By Movieguide® Staff
Rapper Holy Gabbana shared the moment he came to Christ and encourages others to follow in his footsteps.
“All you got to do to make this much money is to be a fool and act reckless…I could do that,” the rapper — real name: John Robert Hill Jr. — told the “God Behind Bars” podcast. “I started being a nut.”
Gabbana began creating videos of himself and his friends vandalizing places, robbing stores and jumping on people’s cars, all in an effort to rack up more views and likes. As he got more famous, though, his personal life fell apart. Gabbana struggled with the effects of the abuse he suffered at the hands of his mother, as well as the loss of his stepfather to bladder cancer.
The rapper started using drugs, and his reckless behavior led to his incarceration in 2018. His cellmate, Joshua, asked him an important question when they first met.
“He was like, ‘Do you believe in Jesus?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah,’” Gabbana recalled. “For that man to ask me, do I believe in Jesus? That lets me know that God was always thinking about me. Anybody else could have been my cellmate. In that moment, God reached me through my cellmate.”
He continued, “When I went to jail, Jesus wasn’t on my mind, because to be honest. I wasn’t thinking about Jesus when I went to jail. You may not be thinking about Jesus, but he is thinking about you. But God was literally setting me up so I could have an encounter with him.”
One night, the rapper experienced the Holy Spirit, saying he felt sad about his circumstances. He decided to worship, singing “Jesus Loves You.”
“I can’t explain why I was sad, but I was just sad. But something hovered over me and stripped my sadness away and filled me with joy,” he said. “I was just laughing. I felt like a child.”
Now, Gabbana is out of prison, four years sober and ready to share his faith with the rest of the world.
Related: This Rapper Met Jesus in Prison. Now He Makes Music for Christ.
“If people can see me and then see how God is able to restore and flip things around,” he told Holy Culture Radio. “I’m not ashamed to share my failures with people because sharing my failures with somebody could really encourage them. It’s never too late to make a turnaround.”
The rapper also shares messages encouraging others to come to Christ on his social media.
“The scariest thing isn’t being wrong. It’s being confident and wrong at the same time,” he posted on Instagram. “You can have all the confidence in the world and still be fighting the wrong fight.”
Gabbana continued, “It’s not too late to get real with God. Not religion. Not church. But Jesus.”
Gabbana’s testimony is an inspiring reminder of the power of God’s love, and that it’s never too late to give your life to Him.
Read Next: How This Social Media Star Found Christ in Prison
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