When I was in school, I joined a fellowship. The guy who established the fellowship and his fiancée liked me so much. One day he told me; “I feel you have the call of God on your life”. He was so particular about what he was saying that he chose me to be part of the new Fellowship Executives that were being chosen. People protested saying “no, no, no, this guy just got saved 3-4 months ago and you’re saying he should become an Executive meanwhile there are people who have been here before he joined us”.
So he said to them, “I have this fellowship and I have the right to choose the next leader of this fellowship. I sacrifice that right and give it to you to select the President and 2 Vice Presidents. All I ask is that you give me 1 slot in the Executive because I believe the hand of God is on this person”. With that they left him and brought me into the Executive. When he was leaving the country, he called me and said to me “No matter what happens, no matter how you’re treated, stay in this fellowship because as far as I’m concerned the future of this work is in your hands”.
As a member of the Executive, when they made a rooster for those to teach, they always gave me majority of the teachings even more than the President. If I had the skill I have now I would not have let them do that but as a young person I was excited. Of course that caused a lot of problems, there was politics in the fellowship and at some point we decided that let there be no strife so I resigned from the Executive and left the fellowship.
During that period, I discovered Bishop Oyedepo and Arch Bishop Idahosa, I started traveling around to their meetings. One of the meetings I went to in Benin city. Arch Bishop was teaching and suddenly he said “so so and so stand up”, he told someone in the crowd to stand up, I won’t mention his name, he was a senior minister but I didn’t know who he was at the time. The man stood up, Arch Bishop said today I am going to tell you a story, immediately his wife snatched him and said ” Stop! Stop! Stop! The Arch Bishop turned to her and said “If you don’t want me to teach the people and tell them where I came from you can leave the meeting but I must tell this people the truth about ministry”. She sat down, Bishop Oyedepo was also in that meeting and he too was trying to signal the Arch Bishop not to say what he was about to say but the man went ahead. He told us a story; he probably piped it down. In that story, he told us about how he got his first car and how this senior minister took the car from him because he was a small preacher. Later on, the minister ran into trouble in America and he helped him out. He then said; “Never repay evil for evil in your life” and he continued his teaching.
I came back to Lagos excited. By this time, the President of the fellowship who had traveled abroad came back to Nigeria for a holiday and came to see how the fellowship was doing. I told him this man’s story. He took me with him to the Executives’ Meeting “to settle the problem that led to my resignation”. The meeting held at U318 Mariere Hall Unilag, this was 1989. At the meeting he recounted the story to them and said, “I believe that story is prophetic. What the Arch Bishop did is also going to happen in this ministry. You see all of us seated here? The person God is going to pick out of our midst to go public first is going to be him (me). The decision whether the World will know that we are ministers of God and hear us will be based on whether he gives us a platform to preach or not. So consider this when you people are making a decision. This is what I think will happen from the story that he told”. So they left that meeting but I didn’t forget. Nothing changed after that, I still wasn’t back at the fellowship and life continued.
One day, I went for midweek service in Winner’s Chapel, we were not more than 100 in attendance. While Bishop was teaching he said, “In this country, as far as we know, whoever breaks away from a ministry will continue to break”. That word just entered me like it was meant for me. So I went back to this fellowship to reconcile. I told myself that after I had reconciled that I would stay for one year before leaving.
When I went back, a chap walked up to me and said; “Welcome, I can see you are coming to this fellowship for the first time and you are a new believer, register here for our new believer’s class”. I looked at him, me that just months ago was teaching in this fellowship but I humbled myself, I took everything, I even took the new-believers class again.
We’re always one instruction away from a breakthrough and most times it’s an instruction borne out of love that we’re resisting. God taught Job wisdom; He asked Job to pray for his friends despite everything that was happening and when Job prayed for his friends, his captivity was turned around.
So one day, I was praying at the Sports Center and God said to me, “You see these 5 people that you feel have offended you. Pray for each of them. That blessing you know that if it comes upon their life will make it seem as if you lost and they won, pray it for them.” I prayed and interceded that blessing for everyone of them.
About 3 weeks later, they handed over leadership in the fellowship of course I was not part of the equation, there was still some politics within, so they handed over the Presidency to one of the founding Vice Presidents. A week later, the guy’s company called him to Chicago so he had to leave. He called me to the car park at the airport and said to me “By all means you are the President of the fellowship but as it is now I can’t go and tell them so go and tell them that you are the President”. After saying that, he boarded his plane and left. So I had to go to the fellowship and tell them that I have been made the new President. From that day 23rd November 1990 till date except I decide that I am not preaching, the door of ministry has always been open for me from that day till today and it was a step of obedience that made it happen, if I did not do it, I won’t be in ministry today.
