Pastor Jimmy Odukoya recently shared his personal story of grappling with faith and grief after the sudden passing of his mother, Pastor Bimbo Odukoya.
In a conversation on the Truth Table podcast, hosted by his sister, Pastor Tolu Odukoya, Pastor Jimmy Odukoya discussed how his mother’s death affected his relationship with God.
He described the sudden loss as a crossroads, where he had to choose between confronting his pain or abandoning his faith.
He likened his emotional state to a battered soldier, but found solace in a message from God, encouraging him to get up and continue, as the worst had already happened.
He explained:
“The difference between when mum died and when dad died was that with mum it was very sudden and no one saw it coming. I think that my biggest fear in life at the time was losing a member of my family and mum was the most important woman in my life.”
“When it happened, I felt like I was at a crossroads with God and I had two choices. It was either the middle finger to God and saying, ‘You know what? I’m done. This is not what you promised, this isn’t what you said. I’m leaving, I’m not doing this anymore. Where has this gotten us? And the other option was to stay there and just cry.”
“I thought to myself that if I take the other option where I walk away, I’m still going to come back eventually so why waste my time walking away? Let me just stay here and cry”.
“It was one of my biggest fears at the time and you know scenes in movies where you see soldiers in war-battered and broken; his shield is somewhere and he’s pretty much lifeless. I felt battered and broken at that time and I remember God saying, ‘Get up, soldier. Don’t you realise that you’re fearless now? The worst has happened so what can the devil use to threaten or scare you anymore?”.
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