John Rich, who is a modern-day legend within the country music industry, grew up in a Christian household, to a father who first began preaching the Word of God as a 19-year-old. That takes a whole lot of courage and faith, especially if you know just how cruel young folk in that age bracket can sometimes be. The singer recently revealed that his father never really preached in big churches, like the megachurches we see all over the place today. No, his dad was the kind of man who took the Word to those the rest of the world tended to forget.
“He was in prison ministry and street ministry — and you want to talk about a guy with some conviction, bravery, courage; he preached on the street corner in New Orleans during Mardi Gras for 34 years in a row,” Rich recalled. Now that takes serious guts. Preaching the gospel during Mardi Gras? Listen, it’s not just the sexual sin and nudity floating around that area during this particular festival that is concerning. A lot of witchcraft and voodoo happens in New Orleans, especially on Mardi Gras.
According to The Christian Tribune, “Rich drew inspiration from how his father remained committed amid chaos and debauchery. While his dad was preaching to strangers, the singer was making his way into the music industry. ‘My decades in the music industry … that became what I worshiped, even though I gave my life to Jesus at a young age,’ John Rich said. ‘When I got out there and started selling millions of records … that became my focal point.'”
Rich said that his perspective underwent a transformation after he got married and had a family of his own.
“I started looking at how I was living and what was important to me,” Rich said. “And I thought, ‘Is that how I want my boys to live? Do I want them to wind up like I am right now?’ And I was horrified by that notion.” The musician spoke about how he felt “subservient to some wicked industry like the entertainment industry” is that it becomes difficult to hear God amid all of the chaos and noise.
Explaining how that felt, he said “You can’t even hear Him, because your ears are full of your noise,” he said, noting he felt “convicted” by the recognition of that reality. “So, over those next few years, little by little, I started separating … from the music industry and stepping further, and further, and further out into speaking the truth.” Eventually, he couldn’t make peace with the lies he was seeing in the music industry. He abandoned lucrative record and publishing deals and struck out on his own.
The country superstar then said, “I felt like [God] went, ‘You can say whatever you want, and I’m going to give you some stuff to say that I want you to say,’ I said, ‘Well, let’s rock and roll. What do you want me to say?’ And when I took that attitude on and re-yielded myself to Him for real, here it came.”
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Ever since that happened, Rich has been diving deep into his faith and sharpening his knowledge of the Bible by showing how the Word applies to current events along with sharing the gospel.
John Rich recently released a song “Revelation” inspired by the book of the same name. He described how the chaos on the world stage had prompted him to think deeper. “I think we’ve all been thinking about that, but I didn’t set out to write a specific song about it,” Rich said. “It just kind of came out of nowhere. It was kind of downloaded to me.”
According to Rich, the words to the song popped into his head and it was finished within an hour. “I tell people it’s not lyrics; it’s Scripture that I just made rhyme,” he said. “Like, I took what it says, and I figured out how to build that into what would be a song, and then I didn’t know what to do with it.” He hopes the song will inspire people to “pick their Bibles up and start reading it for themselves”
Rich encouraged his brothers and sisters in the faith to be bold and speak up for their beliefs.
“It is put up or shut up time,” Rich proclaimed. “You cannot scream and holler about what’s happening around you If you’re just gonna ride the fence, keep your mouth shut, and go along to get along.” He concluded, “Christians are not commanded to do that. We’re commanded to do quite the opposite of that. We’re supposed to go forward, not retreat … it’s not always the most comfortable thing to do, but it is the right thing to do, and it’s what I feel moved to do.”
Let’s hope the platform God has given him opens up doors for millions to hear the gospel and turn their lives over to Jesus.