Saying “God put it on my heart to speak,” award-winning rapper DMX held a Bible study on Instagram over the weekend and even urged his fans to accept Jesus.
“Get into the Word,” he encouraged the 14,000-plus who were watching.
DMX, whose real name is Earl Simmons, rose to musical fame in the late 1990s and 2000s on the strength of albums that carried parental advisories for explicit lyrics, winning two American Music Awards and getting three Grammy nominations. Over the weekend, though, his focus was on Scripture.
DMX, now 49, read from Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, Ecclesiastes 3:16-17 and parts of Ecclesiastes 4.
“The best thing that we can hope for – the most important thing we can hope or pray for or ask for – is that our desires coincide with God’s will,” he said.
At one point DMX read Ecclesiastes 3:5 – there will be a “time for embracing and a time for avoiding embraces” – and paused to reflect on the modern-day parallel during the pandemic.
He urged his fans to learn to pray and not rely on the prayers of others: “Your own prayer will do a lot better than someone else praying for you.”
He spoke of the current lockdown: “God is giving you the time … to get closer to him.”
He encouraged them to receive Christ: “Whoever hasn’t given your life to Jesus yet, whoever hasn’t surrendered all the way … I’m going to walk you through that right now.” He then led his fans in a prayer.
DMX said he woke up earlier in the day with “chills” and felt led to talk to his fans about the Bible.
“God put it on my heart to speak,” he said. “This is new to me. This is not what I do.”
By not living for Christ, he said, people “miss out on so many blessings that He has for you.”
“Get into the Word,” DMX said. “It will make whatever you go through a lot easier to deal with.”
The Instagram Live video has since disappeared from his account, although copies of it are circulating on YouTube.
Photo courtesy: ©Getty Images/Theo Wargo/Staff
Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, The Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
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