He Said the Spirit Led Me to Pick You — Rev. Edward Adeniji Koye-Ladele

He was stranded on the Lagos–Ibadan expressway. The bus had broken down. He was carrying a heavy bag. About thirty people were competing for whatever cars came through, and the ones with nothing to carry were winning. He stood and prayed quietly. A car came, and the passengers pointed him out — the driver had been calling for him specifically. He ran to the car, not knowing the man. When he asked why he had been chosen, the driver said simply: the spirit led me to pick you. It pointed you at me. Pick that man.

Between 2018 and 2022, my dad sent hundreds of short voice notes - prayers, declarations, and pastoral reflections - to WhatsApp groups of friends, family, and church members spread across Nigeria, the UK, the US, and beyond. He recorded most of them early in the morning, usually before 9am, from the house in Ibadan. Many of them were part of his series, Strength for the Journey.

Because he wanted them to be preserved, he typically recorded them as a voice note to me and then forwarded it on to the different WhatsApp groups he wanted to share them with. I have stored 92 of these voice notes, listened to them, transcribed them carefully, and selected twelve to share here. I will add more of them in the years to come.

These twelve span four years, different seasons of his life, and different modes of his pastoral voice: testimony, prayer, teaching, encouragement, and pure blessing. Some are two minutes long. Some stretch to ten. All of them honestly, unapologetically, bluntly, my dad. In most of them, he's sitting alone in his room. He's not constrained by, or speaking to, a specific audience. I often close my eyes and imagine him sitting there in his room upstairs in Olodo, embracing this new tool as a way to keep doing his life's work.

We hope they are a gift to everyone who knew him, and to everyone who is only now meeting him for the first time. - Mogbekeloluwa & the Koye-Ladele family.

———

He was stranded on the Lagos–Ibadan expressway. The bus had broken down. He was carrying a heavy bag. About thirty people were competing for whatever cars came through, and the ones with nothing to carry were winning. He stood and prayed quietly. A car came, and the passengers pointed him out — the driver had been calling for him specifically. He ran to the car, not knowing the man. When he asked why he had been chosen, the driver said simply: the spirit led me to pick you. It pointed you at me. Pick that man.

He tells this story as a teaching on Psalm 91 and the ministry of angels. But what stays with you is the specificity — the expressway, the heavy bag, the thirty people who ran and were turned away. Angels are ministering spirits. They don't always look the way you expect. Sometimes they drive a car, and they know your name before you introduce yourself.