Women of Favour Christian Intercessory Prayer Ministry started in the course of Mrs. Victoria Okpe’s prayer support for her pastor’s crusade, which turned to a weekly meeting by just two women praying every Monday morning for their respective husbands and children. Today, the ministry has grown beyond all women affairs. Hundred of people from all walks of life, women and men including children are regular participants at every Monday prayer meeting of this interdenominational prayer ministry where God through his servant, Prophetess Victoria Okpe wrought awesome deliverance and healing in the lives of people. Prophetess Okpe tells Christian Benefits more on the ministry.
Please can I meet you ma?
I am simply Mrs. Victoria Okpe even though people call me Prophetess because whatever I prophesy come to pass. I encountered and accepted Jesus Christ into my life in the early 1990s at the Deeper Life Bible Church. Along the line my parents who are orthodox Christian disapproved of my mode of dressing without jewelries and make-up. They also pissed off with my praying all the time. The pressure from them on me to quit Deeper Life was too much. But I was not really bordered.
Please, share with us how you eventually received the call into ministry
My call into ministry is divine with two separate encounters. The first encounter was around 2003 when I attended a church programme to intercede for my husband. After the programme I tarried in the church three days dry fasting and prayer, I began to see visions like no man business to the extent that if I meet any person on the street I will tell him/her the entire story of his/her life. The second encounter was in 2005 when I had a revelation in which I sat on the floor, and suddenly I heard my name, Victoria, Victoria, get up and lead these people. I didn’t know where the voice came from and who called me. Later in that revelation I saw some people walking up and down aimlessly. And I heard the voice again, lead these people to him. I asked the voice who is he? And the voice replied me Jesus Christ. And I saw a cloud over this crowd of people as they were moving and murmuring that how long were they going to keep moving? Most of them were wearied and crying that they could no longer continue the journey. Suddenly, I saw the end of the cloud and a man came out of the cloud. And the voice said to me that is him. I asked who he is. The voice said he is Jesus. The journey was too tough. Some of the people were pressing me. Some of them even queried me where I was taking them to. But I kept on encouraging and dragging then until Jesus was close to us. There is no person you can compare Jesus with when I saw him. The light was too much. I saw a flower vase in his hand. The tension was too high. Immediately I took the flower vase from him I woke up from the revelation. A week later the General Overseer of the church I was then called people to us responsibilities in the church. I was surprised when he called my name and announced that I have been appointed a Zonal Leader. And I told my husband that maybe that is the revelation that I had. That was how God began to use me in that church.
How will you describe your walk through the Deeper Life Bible Church?
I want to establish that right from my childhood whatever I say always comes to pass. People usually told me that God wants to use me but I never wanted to be too close to God. When I was in Deeper Life I always manifested this gift of prophesy, and I was committed to evangelism particularly to prostitutes. Unfortunately, while I was in Deeper Life I knew the Lord and the Bible page to page but I was not delivered, so I backslide. If you know Christ and the word of God but you are not delivered and separated from your faulty foundation you can backslide. Many people, including several careless believers will die unfulfilled as a result of their faulty foundation, except they are delivered from such foundation. If you are not delivered from your faulty foundation you cannot fulfill your destiny. I left Deeper Life ministry because of my faulty foundation. I came from a family where nobody is doing well. Darkness has taken the whole village. I am the only light in my father’s compound apart from my younger brother who is coming up in the Lord at the Mountain of Fire and Miracle Ministries(MFM).
How did you birth Women of Favour Christian Intercessory Prayer Ministry?
During a particular Sunday service, the pastor of my former church asked some of us to pray along with him for the success of his crusade programme. The next day Monday I didn’t go to work and I began praying for the success of my pastor’s crusade. In the course of my prayer a friend of mine called me that she wanted to come and see me. When she came she met me praying and she started responding amen, amen, to my prayer. Before I ended my prayer I touched the crisis in her marriage. After the prayer her husband called her and they reconciled. That woman then suggested that we continue the prayer the next Monday. I was reluctant until I shared her suggestion with my husband and he supported the idea. So, the next Monday she came and we prayed for our husband and children. After the second Monday prayer meeting God gave her husband, who had been jobless for many years, a lucrative job. Gradually more women started joining us every Monday in my house to pray for our husbands and children. When my sitting room could no longer contain us someone suggested that we secure a bigger place like a hall but I resisted that I didn’t ask God for any ministry. Some of the women however looked for a bigger place. That was how Women of Favour Intercessory Prayer ministry began eight years ago in October 2005 with testimonies following.
Will you please share with us some of the testimonies in the ministry ?
They are too numerous including several broken marriages that God has restored. There are also awesome testimonies of deliverance and healing of diverse diseases, blessing of the fruit of the womb for barren women of many years and lots more. Apart from the Monday meeting we also hold a vigil on the second Wednesday of every month, and another three days vigil from last Wednesday of every month. We hold another prayer meeting every Saturday morning. Wed don’t hold Sunday service because we are yet to receive a directive from God to that effect.
What role does your husband play in the ministry?
My husband is a pastor and also deliverance minister in the ministry.
Tell us what attracted men to this initially wholly women prayer meeting?
From the on set the meeting centre on praying for our husbands and children. Less than three months after meeting started men started joining us. So men have always been part of the ministry despite the name of the ministry. Besides my husband, the first man that joined us was courageous being in the midst of women without shame. From there more men started joining us until it became an all comers’ affairs. That first man that joined us recently wedded over 50 years old.
Who are your role models or mentors in the ministry?
My role model and mentor is our Lord Jesus Christ, perhaps with a particular man of God that I respect as a father in the Lord. He accommodated us to continue our Monday prayer meeting in his church when my sitting room could no longer contain the participants. He encouraged his church members to accommodate us.
I was a successful caterer before the ministry started. I stopped the business to run the ministry. As a woman in ministry one has to sacrifice much more. More so, my husband also left his successful aviation career for the ministry as a huge sacrifice.
So, how do you cope with your responsibilities as a wife, mother and pastor?
It is by the grace of God. I also thank God for my husband for his understanding, support and encouragement. We are always together even when most of the other women that started the ministry with us are not coming anymore due to pressure from their husbands and families. Since we don’t want the ministry to destroy any marriage we encourage them to do the bidding of their husbands if it includes stopping attending our programmes. We are to build and not to scatter marriages.