Tapeh Godo encountered God as a teenager. He decided he wanted to follow Jesus, but he had some other distractions that he wanted to divulge in first. “I’ll get back at you later, God,” he recalls saying at the age of 15, as he left a church meeting where he had professed to want to know and follow God.
Unfortunately, pressing pause on his commitment to God ended up causing a lot of damage to his and his future family’s life. He managed to marry his junior-high sweetheart, who he identified early on as the love of his life. Yet his faithfulness to her was nonexistent as he habitually engaged in extramarital affairs. Eventually one of his mistresses introduced him to cocaine and as a man in his early 30’s, he hit rock bottom as a drug addict, habitual smoker, partier and adulterer.
The clarifying moment came when his wife confronted him at the house of one of his girlfriends. This landed his kind-hearted wife in jail and him alone, trying to be a father. He knew he needed supernatural help and after a primal, two-hour prayer session in which he asked God for that help, he arose a new man.
This is the story of how God transformed an unfaithful man into a dedicated husband, father and humble follower of Jesus.
Highlights
- Tapeh and his wife, Malika, are from the Ivory Coast and they are fluent in French.
- Tapeh was miraculously freed of several addictions in one moment.
- Justin calls Tapeh "A living, breathing psalm" because today Tapeh is always praising God and will often quote whole psalms from memory.
- Tapeh closes the interview reciting a psalm in French.
- 2013 was the worst year of Tapeh's life. Tapeh counts 2014 the best year of his life, because that's when he encountered Jesus.