It’s always great to know that you are doing what God has called you to do. However, what if you don’t? Here is a discussion between Ade & I on How I was able to check that this podcast is what God wants me to do. This is the part one of this recording, part 2 will air next week.
- It’s not your tool that matters it is the message that matters
- Check very well to be sure you can sustain it
- Count the cost and state it clearly
- Learn to say No to other ideas
- Join my VIP Program now to Find Your First Profitable Idea
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Ep. 44 Transcripts: How To Be Sure Your Idea Is God’s
Like Jesus Podcast Episode 44
[Intro Beat]
Hello Everybody, this is Olu Sobanjo. And you’re listening to Like Jesus Podcast. I have Ade Sobanjo here with me today.
Ade: Hello!
Olu: We’re very glad to do this discussion and to share this discussion with you today. Recently as I was spending some time to pray, I remembered what happened to our son, Demi. At some point, we just were thinking that he should go to an eye test and when he went to do the eye test, we discovered that he needed glasses. After that, we were just asking him the experience he’s had before that. And I remembered one day, we were driving in the night to go or very early in the morning to go to the airport and he said to me, “Wow, look at…” [after he now has the glasses] He said to me, “Mummy, how come you never told me these were street lights?” And I was like, “I don’t know I needed to tell you that these were street lights.” He said, “Because I’ve never seen them. I always used to wonder what kind of light those were…” Because he couldn’t really see them. He’d see some kind of glowing thing – light, but he didn’t know they were just street lights or the oncoming vehicle in the night. He’d just be wondering what was that. But funny enough, he was in school and he’d struggle… He was doing well in school but we didn’t know that he had the challenge of not seeing very well.
And as I was praying recently, I just realized that it’s very interesting that sometimes we may not even know that we can’t see clearly. You know, we’ve been talking about doing what God has put in your heart to do. And as I was praying that day, I remember just feeling that it’s possible that you have an idea and you’re almost… Maybe you’re even running with the idea; maybe you feel like you should start running with the idea but you may not actually know that it may not actually be God’s plan.
What do you think about that, Ade?
Ade: Yeah. I think it’s very important that we are sure that God is directing us to do why we do before we do them. And I think we all run into that problem. You get an idea, you’re so passionate about the idea at the time. You love the idea and you’re ready to commit your money and your time to it. And then after one year, you run out steam – you run out of energy; you run out of money and you put it down. Then, 6 months later, you come up with another brand new idea and you run for another 2 years, only to run out of steam and put it all down. So, maybe what you should do today is just talk about you – your podcast.
Olu: Sure!
Ade: Umm… How did you decide that this is God’s plan? It’s not just another fancy idea; it’s not just another thing that will go on for just 6 months and then you’ll pack it up. What made you know that this is God?
Olu: Thank you! I think that it’s a very good topic and a very good question. It’s going to be a little bit of secret time here today but I think it’s very good to do this.
Personally, I think for a while now, I’ve always thought that I had to share. Every time, I’ll be thinking I need to share; I need to… there’s this message that I want to pass across. I want people to do what God has called them to do. And I’ve always desired that but I mixed it all up at the beginning. I was carried away with the model of sharing the message. I was carried away… it was more of the model – the strategy that I’d use to carry out the message that was more important to me at the beginning. And so, after a while… After I had tried YouTube – I used to do lots of YouTube videos but I realized that I couldn’t sustain it and gradually I just dropped most of the things that I used to do then. You know I mean I’ve had all sorts of ideas and I’ve used different strategies so to speak but gradually, I got to a point… As I continued to fellowship with God, I got to a point where God began to open my eyes to see that it’s not the strategy or the tactics or the tool that I’m going to use to deliver the message that matters. It’s the message itself that matters! And at a point, I was almost even scared of picking it up again because I didn’t want to run my ideas. I was tired of running and stopping. But God began to change my heart to see that the message is very important and people need to hear this. It got to a point, I remember there was a time I got to the point where I said I’m going to be doing this faceless messages that it’s not about me anymore; it’s not about what I want to say. It’s about the message going out and so I… ‘cause I’d get all these write-ups on WhatsApp that people will send and I began to feel that many of these WhatsApp messages and Facebook posts and all these things, they inject fear more than elevate God. And I began to see that you know, I just got angry. So, I said I will be doing this faceless messages – I tried it. I think I did one writing… I wrote a comment and I sent it to my friends and family and I just trusted that it’d just continue to be forwarded like that. And then I did another one that was audio. It was my voice but my name wasn’t there and I sent it out. And I did that and then I began to continue to walk with God and I realized that some other times, I’d want to refer back to these things. It’d be good to have an archive of where it is. And then I began to see, “Okay maybe it will be good for me to put it on my website so that I can always have the archive.” I can always use it – refer back to it and all that.
I was still on that and still trying to see what platform to use, what tool to use when one day I was listening to a message. I can’t remember the title of the message but it was Ashaya that was preaching in that message. I can’t even remember what she was saying but what I got from that message was more like God had a whip in his hand and chased me out of bed and said, “Stop that message now and begin what I’ve called you to do.” That was the day I felt, “Oh! Maybe I should try podcasting. Maybe if I do podcasting it will be easy…” So, I did the first one; the very first podcast – an introduction to Like Jesus Podcast. When I did that, I just saw how easy it was. If I go listen back to that very first one, I still feel I should delete it but I’m not going to delete it because it’s part of the history. And It’s good. I realized that after I started that, what God now did was, I googled how can I start a podcast using my phone? And then I saw an app. The app that I was using then is called opinion podcast or something. So, I paid for the podcasting app and I began to do the recordings and it was so easy for me. Because of the experience that I’ve had with video editing on my YouTube channel and all that, it was so easy for me to handle this app. And by the time I started doing it, it was so easy, I just continued. Gradually as I continued, I discovered that the app crashed and I had to go… Thank God for you that you’re very knowledgeable about it. I had moved over to another platform which is not as easy and where I started from but recently as I was just thinking about it, I realized that God arranged that that day I would start… Because if I had not started that day, I might have been thinking, “Oh Podcasting is so difficult. I can’t do it…” And if you don’t have the time to help me and I don’t want to spend money to do it, then maybe I won’t do it. But I discovered that as I began to do podcasting, it became so easy even easier than writing a blog post. But I really think that it’s good to start with what you think you can sustain.
Ade: Yes! And so what I was trying to find out from you is, how does a person know that this is not another thing that is going to run for just a few months and go off? But you just mentioned that there’s that burning desire. It’s there even when you did it for a while and stopped using the YouTube and you didn’t do it again for a while. God still brought it back up and you had to go and do it. Now, what I want to find out from you is, for people who are just starting out on a project, you started off and you stopped. What are we going to put that in? Was it fear that got you up or you just wanted to go big? What was it that made you start so big and you ran out of steam? And looking back, what are the pitfalls that people should watch out for?
Olu: I think the main thing is what I just said, starting something that you’re sure you can sustain. And sustenance, it’s almost like… In a business, before Coca-Cola or Apple or any big company out there, before they go out and embark on a new project, they’d want to analyze where they are. They’d want to analyze the resources they have. Resources could be money; it could be the human resource; it could be time, it could be… They want to know if they are able to run this race. The Lord Jesus said – He said so Himself. He said, “is there anyone of you that’d want to build a house and will not first count the cost?” I think that was one of the problems that I had. Now, if you ask me and if you take me back to the point where I was, I’d say I counted the cost. And what I did was that I looked at my… you know, this message is really strong on my heart and so I say to myself, I’m going to dedicate one hour every day to do this. It’s a 10 mins video [I can’t remember] or a 5 mins video I was doing then but I’d dedicate one hour to it. And I looked in my schedule and I thought I’d just do this. It’s going to take me some time to pray, some time to write my script and then some time to record, then edit and you know… But really, the truth of the matter is that even though I dedicated that one hour to it, the one hour wasn’t enough to actually get the job done. Let’s say the time when I started this, let’s say I was not a married person, I wasn’t a pastor, I wasn’t a mom, I didn’t have a job… If I didn’t have all that, and it was just me going to the office and just taking time. After the work between 5-10pm every day, I was just free watching TV and all that. If that was my schedule, it’d have made sense. But because of the fact that I had all these other things that I was doing, I thought I counted the cost but it wasn’t well done.
So, I think that for anyone to sustain anything, it’s not just you that you need to count and say, Oh! Yes, I can do it and start jumping. You need to bring it to the table, write it all out then… Just like in a company, the people in one department will do the analysis, another department will do the analysis of the project and then they bring it together in a group and say this is what we need. Then they analyze it. They say “do we do it now? Or do we postpone it or do we…” This is one thing that I could have done. I could have brought my agenda, clearly written agenda to you and then we discuss it together and then we commit to it. Now, that was the difference between then and now. Then, I was running with it and I would do it as long as you know, I don’t want anybody to stop me. But, there was no formal discussion where I said I want to do this and let’s do… And then apart from discussing with your family, there’s also the aspect of Am I able to sustain it spiritually – whatever it is that God is calling you to do? Because, when God has put something in your heart to do, there is always the adversary that won’t want it to happen. So, you need to spend time – quality time with God so that the message that God has given to you is preserved and you’re able to run with it and actually not throw it down as you go. So, I think it’s much more than we think when we say, can I sustain it? Do I have enough capacity to be able to do this? It is much more than what we are really ready to face and actually go for it and say Okay, let me do a detailed analysis. Can I do it? Maybe I should take it easier than the way I started… Because sometimes what happens is you get the idea of what you are supposed to be doing 10 years from now and you want to start that now. But sometimes, it’s good to start small. I bring it to you, we say, “Oh! this is very elaborate but we don’t have this kind of capacity yet. Let’s start with very little part of it and then let’s grow.” And this is what I’ve seen in this new start for me because then we are all doing it together. We understand, the children understand and at the time, my children were very small. They couldn’t understand all these but now it’s a lot easier.
Ade: Yes. Thank you. As you were talking, there were some questions that were coming up in my mind. I’m thinking of, do you have experience of some ideas that they are not just God’s idea? Because in this situation, it was God’s idea, the application was too big and so you had to pull back. But what of someone that has an idea that is really supposed to be killed for now? The idea itself is not supposed to fly? Maybe it is going to come up or it is going to be an addition or it is just supposed to be given to someone, how do we know that? What are some of the things that you can look back into your archive and help somebody?
Olu: Oh yes! Oh yes! Thank you for bringing that up. That’s one of the reasons why it took me time even to get to this point because my personal you know, the way my brain works, and I’m assuming now that I have mingled with a lot of people; I see that I am the only one that is like that. Ideas keep coming in like a flood. So, I get the idea of what God wants me to do but then I have all these other big ideas – huge ideas that come in. You need to actually look at them and see, is this what you really want to do?
I remember one day, God said to me in… I was just looking at the conference that we do – the ladies conference that we do and it was at that year, I can’t remember 2-3 years ago, as I was looking at the ladies, I began to see God say to me, this is the reason why I gave you this idea. Before that, I used to think that it was for me to do all these things. But then I began to see that, no! It was for me to empower many of the women to be able to do what He has called them to do. And so, I began to see that as the ideas are coming, I should actually be writing them down to share with other people. The point is not for me to do. But before that, I used to want to do every new idea. And they’d look really fantastic. I’d see the way it’d work well with where I am right now and I’d just want to start running with it. My brain becomes really busy calculating and my blood pumps… I’m so excited, you know, I get a lot of adrenaline and I just want to go for it. I’m so excited for these things but then, it is not what God is calling me to do.
So, how do I differentiate and say this one is not God’s plan for me and this one is God’s plan for me? I think the way I’ve looked at it and I’ve been able to do it now is based on my walk with God, I’ve been able to declutter to the point where I realize that the reason why He sent me here is this: to empower other people to do what He has called them to do and to encourage them to do so. Now, I’ve seen that as the core and you’ve really helped me a lot where you keep… I remember back in the day you’d say, “But where are you going with this? What are you trying to do with this?” I’ve been able to get to a point where I see it now – I see my call, what God has called me to do and I want to ask myself each new idea that comes and say, how does that fit into what God has called me to do? I want to have a new school – kids club that will help kids. I have always… I love it. I want it for my children and so I should create it and start doing it because right now, I’m in a place where it’s not available so I should start doing it. But then I look at it, “Can I actually sustain it? Will I be able to sit down there? Would somebody else be able to carry out the process if I am not there?” And all these questions help me to look at the idea and then I trash it. Eventually, I got to a point where I’m not trying to achieve anymore. I’m just trying to be who He made me to be. And I think the more you walk with God, the more you get to a point where you’re not struggling to make a point. You’re not struggling to tell the world that you are somebody. You just be yourself and the more you do that, the easier it is to say No to many other things that come.
Do I still get ideas now? Yes, I do! In short, even in this new podcast and all these things that I do now, I still have different ideas but it’s a lot easier for me now to just write it down. And maybe it’s for tomorrow. I don’t know but right now, let me face what I’m doing. This is what God has called me to do. I’ll face it, I’ll do it well and then we will see what God will do from there. So, it’s very important that each one would look at it and say this idea, how does it fit into what God has called me into? So, it’s very important to know what God has called me to do here on earth. It starts with making other people know the joy and the love of God and the name of Jesus to be elevated. That’s the main thing for every one of us but in different ways, He puts a strong desire in your heart for something and you are going for it. The more you do that, the more you submit and surrender to what God is calling you to do, the more it is easier for you to do – to be able to say No to other things.
Ade: That is fantastic. I remember that question, you answered more of that in your course Ready Set Impact, the first class I think. So, those who have not taken the course, go ahead and take it…
Olu: Oh yeah!
Ade: …So that you can know more about that. Now, I have another question for you just to help someone that is starting off. They have this idea, they believe it is God but they are doing some work now. They are working. For yourself, this podcast that you are doing now, how are you… you know you said to write down the plan and make sure you can sustain it What will be in that plan that will tell us that I can sustain this? I know that at that time when you were doing those things, you said you could sustain it so what are some of the things? I want you to go deeper into the plan and some things that they can try because sometimes, you can’t know this unless you make effort. So, how can they test out the sustainability of the plan that they have?
Olu: Thank you I…
Ade: How did you do yours?
Olu: I think that it’s always good to look at… If you are going to sustain anything, it’s always good to look at where you are and see what you have – the resources that you have and where you are at, okay? I am talking about when I say where you are at, it’s very important for example to look at your experiences, your gifts, your talents, your skills… You need to look at all that and write it down. Like you said, we’ve done this well in the Ready Set Impact Course and it’d be very beneficial to anyone that goes to take that course. So, you write down all these things – the resources that you have.
Then your relationships. Your relationships. If you have, for example, to do a good recording, it is good to have a place where there is not a lot of noise. If you have a baby in the house, it may not be so easy to get that done. Except if you have enough money to have an extra room where you can lock it up and soundproof the whole place and make it your studio. Right now, I don’t have that and I have something similar to – close to it but it is not complete. Even at the time, it was far from it. So, it is good to look at your relationships, look at your home setting, look at your schedule at work, look at your schedule at church, some of the commitment that you already have – things that you have said yes to and you have committed to. Some of the things… You may need to drop some things, some relationships that may not be necessary at the time in order to do what God has called you to do. You may need to cut down on some of those. But really, the main thing is just to look at all of the things that you have where am I right now and what can I sustain?
For example, when I was starting this, I didn’t start with buying a microphone or buying a tripod stand or buying some of these things. I had many of the things already and then I started with my phone. I didn’t start with a new recording set that will make it look professional. No, No, No! I realized that I could even start with my phone and people were asking me, are you actually recording that from your phone? Yes, I was. It was later on that I bought a better mic for the recording and I’m still doing it on my phone. Now, the next level is to do it with a better recording set so it’s good to start with what you have – the equipment, the tools, the things that you already have now. The only money I spent to start this was $5.99. That was the cost of the app at the time. And that was it. I was just using that. But you know, what happens is that if you go big, you will go home. You may go home because you’ve spent so much and you are not getting so much and you get tired. So, it is good to analyze all these things and say, what do I have? What can I do with what I already have? And then at the same time, what you are doing is that you are trying to… you want to, first of all, be committed to the thing. If you start too big, you reduce the chances of you being fully committed. I mean, I don’t know if I said that well. If you start too big, your mind may be clouded to the point where you forget about the fact that you may not still be 100% committed to what you are starting to do but you already spent $1000. But it’s good for you to, first of all, prove to yourself that you are in and get regular. For example, in my podcast, I bought the $5.99 thing just to prove to myself and to prove to you that I’m ready. I want to do this now and then gradually after that – after I had done this regularly for so long, I could now pay for a bigger platform that I’m now using. And then I would discover that I need more equipment and tools and then I get it, you know, gradually like that. What happens is, usually when we say we are trying to see, can I sustain it, we are looking at, Oh, yes. I can buy this and buy that and buy all the things that I need. Yes, I can sustain it but really, that’s not the point. The point is, do I have enough commitment first of all inside of me and then can I start small?
So, I’m looking at the time here and I’m thinking that it will be good to wrap it up here. I think we may still… I don’t know if you still have…
Ade: Yes, I still have lots of questions because I know that people want to start something and that is what this podcast is about – to get people to do what God has called them to do. So, it’s good to really get some other things that one may have to think about and so maybe I’d ask you some more questions and we can do that next week.
Olu: Sure! We can do that. So, people, we are going to wrap it up here. We’ll continue again next week. And before we do that, why don’t we pray? Do you want to pray?
Ade: Yeah, Sure! Father, we thank you for everyone that is listening to us – listening to this podcast. Especially those that have this idea, they are thinking in their minds that this is you, God speaking to them and they are about to take off but they are wondering, Is this another fad? Is this going to just go on for 2 more years and then fade off like some other projects they’ve done before? Father, I pray for just a confirmation for each one of these people that they will hear deep in their spirit that you are with them and that you are going to help them. And as we’ve talked about writing down the plan and really looking at the action steps that need to be taken over a long period of time, we ask that you help them to write that and as they write it, if it is not your will, declare to them Father. And for those who know what you’ve told them to do and have written the plan, I pray that they will be encouraged to take steps this week to be able to move the project forward. We pray for anybody that is going through a difficult time for intervention, for healings, for breakthroughs, for wisdom in the name of Jesus.
Olu: Amen
Ade: Thank you, Father. And this time as the end of the year comes and we celebrate the birth of Jesus, we pray that Joy will fill the heart of everyone. In Jesus name,
Both: Amen
Olu: Amen. Thanks, everybody. See you again next week and yeah, Bye for now.