Overseer of God’s Remnant Assembly Akintayo Emmanuel Explores What it Takes to be a Follower of Christ
In the New Testament, Matthew 22:14 proclaims: “For many are called, but few are chosen.” But what does it mean to be chosen? At first, this may seem like a mystery to be solved or a riddle to unravel. However, as far as the Overseer of God’s Remnant Assembly Akintayo Emmanuel is concerned, it is categorically neither of these things — and never has been.
“The reason that so many people find following Christ cryptic has nothing to do with Christ, and everything to do with the fact that they don’t want to accept to His divine will and plan for them,” commented Akintayo Emmanuel, who in addition to serving as the Overseer of God’s Remnant Assembly is also President of Hear the Lord Ministries. “They shroud themselves in complexity and skepticism because it allows them to avoid facing the clear, unmistakable fact that they are not following Christ in the way that they should. They may trick others and delude themselves, but they cannot deceive God, any more than a small child can fool one’s loving and attentive parent.”
According to God’s Remnant Assembly’s Akintayo Emmanuel, true followers of Christ are defined and distinguished by core, unmistakable characteristics that include:
1. Joyful Surrender
True followers of Christ joyfully — rather than anxiously or miserably — surrender to God’s will. As Proverbs 3:5–6 proclaims: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.”
2. Consistent Obedience
True followers of Christ do not employ circumstantial ethics or take moral and ethical shortcuts. They are consistently obedient to God’s will and plan. As John 14:23 proclaims: “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.”
3. Caring and Supporting Others
True followers of Christ do not live a misery life — emotionally or financially — with the hope they will be rewarded in the next life. The time is now, the place is here, and the instruction is pure: care and support others in thought, feeling and action; including and sometimes especially those who may disagree with you, but are nevertheless children of God. As James 2:14–17 proclaims: “What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, `Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,’ but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”
Comments God’s Remnant Assembly’s Akintayo Emmanuel: “We have the freedom to embrace His message and mission or reject and rile against it. It really is that simple. We only make it complicated because we want to follow Christ and God the Father on our terms, not on His. It doesn’t work that way, but some people — who may be extremely intelligent in other aspects of their life — refuse to accept this basic, fundamental and very simple truth. It’s not that they don’t understand it. They do. It’s that they don’t want to pay the price of understanding it, because it means that their life will have to change. What they don’t realize is that what they receive is far, far greater than what they give up. It’s an incomprehensibly profitable exchange.”
