How God used Christian hip hop to change Sean and Asa’s lives


Two readers submitted the following stories about how God used Christian hip hop to change their lives. Rapzilla will share more readers’ testimonies each Sunday.

Sean Breezeale’s story

My name is Sean Breazeale, and I have been a Christian for about four and half years now. Up until my junior year of high school, I was the shy kid on campus.

I developed some identity and confidence issues in middle school due to the fact that I was skinny, short, awkward and shy. Many times in class, I would sit silently, afraid to ask the teacher a question because I feared the judgement of the class. In between classes, I moved from building to building with my head down, afraid to make eye contact with the surrounding 3,000 students of Trabuco Hills High School.

Just about the only place I was comfortable was the wrestling room. This shyness led to a lot of regret. I missed out on many opportunities to create new friends because I was simply just afraid of people.

On top of my shy personality, I was struggling with a terrible porn addiction. And I was going through all of this without God.

It wasn’t until my junior year of high school that my life took a huge flip. Because of my shyness, I was often trying to talk to girls online.

To someone who is shy, the internet is gold. You can make tons of friends without ever having to actually make that awkward first hello.

I ended up making one friend who was different then all of the other girls I had “met” online. Through our friendship, she ended up telling me about a rapper named Lecrae and a song he wrote called “Don’t Waste Your Life.” This song would be the spark of the biggest life decision I would ever make.

I remember sitting in my room looking at those big white letters “Don’t Waste Your Life” and asking myself, “Am I wasting mine?” My whole life, I’ve known a lot of regret because of the things I was afraid to try or say. One of the lines that Lecrae raps is, “So I know I got life / Matter fact, better man, I know I got Christ.”

This grabbed my attention. I started asking myself what that meant: Who is Christ? How do I get life from him?

I did not grow up a Christian, so “Christ” was not someone I was really aware of. But to see this guy rap so passionately about this Christ, “That’s why it’s Christ in my rhymes! That’s why it’s Christ all the time! See my whole world is built around him, he’s the life in my lines!” caused me to want to learn more about Christ.

I looked up many more of Lecrae’s songs, and I discovered songs about his sin life. I heard him rap about his struggle with lust and how it tears at him, but I also heard him rap about this thing called grace.

I spent hours listening to Lecrae’s music — just trying to figure out how he was so confident to get up and tell the world about God, his porn addictions and his sins. And I ended up stumbling across the Bible verse Romans 1:16.

Lecrae’s signing company, Reach Records, uses this as their anthem. It reads, “For I am unashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of Christ.” This verse changed the very way I live life still to this day.

I found more Christian hip-hop artists like Trip Lee, KB, Tedashii, Andy Mineo, and W.L.A.K, and that’s where my Bible studies began. Before I ever opened a Bible, I was learning from these guys and their unashamed faith in Jesus Christ. Before I asked my friends if I could go to church with them, my church was in my room, and my pastors were rappers.

By the end of my junior summer, I had started going to church. I was given a Bible, and I had stretched my comfort zone so far that I couldn’t believe it myself. I went into my senior year with a shirt that had a big cross on it and the word “Forgiven” along the cross.

I had a new aspect of life, and I wanted to share Christ with everyone. Much like Lecrae, Trip and Andy would get up on stages and proclaim the good news, I wanted to let everyone know of the change that God had done in my life. I ended my senior year of high school speaking in front of over 400 high school students at Saddleback’s High School Ministry, and now I am pursuing a career in youth ministry.

I am currently leading a group of high school boys. I am interning with my college ministry at my church. You can now also find me driving around North County, San Diego blasting the latest and nuttiest Christian hip-hop song, or catch me in the front row of a Social Club concert getting turnt as heck.

David Daniels
David Daniels
David Daniels is a columnist at Rapzilla.com and the managing editor of LegacyDisciple.org. He has been published at Desiring God, The Gospel Coalition, Christianity Today, CCM Magazine, Bleacher Report, The Washington Times and HipHopDX.
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