Pastor Thabiti Anyabwile: How BET & Islam showed him to Christ | Wade-O Radio Backstage

what's up this is Michaela aka lady Mac and you are watching weight or radio backstage radio show of course man DJ wait oh we are live at legacy with Pastor to BT on your blue leg it was good man what's good I'm chillin man how are you I'm doing well man enjoying the legacy conference man the energy here the excitement about the Word of God and seeing that kind of zeal in young people man that blesses me more than anything I can think of hey you know it's interesting you've kind of seen this conference to grow hmm as well over the years man so cuz you was you was getting down with this in the early days well a little bit yeah you know not here from the beginning but Brian and those guys you know we're gracious and having me come about five years ago yeah and and that's when I was first blown away man it was it was it was crazy to see cats man in their mid 20s late 20s early 20s married up pushing strollers praising God by just going even just like yo this is phenomenon Lord that word yeah so you just recently planted a church in DC man yeah by God's grace man a year ago last July the Lord called us back to the States to join with a couple of other brothers and a number of brothers and sisters that he's raised up to plant Anacostia River Church in Southeast DC and so if folks know southeast they know you spell at sou F DC and back in the day man that would have been the hottest spot in DC or never been when when the crack epidemic kicked off and when Mary Barry was tripping it off listen all that good stuff that was kind of ground zero and it's it's changed a bit it's improved a good deal yeah but is she still got her needs and we just feel privileged that the Lord has called us there they plant our lives there and the gospel we were talking about this earlier just activism in the activist community in that in that area man um do you find that in that context because a lot of times with the activists they black power you know they all of this mmm how has that kind of influenced you know how you guys have to go in there to do ministry because obviously there's a whole set of apologetics and all that stuff that's there might be a little bit unique that you men everything is in is in the hood man yeah you know you got the gods of Nations and herbs you got the 5% you just got he's got everything there yeah and part of what happens in burnt-out african-american communities is you get this rise of a kind of nationalism kind of black nationalism and it it feeds on a couple of things it feeds on self-love and the need for that and it feeds on a kind of political aspiration sure huh and and it's it feeds on a kind of us then right so you you sort of cast the african-american community over and against them those people and what they've done to our communities and not all that that's wrong the self love the the sort of us them dynamic now that's wrong but it gets sort of turned up and hyped up and it gets turned in on itself because it's not sufficiently connected to the grace of God the wisdom of God is not turned out on mission because it's I mean it's not Christian right and so what that means for us ministering in the context is I think you have to respect that yeah right yeah and I think you have to see the good in that the sort of self love and that the aspiration for good things and you got to recognize that at the bottom people are people men and so people in hurting communities are hurting people and and most of them are good people looking to do the best they can with what they have and so I think what it's meant for us is we've got to come in the community put ourselves in the community you can't reach a community that you don't live in and so that's home for us and and it's got to mean everything that home means and we've got to look to serve and to be neighbors and to minister mercy on the block and it's it means we got to encounter the unhealthy thing with the gospel perspective sure right so I'm thinking of a particular corner in my neighborhood I Drive by it almost every day and the block is littered with people in whose lives you can see the waste that sin creates Wow now I've got a choice pulling up in the corner and sometimes I have to I have to preach this to myself because sometimes you pull up you know you're looking at a brother walking by the car you know yeah I want a brother and if you're not careful you know you develop hard thoughts and so many times I'm praying Lord this man can be redeemed and rebuilt yeah this woman who looks they have been wasting away for decades you can renew and restore Wow and and would you would you give me compassionate enough to see that in people and love them and proclaim the hope of the gospel and by your grace would you save them and bring them to yourself and and make them new all things new again so you know as we're in the community being a part of the community trying to sort of parse between what's good and and what needs to be rejected in light of the gospel we need to be doing that with hope man I mean otherwise we just become self righteous or afraid yeah and we can't feed our people man we got to go to our people with the good news that's good it's interesting man I'm just I'm hearing you talk about this and I'm thinking in my mind I'm like man this guy has ministered in so many different contexts obviously you have your church plant in Southeast but man then you're at these big conferences like together for the gospel you and the Grand Cayman Island and we always joke like oh man he was on a vacation down here you know it's paradise down there but I'm just like man like like how has the Lord just prepared you in each one of those situations cuz all of those have different different challenges different needs it's a good question that's exactly right cause sinners and sinners everywhere you go and sinners don't give you no vacation you know that that's that's a fabulous question way man because when I look back on it by God's grace every step along the way it's been preparation yeah so my days before Christ as a Muslim sure it's been preparation for understanding the Muslim mind yeah and having had a number of relationships with guys who are Orthodox Muslim and guys in the nation that's a world I know yeah and and as an undergraduate student man you know we used to have cats on campus like Molefi Asante and doctor and all the guys for this world of kind of after centrism and and that kind of math it's a world I know man well I feel like I grew up in Wow and then a go from that and you find out more about it than eight though it's funny man it's just like I was having this cab ride in Louisville one day man and this dude you know I had had a look goofy on and he's got all this little paraphernalia hanging from the rearview mirror a cab driver yeah and I'm traveling with one of my partners white dude man Pennsylvania just just straight khaki and button-down right and so I'm sitting to back deuce in the front I'm looking at him and I see him coming after brother he's setting him up to try and share the Gaussian and so he house reading ephesians this morning and and brought you start running down stuff man it's just that rhetoric man yeah and my partner looked over the back scene he's like over to you but God gracious man that's just the conversation I feel like wow I can't believe dude still reading this day and talking about this stuff and he brought all I could stuff but praise God you know let's let's chop and so from that to just my graduate studies in psychology and thinking particularly about racial identity development that was my area of research and sort of trying to help people navigate those waters to working in a non-profit world community-based novel world here's the thing the Lord doesn't waste a thing he's efficient with our experiences yeah so our pains and our suffering our preparation our studies he harvests that man he's in in all of those things he's planting seeds in our life that he's going to grow and use at some other point and there's a sense in which my wife and I feel like he's dropped us down in Southeast and he's just bringing to flower all the things he's been doing in the years leading up to that you know and so we're grateful man we have a deep sense that we are in God's will and man that's a joyful place to be and so we just we just been loving the Lord right now I'm more excited right now in my spiritual life than I ever been raelia I've been walking the Lord for about 20 years Wow and I can't think of another time in my Christian life or in my life as a Christian minister where I have felt more privileged and more blessed and more joyful serving the Lord so how did you come to know the Lord kind of being in that Muslim space and then yeah obviously well it sort of happened in about sort of three stages I'll tell you real quickly one was the collapse of Islam itself so I was zealous for Islam LED lots of guys into the faith and one year doing Ramadan up early for the plot for the fast I made my morning prayers and I'm reading the Quran and as I'm reading the Quran I'm reading surah Marianne sort of 19th chapter there which reads like a plagiarism of the Gospel accounts of the virgin birth of Christ that rocked me man because I thought here is my holy book telling me that Christ is virgin born and yet as a Muslim and every Muslim I know would deny the unique sonship of Christ Wow what do I do with this and in other things start flooding into my mind that you know the number of times that the Quran speaks of the Holy Spirit yeah so how is it the Quran speaks of the Holy Spirit when we are not Trinitarian that's a Trinitarian idea right and all the explanations about the Holy Spirit being the Archangel Michael and all that good stuff it makes no sense well the number of times that Jesus is referred to as isa al maseeh the Messiah yeah it's a Jewish concept has a definite meaning in the Old Testament as to who the Messiah be and what he would do all this is in the quarter this is in the Quran so I'm just dealing with the Quran I'm not even dealing with you know anything outside of it and not able to find satisfactory answers to that man at the end of day I about a year I kind of threw my hands up said this just just doesn't stand on its own terms well that put me in a season of living kind of between agnosticism and atheism really and my wife and I mainly me decided you know what I'm gonna make as much as I can I'm gonna can all I get and I'm gonna sit on Mike and you know yeah try to live that American Dream a man white house picket fist two and a half kids and I'd never been more brittle more cold more dead inside than in that period and it was in that period man that was having water-cooler conversation at work and a girl I've gone to college with who we known each other all throughout college we're talking about you know people we respect and people are naming off world leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin King stuff like that and Tracy was like nobody I respect more than 30 she's like no she said you know curse you you know you you don't you treat Christie well you don't go clubbing she start naming all these external things that had sort of grown up in my life as a Muslim and the more she talked brother the more corrupt I felt Wow because she didn't know my lust yes he didn't know my hatred and she didn't know what was in here yeah and that was the first time I experienced conviction man just just dark corrupting feeling of guilt you know I know I'm not that person you're talking about yeah so the next thing that happened man mister third chapter was my wife and I miscarried our first child and the Lord humbled us and I was sitting at home on the couch now having left Islam having felt the coldness and the corruption of you know moving between agnosticism and atheism I'm at home in a couch man in this pastor named John chair he comes on television he pastored a church in Temple Hills Maryland the bt2 why some rap and so he comes on man and he's preaching 2nd Timothy that morning and just sort of verse by verse and talking about the life of the Christian mind and started to show yourself approved and I had a couple of thoughts that morning I said who rewrote the Bible because I'm hearing now some preaching I understand I growing up in the Church of a cat with hoop 4:25 I gotcha you don't know what he was talking about and so seeing him preaching this sort of systematic way yeah the word was a lie and then God started drawing me by the words the first thought thought was who rewrote the Bible second thought I had was when the Christians started thinking because he was talking about the life of the Christian mind and I never met a Christian up to that point who could explain and defend the faith Wow and so I'm watching this gum thing and this is different yeah and the Lord was just draw me by the word so watch the show for a couple months we went to Temple Hills my sister-in-law lived in South East at the time yeah went to the church he preached an exposition of Exodus 32 I'll never forget it and he was talking about idolatry in that passage and then preached Christ from that passage the golden calf passage and preached the gospel and things that I couldn't hold together as a Muslim fit together in the gospel as a man and in God's grace my wife and I both were converted under the preaching of the gospel that morning Wow that's about that's about 1819 years ago now don't ya look congratulations all over again

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Keywords: interview, hip-hop, dj wade-o, music, chh, industry, wade-o radio show, thabiti anyabwile, testimony, christian, faith, pastor, church, God, Jesus, Anacostia River (River), Washington D.C. (City/Town/Village), anacostia river church, thabiti, Christianity (Religion), Jesus Christ (Deity), Islam (Religion), Gospel, Religion (TV Genre), Holy, Ministry, Radio (Invention), Praise, Hip, urban, city, hood, Church (Project Focus), Lord

Id: 7Y41NbXOu5M

Length: 14min 2sec (842 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 11 2015