Dodie Osteen, the co-founder of Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, and the mother of the church's current leader, Joel Osteen, has died more than four decades after she said she was miraculously healed from metastatic liver cancer, even though doctors gave her weeks to live in 1981. She was 91.
Joel Osteen announced his mother's passing on his social media on Wednesday night, saying she died "peacefully at her home" of "natural causes."
"It is with a heavy heart that Victoria and I, along with our family, announce the passing of our cherished mother and grandmother, Dolores' Dodie' Osteen. She was the beloved matriarch of Lakewood Church, an inspiration to millions of people around the world, and a faithful servant of God," he wrote. "Known as 'Mama Dodie' to the entire Lakewood family, together, we celebrate her amazing life and lasting legacy."
Christian leaders have shared on social media how the Lakewood Church matriarch's testimony of healing inspired their faith.
"Dodie Osteen has gone home to be with the Lord. She has been an inspiration to me in the realm of standing for your healing," global prayer movement leader Jennifer LeClaire of Jennifer LeClaire Ministries wrote in a statement on Facebook Thursday.
"Decades ago she battled terminal cancer when they gave her just weeks to live. She cried out to God and took her stand and was miraculously healed. She lived to be 91 years old. … What an inspiration! She ran her race. She finished her course. Let's pray for the Osteen family in this time of loss."
Megachurch Pastor John Gray of Love Story Church in South Carolina, who previously served at Lakewood Church, said Dodie Osteen would pray for the sick while fighting cancer herself.
"A light has gone out. She was a true woman of God in every sense of the word. When my family moved to Houston to serve the vision of pastor Joel and Victoria and @lakewoodchurch, it was momma Dodie who spoke life, prayed, encouraged, and showed up every Wednesday to support and pray me through," he said in a statement Wednesday.
"She raised Godly children. She prayed for sick people — while battling cancer herself. She was firmly committed to a selfless life and completely devoted to Jesus Christ and His church."
In a 1987 recounting of Dodie Osteen's healing testimony, her husband, John, who co-founded Lakewood Church with his wife in 1959 and died in 1999, highlighted how doctors told him she would die from cancer after giving her just weeks to live in 1981.
"My wife Dodie was in this hospital for 20 days trying to find out what was wrong with her body. I remember one day the doctor came to me at the end of those tests and said, 'Pastor, I've got bad news for you. Your wife has metastatic cancer of the liver. She cannot live. She'll be dead within a few weeks," he recalled.
Instead of accepting the death sentence pronounced by the doctor, John Osteen invoked his faith.
"I said to the doctor, 'We believe in miracles.' He said, 'You're going to have to have a miracle for her to live.' I looked at him and I said, 'We're going to get that miracle,'" John Osteen declared.
"I lifted Dodie out of that bed. She weighed 89 pounds. [I] put her in a wheelchair and took her home. We got on our faces before the Lord and we pled His promises. I'm glad to announce that Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever, healed Dodie."
Dodie Osteen said she was devastated when she got the news about her cancer diagnosis 15 days before Christmas in 1981.
"When I found out about it, I was, of course, devastated. The whole family was devastated. Here I had finally gotten to the point where I could enjoy life a little because I didn't have little children and had been well all my life, and then all of a sudden was struck with the news of cancer of the liver with a tumor the size of an orange," she explained.
A day after she left the hospital on Dec. 11, she said she joined her husband in faithful prayers.
"I got up on the 11th of December. John and I got on our faces in our bedroom, and we prayed. And he, as head of the house, rebuked that cancer in my body. And I set the date of December 11th, 1981, as the date that I was healed," she recalled.
"Now I'd advise you, if you're fighting a battle, it'd be a good thing for you if you'd like to set a date because I think that when the devil comes against you and torments you in the middle of the night like he did me, you can always say, 'No devil take your hands off of me because on December 11th I believe I received my healing,'" she added.
"I say that every day when I awake in the morning, and if I forget to say it, I say it later on in the day because I believe that on that day God began the healing process of cancer in my body. John commanded that cancer to wither and die. It began to die as far as I'm concerned on that day."
