JESUS saved me from Islam.

so while I was in Nigeria I'm surrounded by Christians I'm attending a Christian School I'm going to Bible study and one day the pastor says Jesus is coming back soon if you're a Muslim you need to repent I got pretty angry and I was like why would he say that and then they told me about this youth conference and they paid for me completely to go and when I was at this conference I realized that I was born into sin and that there's no amount of good works that could make up for the sin in my life and so at that conference I renounced Islam completely they did an altar call and I went to The Altar and I gave my life to Jesus growing up I grew up in a Muslim household both of my parents are currently practicing Muslims and I did not know Jesus to be God in fact growing up I always questioned uh the religion of Islam God never felt personal to me it was never taught to me that I could have a personal relationship he is not portrayed to be a personal God in Islam he never came down and related with Humanity in fact it's almost as if there's a wedge between us and God and I never knew that God could speak to us I never knew that God wanted to speak to me or communicate with me so I never even positioned myself to try to hear from God God I just had this knowing that God existed and he was somewhere up there looking down at me but I didn't think that I could have a personal relationship with him so to describe my household growing up uh I grew up with strict Nigerian parents and I want to say the display of love was very rare in my household I never heard the words I love you I never um was asked how are you doing we never communicated about feelings so I grew up in just a very Stern strict household where it was like do good in school get a good career be the best you can be if we talked about anything it was probably like politics or school education but there was no emotional connection I would say in my family so this affected me in a lot of different ways and some people if they grew up in a household where they were never told I love you especially from a father figure they might cling to people more in the outside or they might go and look for love in um like as women we might go and look for love in uh men but for me it made me like very harsh so I was very cold in a way not that I couldn't relate to people or have friends but if someone were to tell me they loved me I couldn't say it back I didn't know how to show my emotions and eventually um when I got to I want to say high school I was bullied a lot one for being African for my name for my look a lot of different things I was bullied a lot and so when it got to middle school I felt that the bullying was unbearable and I remember going home and telling my parents I don't want to be in this country if I'm going to be bullied for being Nigerian I'd rather just go back to Nigeria and often times in school I would try to defend myself I would try to you know um just defend myself when people would bully me and I would often be the one to get in trouble and so my parents they would call me a troublemaker they would say why are you always getting in trouble and I would TR to explain to them I was getting bullied but it's like they didn't understand or they didn't hear me so I ended up like begging my dad to send me to Nigeria and little did I know God was in the process he knew what he was doing when I would go back to Nigeria because when I went back to Nigeria I stayed with a family who was also Muslim but their children attended an all girls Christian boarding school and it was one of the best schools in the city so that is also the school that I attended so in this school whether you were Muslim or Christian they didn't really care what you were you had to go to church on Sundays and you had to come to Wednesday Bible study so I also took classes on that campus about Christian Studies and that's where I really started to learn about Christianity and who Jesus was I was taught more so religion over relationship but I still began to learn of a God that I never knew growing up and I do remember that I would have bad dreams growing up from about the age of 10 years old and I would wake up out of my sleep crying sometimes and my mom growing up she went to a Christian school as well because she grew up in Ghana and um she knew that there was power in Psalm 23 because even Muslims believe in the Old Testament and they are told to pay attention to the words of the prophets so my mom would tell me to recite Psalm 23 and that was the only Bible scriptures that I knew and so I had that memory that when I would have these bad dreams I would recite Psalm 23 and that was just always at the back of my head so while I was was in Nigeria I'm surrounded by Christians I'm attending a Christian School I'm going to Bible study and one day the pastor says Jesus is coming back soon and if you're Muslim you need to repent and I remember I got pretty angry and I was like why would he say that I remember after the Bible study I went to my best friend at the time who was also Muslim in the school and I was like did you hear what the pastor said he said if you're Muslim you need to repent she just told me don't worry about it we serve the the same God and I was like okay I remember my mom telling me that that Christians and Muslims serve the same God but it wouldn't leave my spirit like my mind almost and I was just questioning it like why would he stand up there in front of the whole school knowing that there are Muslims in the school and say that Jesus is coming back soon and we need to repent repent of what you know I didn't think there was anything wrong with being Muslim I didn't understand what we would have to repent for and so I took a Bible because I told you we took Christian Studies classes so I had a Bible um but I never read it unless it was to study for the class and that day I actually read it because I wanted to and I wanted to understand why the pastor was saying what he was saying and so I stumbled across John chapter 14 and I came across the verse that says Jesus is where Jesus said I am the way the truth and the life and no one comes to the father except through me and in that moment it was as if that scripture pierced my mind it pierced my heart and for some reason I couldn't come to terms with the fact that we serve the same God if Jesus himself was saying I am the way the truth and the life and no one can come to the father except through me so I remember I went back to my best friend and I told her about that and she was just denying it and she was just saying like don't worry about it but I was like read this verse like what does that mean to you and so I started to ask questions I started to do more research and then over the time I stayed at that school for 3 years and I remember just the praise the worship it really drew me and I loved it and I felt this freedom I saw people worshiping god with such Joy whereas in Islam I didn't understand why we had to learn a whole another language just to pray to a god who's supposed to be all knowing but in Christianity you know my language is yurah and I would see people praise him in yurah I would see people praise him in different dialects in different languages with different songs different praises and it just seemed free that's the only way I can explain it and so I was drawn to the idea of this God but I still didn't know him personally and so I Remember by the time I left Nigeria I wanted to be a Christian I didn't want to be Muslim anymore and I remember my classmates saying you can't just do that like your parents are Muslim you can't just do that but when I did come back to America um for ninth grade so I was about 13 years old I came back to America just everything went back to normal I continued going to the mosque with my parents and I knew about what I learned but there was no I don't think I was saved I wasn't saved yet and I didn't have an understanding of Salvation and sin so I took that information and I knew I was drawn to the god of Christianity but when I came back home it was like everything just went back to normal and so I would sit in the mosque and I remember just being so detached I would feel as if we're praying and there's like a brick wall in front of me where my prayers are not being heard my prayers are not being answered and I told my parents I don't want to go to the mosque again I don't feel like I understand this God I don't understand anything and it's confusing and I didn't see the manifestation of any fruit in my parents' life I didn't see any freedom I didn't see any uh prosperity in their souls I didn't see a real relationship where they communed with this God and so I didn't feel connected to Allah and I didn't want to attend the mosque anymore so I stopped around 10th grade and I just started doing my own thing now in 10th grade is where I really started to um look introspectively at myself I started to look internally and see that there was something that I was missing I was missing a love right and I would this is 10th grade is around the time where a lot of your friends they're getting in relationships they're dating guys and at this time I made some friends who were uh they identified as bisexual they identified as different things and I remember feeling unseen looked over I felt as if guys were not attracted to me I felt as if I was heavily rejected and I didn't understand why and so I remember thinking to myself one night if guys are not attracted to me maybe I'm supposed to be gay maybe I'm supposed to be in relationship with women it was as if the moment that week where I began to think those thoughts I remember a specific girl she started to pursue me and I just thought that must be what is supposed to be because what are the odds that I would be thinking and then it would happen little did I know that the enemy was trying to use that door that I open in my mind against me and so I entered a relationship with a girl and I dated her for a few months but I knew that something wasn't right I knew that this is not what how it's supposed to be but I just wanted love and that stemmed from the fact that in my home I don't feel like a certain type of love was shown to me or given to me um especially from my father and so when I was rejected by my father and then also rejected by men in school I turned to entering into a relationship with a woman and over time I just knew that wasn't right but I kept hanging out with the wrong crowd I kept being open to certain things introduced to certain things like smoking weed and drinking and if you were to tell me freshman year a girl just coming back from Nigeria that yeah you're going to be smoking heavily one day and getting drunk I would have laughed in your face because to me smoking weed was like close to murder like I just grew up don't do drugs you know don't drink like it just was foreign to me but when I surrounded myself with people who were doing it you know Bad Company corrupts good morals so I started to feel that this was normal and it was okay and so I graduated high school and eventually I went to college and college is where God really met me because college is where he got me away from my family he got me away from everything that I knew and it was just me and a brand new world and a new level of freedom and so when I went to college I continued smoking a lot drinking a lot partying a lot but I would go to these parties and feel so empty I would go to these parties and experience more rejection but I would still go again every weekend and I couldn't enjoy these parties unless I was high or unless I was drunk and so I used weed as a coping mechanism for my rejection for my depression um when I would feel lonely I would just get high and I would just get drunk at these party so that I wouldn't realize that I'm being rejected you know I had friend a lot of friends who were boy crazy in college and I still felt that rejection that it seemed like everyone's getting in a relationship everyone's finding people or being um seen by people and I felt unseen I felt as if nobody saw me and the day I realized that this was deeper that I was actually depressed I remember I woke up out of my sleep and I just started crying and I went to the bathroom and I didn't know why I was crying but it it felt like there was this deep hole in my heart and something was missing that was that was greater than anything could feel weed couldn't feel it a guy couldn't feel it a girl couldn't feel it drugs couldn't feel it nothing could feel this hole in my heart and if my roommate were to wake up that night and ask me why are you crying I literally couldn't tell you I couldn't tell her because I didn't know but I just knew there was this huge hole in my heart that left me so depressed and so empty that was my freshman year sophomore year I continued to just journey through college and I remember really struggling with purpose and this is where I started to realize that I need someone greater than me to tell me who I am and tell me why I'm here because I would look around and everyone would be passionate about something everyone had like a major that they knew they're like oh I I've always wanted to be a doctor since I was younger I always wanted to be a therapist or this and I felt like I didn't have that I felt like there was nothing that I could see myself doing um I tried to put myself in these checkboxes of a major and I just couldn't do it and I remember being so discouraged and I just knew like I need the one who made me to tell me what I'm supposed to do so this is how God try um started to draw me to himself I just remember all of my friends were Christian but no one ever invited me to church all of my friends were going to Bible study but none of them ever invited me to Bible study so one day when I just came to the end of myself I was so depressed and I was lost I had no direction I remember I invited myself to their Bible study and I told them I want to come to that Bible study that I see you guys on Snapchat going every week I want to go with you and so they told me they're like oh yeah come and I went to this Bible study and I saw young people my age at the time like 20 21 years old worshiping God so freely so passionately but it was different from how I had seen people worship Allah and it was even different from how I seen saw people worship in Nigeria they worshiped him as if he wasn't just a God he was also their friend they worshiped him as if they related with him as if they knew him intimately and personally and I had never heard of anyone talk about God in that manner or talk about him as if they just knew him so well like a best friend and I remember just sitting there and observing the Bible study and I can't even tell you what the topic was preached on that day but I do know that I saw people who actually knew their God and I never saw that before and so I remember saying I want that I want a relationship with God and so I still had a lot of conflict in my mind about the difference between Islam and Christianity but I continue to come to these Bible studies and I continue to hear people testify about how they came from some of the same things that I was struggling with I didn't know that I was addicted to weed I didn't know smoking weed was bad or it was something I necessarily needed to be freed from and when they would testify and share the root of it all I realized that I am masking a bigger problem and the the root of it is sin actually and so when they would testify I would start to get convicted day by day and I made it my mission to go to these Bible studies nothing could stop me from attending and then they told me about this youth conference where it was about 2,000 college students they would gather together once a year in North Carolina and they would just worship and people would encounter God and so what they did was they brought in a few people who had testimonies from the same conference to come and testify I just remember hearing the testimonies and how one person testified about how when they came back God changed their life and told them to change their major and God knew I needed that to pull me in he he he knew he was intentional about bringing that person to testify about how he told that person to major in something specific and he knew I was looking for purpose and so I said I want to go to this conference and they paid for me completely to go and when I was at this conference I experienced the tangible presence of God I saw the physical manifestation of God and I learned about the real Gospel of Jesus Christ it was at this conference that I came face to face with my sin and I realized that I was born into sin and that I needed a savior and that there's no amount of good works that could make up for the sin in my life because in Islam you're taught that on Judgment Day there would be a scale and if you do enough good works it would outbalance it would outweigh the bad that you've done but sin the wages of sin is death and Jesus Christ died on the cross to give us life and if there is no new life then the wages we owe them we we will still pay those wages which is death and so when I came face to face with my sin at that conference they did an altar call and I went to The Altar and I gave my life to Jesus and it still wasn't that simple I gave my life to Christ but I still had so many questions and I remember talking to some people at the conference and letting them know like yeah my parents are Muslim and I still thought it was okay I just thought maybe this is my path and my parents are on their path and it's okay that they're Muslim and that I'm going to be Christian but I realized at that conference when they taught about generational curses and they tgh about deception and how the enemy uses different tools to deceive us and lure us away from truth I realize that there is only one way one truth and one life that comes through Jesus Christ and so at that conference I renounced Islam completely and I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior after we left the conference we came back to campus and the group of us that went we held hands together and all we did was simply want to pray a closing prayer of just thanking Jesus for returning us back to campus and in that moment we're just saying thank you Jesus no one laid hands on me no one prayed for me and the presence of God fell on me and I remember in that very moment all I said was thank you Jesus and I started to speak in tongues and I had in that moment I didn't know what tongues were I did hear other people speaking in it at the conference I saw Deliverance at the conference I saw interpretation of tongues at this conference but I just I guess I just thought that maybe that's something that's going to happen later for me or maybe I have to get to a certain level in Christ before that can happen I didn't ask any questions but when we were praying that closing prayer and the spirit of God fell on me I was baptized by the Holy Spirit and I knew in that moment that I was never going to be the same again I left with such a fire and a Zeal for Jesus I knew that I was not leaving this conference alone but I left with a friend that was always going to be with me that would never leave me nor forsake me and so I just started to develop a prayer life in private I started to read the Bible for myself and I began to consume the word at a crazy rate like I was just so hungry I remember I went through the whole Testament in like a month and I was just reading and reading and I was just learning about who Jesus was and I continued going to these Bible studies I remember wanting to experience that tangible presence again in my bedroom and I said Lord like I know that you know you met me at this conference but you're everywhere you're with me right now you know and the Bible talks about how the spirit of God right how when you don't know what to pray for he'll pray through you with moanings and groanings that can't be expressed through words so when I would pray I would begin to acknowledge the Holy Spirit and ask him to pray with me and um I just wanted to experience the same encounters alone in my room and the presence of God just began to meet me and he just I felt him with me when I would go to class es I felt him with I would tell everyone about Jesus no one had to teach me what evangelism was or tell me to go and spread the gospel I let everyone know like hey I went to this conference addicted I was high on the way to the conference I went to the conference listening to secular music in my headphones and I came back wanting nothing to do with alcohol or weed he stripped the taste of weed from my mouth he removed everything that I used as a to fill a void and he replaced it with him and I no longer had to be drunk with wine cuz I was filled with the Holy Spirit and the high the presence that comes from the holy spirit is 10 times better and I actually feel fulfilled you know when I drink from Jesus's cup I don't thirst for anything again and so when I came back from this conference it was beautiful I was on this honeymoon phase and I actually ended up becoming a leader in that same Bible study where I got saved and so I was helping to make more disciples on campus and things on campus was beautiful but the study of the difference between Islam and Christianity continued I still had to understand how so many people could be following one God but I had this real life encounter and I know Jesus is real I know he's God there's no doubt about it but I still had to understand how are people following this other God and where did this come from and so I began to study I began to research in a bill caresi and read uh seeking Allah finding Jesus and I begin to just see where did where did Islam come from and how did this come about and one thing I know is that you know um Muhammad states that he received this Revelation from an angel and in the Bible it specifically tells us that even if an angel were to come to you if anyone is to come to you preaching another gospel let that man be a cursed and I I I went and did the history and I I saw where they took the the words of the prophets and they misunderstood because the Old Testament the words of the prophets it points to a Messiah it points to one who is coming who will redeem the people of Israel who will save us and people are sadly deceived right and so I just did a lot of research and I had to understand that there is one God we don't worship multiple gods we worship one God who manifests himself in three persons and over time I continue to study and study and study until there was no doubt in my mind that what I knew was the truth and Jesus revealed himself to me through encounters but also through study and through reading the Bible and even going back at times and reading the Quran and seeing the difference between the two faiths and understanding that you know God is Jesus he is the way and he desires to not just save me but to save everybody and so I had to understand that um there are many people who grew up in church and they knew God but I'm someone who didn't grow up in church I'm someone who I should never I should have never been a Christian there's no way that I should have come to the knowledge of this truth but he still found me he still encountered me and if he can encounter me he can encounter anyone you mentioned at the start of the testimony that your parents are still Muslim yes what is that Dynamic with your family today when I got saved you know like I said I was serving God on campus and everything but that question still remained God what do I study I still felt like he didn't answer me but the joy that I had of Salvation it didn't allow me to worry too much however I did constantly go to God and say God why am I here what do you want me to do and I feel as if God would only speak to me about souls and and the salvation of Souls and so when I it got to a point where I was really asking God okay what direction do you want me to take with school he revealed to me that for what I've called you to do I don't need you to be in school and I think that was one of the hardest things for me to hear because I was madly in love with Jesus and willing to follow him wherever but I am Nigerian and Nigerians value school they value education they value college higher education so much you know many Nigerians you'll meet they'll there'll be nurses doctors lawyers Engineers things like that and to hear the god of Heaven and Earth tell me that I didn't need school it broke my heart and he eventually called me out of school and he called me to leave and I had to face my parents with that and in my country you follow your father's religion that's just custom so it's already a little bit dishonorable for me to not want to be Muslim at all but because my parents believe my D my mom at least she believes that the god of Christianity and the god of Islam is the same God my dad however does not believe that he believes Allah is God and that you know Christians he just doesn't believe in that but for me to tell them that I was Christian and you know they were a little apprehensive about it but they were okay with it until I had to obey God and so God started to call me to obey him in ways that would ultimately I would have to disobey my parents and so when I had to leave school I told my parents and that was one of the hardest things for me to do because they thought I was crazy they were like okay you're a Christian we understand that but now you're saying this God is telling you to leave school it's not making sense you're taking this Christianity thing too seriously and I remember like just the anger you know of my parents and I wanted to represent Jesus so boldly but I felt like at home I couldn't in college I would be bold but at home I couldn't I would be more silent and so it was really hard you know leaving school I remember just feeling hopeless I felt purposeless and the Lord led me into a Wilderness season because he didn't tell me where I was going but he told me where to go and that was away from school and I just remember feeling without a degree there's nothing I can do I felt dumb I felt embarrassed and this was all during covid so the whole world shut down so a lot of people didn't get to see that you know I never actually graduated from college however I was in a Wilderness season with the Lord where he began to remove every form of dependency I had on a college degree on my parents on other people and I had to be completely dependent on him I had to be dependent on him for my purpose my future where I would live where I would eat and for a while I couldn't live with my parents because my faith was was not at a place where I could stand the words they were saying to me where the way they would speak you know against my faith I could not handle it so for a while I had to actually live with my pastors and the Lord began to just develop me and root me in my faith wholeheartedly so that if I could stand before him in this secret place that when he would Release Me From that Wilderness season I would be able to stand with him and stand before anyone he gave me such a confidence in him and in what he was doing in my life knowing that he's going to get the glory and he's using my life to testify of his nature and so I just came to a place of surrender where God you can do whatever you want through me and today you know the Lord has called me to be an entrepreneur and I am in a service-based business where I see women every day and sometimes I call myself like a seceret agent because I am servicing them in a form of makeup but I am planting seeds I am winning Souls I am sharing the gospel I am telling people about Jesus and one of my favorite things is that my clients always ask me how did you get into this industry and I get to tell my whole testimony every single day what do your parents think about all of this after I want to say two years the Lord he just kept telling me that their hearts are in my hands and he will turn it whichever way he pleases and after about 2 years it was as if he softened their hearts toward me and they actually support what I do in terms of Entrepreneurship and you know the mocking the scoffing the persecution from them it just completely stopped and they have this understanding that you know Remy is going to serve Jesus and Remy loves Jesus and I just trust the Lord for their salvation but as far as how they treat me I truly thank God because it came from a place where I could barely stand in their presence without crying or feeling ashamed for being a Christian to now boldly just talking to them about my faith and God has opened doors for me to share the gospel with them and though they are not fully convinced yet I know that Jesus is going to do more work than I could ever do and so now they understand where I am and I know that God is working in them and he's going to complete what he started in my family not just in me but in every single one of my family members amen amen amen now Remy there's people around the world that if they were to say what you are saying right now could face quite literal death why testify boldly in this way when you come to the knowledge of Truth you want to share that with everybody and if somebody were blindfolded and walking off of a cliff you would want to run and grab that person and tell them to walk in the other direction and when I encounter Jesus Christ and I knew that he was the way the truth and the life I just knew that I had to tell everybody it's not something I can be ashamed about it's not something I can be silent about because one day we will all stand before him and every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and I would rather that people would do it on this side of Eternity and so I will not stop sharing this testimony I will not stop sharing it to every person I come across that Jesus desires to have a real intimate relationship with you and that he died on the cross for your sins Remy can you pray for those who are watching that desire this Revelation um or maybe even also they know somebody uh and then they desire for them to know that Revelation could you just pray for them as they're watching right now yes Heavenly Father God I thank you so much I thank you Lord that you called me out of darkness and into your Marvelous Light and as I stand here and share this testimony father every person who is listening who desires to know truth God I pray for the spirit of Revelation for the spirit of wisdom and the knowledge of God to come upon them Lord I pray that you would Open the Eyes of their heart to know you God I pray that you would encounter them I pray that you would lead them Father God to the evidence that they need to be fully convinced and I thank you Jesus for every person who desires to share this truth with someone that they know may you give them the boldness and the power that comes from your Holy Spirit to share the truth confidently in Your Divine timing and with wisdom in Jesus mighty name amen amen Remy any last words for people who are watching your testimony right now yes truth is truth and we cannot say that there is a truth for one person and another Truth for someone else if I were to look at the sky we can't say that it's red and then one person says it's blue there's one truth there's one way and his name is Jesus he did not just come for One race he did not just come for one culture or one people God so loved the world that he sent his one and only son so that we would not perish but eternal life and he desires to save everybody and so if you're coming across this this is a sign that Jesus is calling you and he is going to allow everyone to hear this good news so I pray that you would truly seek truth not just because you were raised in something not just because that's all you've known your whole life but I pray that you would truly seek truth and if you seek God wholeheartedly you will find him

Channel: Delafé Testimonies

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Id: 4nu-6sr8l8k

Length: 33min 3sec (1983 seconds)

Published: Wed May 01 2024