Minister and Gospel singer Daryl Coley has died, he was 60 and died in hospice care.
Known for songs like “He’s Preparing Me,” “When Sunday Comes”and “Beyond the Vail,” Coley was born in Berkley, California. He rose through the ranks to be a top figure in Gospel. His voice has been acknowledged as one of the most satisfyingly soulful in contemporary gospel. His albums stay in the Billboard gospel chart seemingly forever while he has a sideboard of awards proclaiming his stature as one of America’s gospel luminaries and one of gospel’s most popular male solo singer.
Coley also felt a call to the ministry and founded the Love Fellowship Tabernacle in Los Angeles.
It was a few years ago when the singer started to get ill.
“After I was home for two or three days, I got very ill. I mean, I woke up and couldn’t get out of the bed. I just thought it was the flu, because of the symptoms. I didn’t even go to the doctor. In fact, I was home for two weeks before I went to the doctor. I really didn’t get concerned about it until I woke up about a week or so after the initial sickness and I couldn’t see beyond a foot in front of me. When I finally did get to the doctor and started describing my symptoms, they took blood. My glucose count would not register on his machine. When they got the (blood) sample to the hospital, a week later, I talked to the doctor. He told me that it was juvenile diabetes and that my blood count was 1200 and my blood pressure was at stroke level. The doctor immediately said, ‘We’re going to have to put you on insulin and put you in the hospital. You shouldn’t be up.’ I just immediately started believing the Lord for healing. It was one of those things that was in my family. They said, ‘you really don’t fall into the family trait of diabetes until you’re 35,’ and I’d just had my 35th birthday.”
About a year after the diagnosis, one of Coley’s aunts died from the disease. At the time, the singer was ironically back at the Queen Street church in South Carolina. Daryl remembers the incident as a traumatic one. “The Enemy really tried to mess with me!” he recalled. “I told the doctor, ‘For Daryl to surrender to having to take insulin meant surrendering to the Devil – saying “Yeah, I’ve got it, I’m defeated,” and I was just determined that I wasn’t going to let diabetes rule my life, and I wasn’t going to take insulin. I told the doctor, ‘While you determine how you’re going to deal with it, I’m just going to turn my face to the wall and pray.’ And I just began to pray and to believe God – and in the midst of it the Lord spoke to me. Really, it was a situation of me needing to take better care of my body, better care of how I was eating, resting and exercising and my body would begin to heal itself. They gave me two kinds of medicine, one to take in the morning and one in the evening.” In the midst of the illness, Coley’s concert itinerary suffered. He had to cancel dates and, being a full time artist, this seriously affected his family’s financial position. “But even in the midst of that, God blessed,” he stated.
Even though it became necessary for Coley to begin seeing a doctor on a weekly basis, he maintained his spiritual focus. Without insurance, bills ran high, but he was able to find a Christian doctor who understood his situation. “With every examination, things got better,” Coley remembered. “But in the course of that I was learning to eat the right foods and leave the junk food alone, how not to eat heavy food late at night and go to bed. I stopped drinking a lot of sodas and…
…started drinking more water, and fruit juices, and I started exercising and even lifting weights. I was on a real strict diet for about a year and a half.”
As Coley restricted his intake and restructured his eating habits, he says he asked God to help him maintain. Two years later he reports complete healing and no need for medication of any kind! “It was just simply standing on what God said, believing the Lord and holding on to my healing. I’ll tell anyone – it’s in the Word, ‘as you believe – so be it unto you,'” exclaims Coley. “It’s been an absolute miracle for me; I never took insulin and I haven’t taken any other medication for the last two years. God says the power of creation is still in our tongues and we can create by what we say and our body has to come in line with what we confess before God.”
The result of the entire ordeal strengthened Coley’s faith. “I’ve gotten to the place where I believe God for anything,” he says. “Your testimony means a whole lot more when you’ve faced it, gone through it, come out of it and you know God has proven himself.” Coley observes, “The Enemy meant (the diabetes) for my defeat, but it actually strengthened me, and taught me how to deal with the temple of the Holy Spirit which is my body, and how to keep it healthy so it can be fit for God’s service. It taught me how to be a good steward over this temple that God has given me.”
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