‘God Was in The Room’: Movieguide® Awards Performer Wins Golden Globe

“God was in the room, bro,” Day said in her acceptance speech. “God was in the room and God was present and that’s a blessing.”

Day also thanked her parents.

“The people who were in the room with me was first of all my family, my mother and father in the room with me, which makes me just so happy because they put up with me for so long,”

Day’s mother was a strong Christian influence in her life growing up.

“My mother converted to Christianity when we were very young. When I got into my teen years and into my younger adulthood it was, ‘Yeah, yeah, I believe.’ But I was smoking weed, drinking heavily, into promiscuity—cheating on whoever I was with—just doing things selfishly, and doing music for my own sort of vain persona. I ended up moving out to New York … but my conscience just started to catch up with me. I told [God] everything I had done, I told my family everything I had done. Dealing with the guilt and the shame, you know, it was a very low point in my life. I didn’t have a job, completely broke, sleeping on my mom’s couch in her tiny little apartment. And any deal I had at the time basically fell through. It was a low point, but it was the greatest point in my life,” Day said in an interview in 2016. 

She continued:

I rededicated my life to Christ. I was like, ‘I’m not playing games anymore, I’m not lukewarm, I’m not doing that anymore.’ I regret hurting someone, but I’m grateful for who I have become and how close I’ve been able to grow in Christ, because of all of that. I always say ‘those years were formative years. When I came back to San Diego, I literally told God, “God if you want me to do this, I’ll do this. If you want me to teach, I’ll be a teacher. If you want me to panhandle on the corner for you, I’ll do that.

From there, that’s when the door with Stevie Wonder opened. When things that weren’t supposed to be there came through. Eventually, he introduced me to the producer I did the record with, Adrian Gurvitz.

And so from that moment we met and I got into the studio, I told myself, ‘Tell the truth, talk about everything. Talk about the heartbreak you inflicted, talk about the heartbreak you experienced. What you’ve learned, how you’ve grown, how you continue to try and grow.’

Day performed her song “Rise Up” at the 24^th Annual MOVIEGUIDE® Faith & Values Awards Gala and Report to the Entertainment Industry in 2016.

Day said “Rise Up” came from a place of prayer.

“You know, I pray about everything, and this song was no different,” she said in an interview. “So it was kind of like, ‘God what do you want to talk about today?’”

She continued, “It is Christ who empowered me to be able to say those things. You’re not trying to prove yourself anymore. All you are doing is being obedient, and that really lifts the burden and the worry of people’s opinions.”

Movieguide® found lots of cautions in THE UNITED STATES VS. BILLIE HOLIDAY, and determined adults should exercise extreme caution before viewing. Please check back to movieguide.org for the full THE UNITED STATES VS. BILLIE HOLIDAY review.