Full transcript of “Christian Influencers, let’s address the elephant in the room.”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 So this is one of those topics that I would say that I have always been very skeptical about speaking about because I can totally understand how conversations like this can come off to be Miss Goody two shoes. It can come off to be oh you know it all and we don't. It can come off to be you even exalting yourself. But I promise you that this is not what this video is about. If anything, this video is born out of so much grace, so much love, so much peace. So, I come in peace. Hi guys, welcome back to my channel. My name is Arma if you haven't seen me before, but if you're a returning subscriber to my channel, welcome back
0:45 to my channel. As always, what I'm about to discuss is something that is very, very dear to my heart. And if you're a Christian, you love having conversations about God, about faith, about just navigating your Christian life as probably a young Christian trying to figure out life with God, then this is the place to be. Please click the subscribe button and yeah, let's have this conversation. Just so that we feel more comfortable about this conversation and know that this is not coming from a judgmental place. I'm going to be sharing my personal experience about being properly discipled before you begin to disciple. The end goal of giving your life to Christ is that you grow in Christ. And not just that you grow in Christ, but you also bear much fruit in Christ. That means you begin to
1:31 replicate yourself. You begin to spread the gospel. you begin to share the gospel and have other people come to know Christ the way that you have known Christ. So I believe that every believer is called to the ministry of evangelism, called to the ministry of reconciliation, called to the ministry of talking about Jesus to the world, sharing the gospel to the world. I don't believe that it's for a set of people. Everyone should be talking about Jesus. Everyone should be crazy about Jesus. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with sharing your faith. I mean, I believe that if you even receive the gospel, if you receive the good news of Jesus, there is no reason why you would want to keep that. You cannot you cannot receive the gospel without talking about Jesus. There's an excitement that it
2:18 builds on your inside. There is an overflow that it causes to erupt from your inside. You cannot meet Jesus and be quiet. The scriptures are ladden with so many examples. talk about the woman at the well when she had an encounter with Jesus. I believe that you can't meet this Jesus that I have met and be quiet like is it is like fire shot up in your bones. I mean the prophet will say that I said I would never make mention of him again but the word was like fire shot up in my bones and I believe that that is the Jesus effect in the life of every believer. I'm laying this foundation to say that I believe that you should talk about your faith. One of my favorite scriptures is Matthew 5:13-14. And I read it in the message translation every time and time again because I love
3:05 that it reminds me why I'm here. I'm here to be sold. I'm here to be light. Verse 14 goes ahead to say that God is not a secret to be kept. We are going public with it. As public as a city set on a hill. However, and I think that this is, you know, the cross of the story, the cross of this video. However, I believe that there are certain things that God has called us to that we have to grow into them. There are times and seasons. There are seasons of growth. There are seasons of becoming before there is a season of manifestation. And I'm going to explain that the duty of discipling other believers in Christ is not one that I take lightly. I have been
3:50 privileged to be a disciplehip teacher in my local church. It's not an assignment that I take lightly at all. Every single time before I'm about to take a class, before I'm about to take a session, I find my heart still beating. And guys, I've done this for about maybe two years at this time. Three, three years actually at this time. It's not something that I would say that I don't know. is not something that I would say I don't have a hang of but I still find my heart beating every single time before I take a class because I understand that this is such a huge privilege is such a huge assignment that the Lord has called me to steward that every one person that comes into this meeting and hears me talk about God has an impression of him formed inside of them. I I want to be correct. I want to
4:36 be sure that I'm speaking the mind of God. I want to be sure that I'm doctrinally sound. I want to be sure that I'm communicating. I have the right examples. I can drive it home. So disciplehip is nothing that I take lightly. But I think we actually should start this conversation by even x-raying what the meaning of disciplehip is. So I'm just going to go to a document that I found talking about disciplehip in a very in-depth way. And it defines disciplehip as the process of learning to love and follow Jesus. and becoming more like him in actions and in our attitude. And then of course the second part of disciplehip is also seeking to make other disciples. But I feel like
5:22 for most of us creatives and I'm I'm included in this sect. I'm going to drag myself very shortly. For most of us in this set, I feel like we move way past the first and we get into the second. So we give our lives to Christ. Of course, we are excited. Of course, there is so much to be excited about. You know what I mean? You have been translated into the kingdom of Christ. But we miss the part of learning to follow, learning to love, learning to become more like Jesus. And we just skip to the part of making disciples. If you have not learned to follow, how then can you effectively make disciples who are people that are supposed to love, follow, and become? All through scriptures, we find so many examples of people discipling. Maybe not the word disciplehip but we find so many examples
6:08 of the act of discipling Elijah and Elisha. We see Elisha and Ghazi even though that did not go as well. But even coming to the New Testament when I think about disciplehip I always like to refer to first Jesus and his disciples and the second whom I love so much Paul and Timothy. I love the dynamics of their relationship so much. So we see Jesus picking 12 men that look nothing like who disciples should be that look nothing like who we should know about in history right and making these men become tremendous fathers of faith teaching dividing the word spreading the gospel dying for the gospel we see Jesus make that of lay man we also see Paul picking up Timothy as his protegee and
6:55 teaching him everything he needed to know encouraging instructing rebuking, doing all of that. And I think that that is such a beautiful example of disciplehip. When we give our lives to Christ, yes, we should talk about our faith, but we should also understand that there is a place for growth. There is a place for understanding. There is a place for even learning. Paul, one of our biggest brothers in the faith, wrote most books of the New Testament, had to subject himself to disciplehip. He went, he studied. Paul went to Peter and spent days with him studying, asking questions, gaining clarity. So we see disciplehip is very important. It's important that you learn. It's important that you learn to follow, you love, you become more like Christ in actions, in
7:42 words. You understand doctrine before you start making disciples. We always skip this very important and defining step. When you give your life to Christ, you're a new baby. The scripture even calls you a newborn babe. Think of yourself as a new baby. Literally, you need to grow. You need to be fed. You need to grow into understanding. You need to become before you start to do certain things. Just the way that a newborn baby is fed with milk. He's fed with everything that he needs to grow. You need to feed yourself. You need to feed your spirit man because that's the way to renew your mind so that you can think like Christ. So that you can become like Christ. You need to read your Bible. That's the feeding that we do to our spirit man. You can't be a
8:29 believer and you run off. You are sharing, you are talking, you are advising, you're admonishing, and you don't read your Bible. You don't even have a grasp of what the Bible says. And I'm not saying read the Bible from cover to cover before you become qualified. But you have to read your Bible. You have to understand what God says. Not what you think, not what you've heard people say, not what what is popular on social media, what is widely accepted, but what does God actually say about these things? Let's look at this scripture that I found. John 8:31. So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, these were people that had believed him. These were believers. He said to them, "If you abide in my word,
9:14 you are truly my disciples, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free." So when we come to the place of believing, the next thing we should do is to abide in the word of God. Abide in the word of God because that's how you become a true disciple. Read your Bible. Study your Bible. Delight in the word of God. Seek to find the truth. That's the next step. The scripture is clear on it. Offer yourself to be discipled by the word. And when I talk about disciplehip here, I'm not just talking about going to an individual that you feel is more mature in Christ to teach you. But I'm talking about you sitting down on the word. Sitting down and understanding the word. Of course,
10:01 I'm not even going to negate the part of also having mature believers in your life, mature people in Christ that would teach you correctly. Paul speaking to Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter 2 1 and verse two says, "You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And what you have heard from me in the presence of many weaknesses in trust to faithful men." what you have heard from me, what you have been taught by a more mature Christian, entrust them to other faithful men who would be able to teach others also. So it's a cycle. Paul disciples Timothy, Timothy goes ahead, disciples other believers, but you cannot step out and begin to teach without even proper understanding.
10:47 Submit yourself. You might want to do some Bible courses. You might want to submit yourself to a Bible academy. you might want to get into the disciplehip program of a local church. And talking about a local church, I'm about to, you know, get into all of that very soon. I'm going to drag myself. I remember a couple of years ago, I believe this was 2019 or 2020. 2020 if I'm not mistaken. I think this was at the heat of co, I had began to seek for a very deep relationship with God. I didn't want anything on the surface anymore. And I remember, you know, in that season, I was praying a lot. I was studying a lot. And I had a vision. At this point, I have had a couple of supernatural encounters and experiences. So, I could not mistake this one. I knew what this meant. This was literally God speaking
11:33 to me. I wasn't sleeping. I wasn't awake. You know, that kind of thing. And I saw a vision. And when I woke up, you know, when I, you know, jacked up from that vision, I began to interpret that scripture by virtue of what I knew. And I remembered them. I felt I had seen the second coming. I felt I had seen the rapture. I didn't even know at the point the difference between the rapture and the second coming. By the way, they are two different events if you don't know that. So, I thought I had seen the rapture. I thought I had seen the second coming. I wasn't even sure what I had seen. I thought it was one and the same. I went on my WhatsApp. I was spreading the news. I was talking about Oh my god. I was sharing this story with my husband a couple of days ago and we had a very good laugh about it. I was just talking
12:19 and I was sharing and I was crying. I was emotional. I had a lot of people call me and say, "Rema, are you okay? Is everything okay?" And I'm like, "You don't understand what I have seen. I've seen a vision from God. I have seen a vision from God. You don't understand what I'm saying." But now, a couple of years after the Holy Spirit brought back that vision, of course, because now I understand why he would even bring back that vision to me. It was for this appointed time. And when he began to replay that vision, of course, I can't even forget it. It was it was so vivid. It is still so vivid in my mind. The Holy Spirit brought back that vision and began to explain to me what it was. And I was so surprised how I now understood that what I had seen, even though, you
13:04 know, types and shadows had absolutely nothing absolutely nothing to do with the rapture, had absolutely nothing to do with the second coming. The Lord was giving me a personal message, a personal instruction about a next season of my life. But because that was what I had heard about rapture, that was what I heard about the second coming. I misinterpreted it. And not only did every man misinterpret it, I went and shared the word to everyone that care to listen. I apologize to everyone that received that broadcast message from me. It was not from God. That was not what God told me to share. But this is really what it is when you don't read your Bible. Now with a better understanding of scriptures, now with a better understanding of doctrine, I just know
13:51 that that was not what I saw. That was not the second coming. That was not the rapture. That was nothing like that. But imagine how many of us go out as Christian content creatives and we share so passionately what we believe is the truth. Second Timothy 2:15, I'm reading the Amplified Classic Version. He says, "Study and be eager and do your utmost to present yourself to God, approved, tested by trial, a workman who has no cost to be ashamed, correctly analyzing and accurately dividing, rightly handling and skillfully teaching the word of truth. You are not ashamed of the gospel. You are correctly analyzing it. not analyzing it by what you have
14:36 heard, what you think, what the popular opinion about it is, but you're correctly analyzing. You're accurately dividing. You are rightly handling and you are skillfully teaching. Because some of us as content creators, we are not skillfully teaching. You are sharing the gospel is coming off judgmental. You are sharing the gospel is coming off like you are prideful. There is something called skillfully passing the message of God skillfully rightly packaged for the audience that it is meant for. You have to read the word. The last thing I'm probably going to talk about in this video is the need for us as believers to be in Christian communities. Sometimes when we give our lives to Christ, we believe that, oh, I know the way God is leading me. I know what God is saying to me. I know what God has said to me. And we find ourselves thinking of our encounters and
15:24 experiences as superior to what any person, any church can teach us. Hebrews chapter 10 25 in the King James version, he says, "Do not forsake the assembling together of brethren as the manner of some is." Don't forsake that coming together. There is something that happens when we come together. You cannot be a Christian content creator. You cannot be a Christian talking about God, sharing about God, and you are not rooted in a local assembly. You're just on your own. You're just doing your own thing. You believe in what God is telling you. And that thing God is telling you, God is telling only you. You don't agree with anything that any other church has to say. No, you can't be a person in Christ without having authority over you. God does not lead us
16:10 that way. God leads us in authority. Christ is our head. But even on earth here, there are several heads that we have that lead us in Christ. So please submit yourself. Please find a local assembly, a bibleelving church that speaks Christ, that shares the gospel, that understands doctrinal truth, and be planted there. Don't be moving up and about. Don't be here. Be planted and grow and become. And I'm sure that God would use us to manifest to the ends of the earth. That's my utmost prayer. I hope that I've shared this message in love. It was I feel like a burden has been lifted off my shoulders and I hope that I share this message in love. God is still correcting me on certain things that I I was doing without being properly discipled in areas in certain
16:57 areas. So, I just hope that I I wasn't sounding prideful. I hope I wasn't judgmental. I hope I didn't make you feel less of yourself. This is not in any way to say that your Christianity or your life in Christ is substandard to whatever standard, but this is just me sharing what God would have you know in this season. Thank you so much for watching. Give this video a thumbs up and please please please if you have never shared a video from this channel, please share this one. Tag me. I want to repost. I want to reshare share it to someone that would find this useful and helpful. And you might just be saving someone from error. God bless you and see you in my next one. Bye. [Music]
