the provincial pastor, and every one of them was pushing to be the one to be nominated.
A provincial meeting was held in which all the top leaders of the province gathered to decide who would be sent to the healing hands ministration
All the pastors have their candidates, and the discussion was very heated and emotionally jarring
They brought this Zonal pastor to my office in a wheelchair, hoping that his presence would convince the provincial pastor to nominate him
I kept staring at the man with concern in my heart
Why should pastors send a sick person to the general overseer instead of healing the person themselves?
The man could speak, but he could not walk
I watched him for hours while the discussion upstairs went on and on
Eventually, I decided to try out something that had been on my mind for a while
The man slept off for about an hour
When he woke up, he asked me if they were done with the meeting, and I said, “Sir, while you were sleeping, the General Overseer came to the province, and he laid his hands on you and prayed for you. He said you have been healed and that they should not bring you to the healing hands programme again.”
The man’s eyes lit up.
The G.O. came here and prayed for me?
I said yes!
It was a lie, and i am sorry for telling it, but that was what had been on my mind for over four hours.
The man began to attempt to stand up immediately…
I encouraged him
“Glory, yes, sir, you can do it… Don’t stop, yes, now the left leg, yes, sir, you can stand, Glory! Don’t give up, you have been made whole. Jesus has healed you. Glory!”
Wow.
The man was walking all by himself, thirty minutes later
he was walking and sprinting up and down the corridor of the first floor, where my office was, while blasting in tongues!
When the pastors doing the meeting upstairs came down, they found their colleague walking and praying in the Holy Spirit
It was an eruption of good news and a testimony of grace!
The zonal pastor got remarried, and the new marriage has now produced two children.
The sickness was in his mind, and as a result, it affected his body
He had tried several times to walk by himself, and his body didn’t respond; as a consequence, he gave up on his body and submitted to the verdict of affliction.
This is the Pike effect.
PS: There is a lot to learn about our new creation reality and walking in the supernatural
This is why I have been teaching PSSBC since 2019
If you would like to learn some more and grow in the reality of the new life we have in Christ, please send me a DM or a WhatsApp message on 08072744871.
The school is not free but the fee is a stipend to ensure that students are committed to the endeavour