General Overseer of The Redeemed Christian Church of God, Pastor Enoch Adebayo, has spoken of the lessons he learnt from his 40 years relationship with the late televangelist and founder of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria, Dr Uma Ukpai.
Adeboye, whose remarks at the 80th birthday celebration of the revered preacher who spent his life serving God and causing havoc in Satan’s kingdom, noted that he saw in Ukpai a man that was sold out to God.
The video of his speech at the birthday event returned to public view after the death of Ukpai. In it, he said “I met him for the first time more than 40 years ago when he came to Lagos for that wonderful crusade, and I’ve been always following him ever since.
“I was a small boy then, I’m still a small boy now -just that small might be different from small. And I’ve learnt a great thing from him right from the very first time I met him, and that is that if you really want God to come down, you want God to be present in any of your programmes, learn to worship God. I learnt that from him.”
As a matter of lifestyle, Ukpai would not start preaching anywhere without spending enough time in worship. He would move from song to song and would dance at some intervals, before preaching.
Adeboye said he learnt to kneel in worship as a matter of lifestyle. “ So if you see me kneeling down to worship God before I stand up here, I know that if I follow the footsteps of a great man like that-well, you know there are things we say.
“We say when you are young, and you say, ‘who would you like to be like when you grow old?’ and then you mention somebody. I think when I grow older, I will want to be like Uma Ukpai.
“I learnt something else from him — that if you really, really want to serve God, then you must be ready to serve Him whether things are pleasant or things are not pleasant.
“In the darkest moment of my life since becoming a Christian, when I lost my son without notice — when my son phoned me on a Sunday evening, ‘Daddy, oh, the weekend programme has been extremely successful, glory be to God, thank you for your prayer support.’ And then the next thing I heard on TV on Tuesday night was that my son was gone.
“And I had to preach on Friday. One reference point that gave me strength was Uma Ukpai. I know he lost more than one child in a day, and he did not waver. He kept on serving God. He gave me strength at a time when I needed it most.”
