See the Unseen — Rev. Edward Adeniji Koye-Ladele

This is one of his most complete short teachings. He takes 1 Corinthians 2:9 — eye hath not seen, nor ear heard — and turns it into a direct pastoral instruction: stop looking at what is visible, and start looking at what God has promised. The concrete circumstances are not denied. The pain is real, he says. But the things which are seen are temporary, and the things which are not seen are eternal. He anchors the teaching in Joseph, who saw his glory long before anyone else did, and in Job, who said I will wait all the days of my appointed time until my change comes. He believed both of those things. He preached them because he had lived them.

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.

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This is one of his most complete short teachings. He takes 1 Corinthians 2:9 — eye hath not seen, nor ear heard — and turns it into a direct pastoral instruction: stop looking at what is visible, and start looking at what God has promised. The concrete circumstances are not denied. The pain is real, he says. But the things which are seen are temporary, and the things which are not seen are eternal. He anchors the teaching in Joseph, who saw his glory long before anyone else did, and in Job, who said I will wait all the days of my appointed time until my change comes. He believed both of those things. He preached them because he had lived them.