Church Boy Page 15
In some of the stories that came out after the accident in Memphis in November 1996, people were saying it was the fall that straightened me out. Honestly, I don’t believe that the fall had anything to do with any of that, except this: The fall was just God’s way of speeding up the growing up process that was taking place. I was already on my way. But it was like stepping on the accelerator. The fall put all those things into high gear.
Whether I’m living high on the hill or down in the projects, I’m cool, so long as God is leading me every step of the way. But I will say this: What the accident did for me was take me from age twenty-six to age forty in one day. You know what I’m saying?
It sped up the process I was already on. I was running as fast as I could to get things right, to get my walk with the Lord back in step, but suddenly God stepped in and took it all on Himself. I didn’t have to do it in my strength because He was entirely capable of doing it in His strength. He used the fall in Memphis to teach me that lesson.
I have been quoted in several publications for something I said about the fall’s impact on my life. I said I didn’t really appreciate my ministry until I saw it in the light of that dark night in Memphis. Realizing I could have lost it all, I suddenly appreciated what I have in an all new way.
I could have died, or I could have wound up a vegetable. In five short years I had gone from a kid who borrowed five grand to make a demo tape to an international celebrity, but somehow the surprise and suddenness of it eclipsed the full force of the transformation. It was like giving a four-year-old a diamond. I didn’t know what I had.
When you have responsibility and the ear of the people but you don’t realize the power and the impact of your position, you don’t know what you’ve got. I have to be careful about saying this because some people have misconstrued it and tried to imply that before Memphis I didn’t love God, that I wasn’t saved, or maybe that I didn’t even believe what I was saying. But the fall had nothing to do with my not loving God. That would be an easy thing to say, and it might have made good press, but I’m glad to say that’s not the case.
Before Memphis I was on my way. I was working on everything about me, and I was still striving to grow closer to God. But after Memphis, it was like, Let’s don’t work on it anymore; let’s just do it. You know? Let’s not work on being God’s man; let’s just get rid of those weights holding us down. Let’s be God’s man.
I never graduated from high school. I never had the privilege of walking across the stage. But Memphis was my graduation. That was me walking across the stage and getting my diploma. It was my battle scar. It was my coming of age.
I was off the tour from the first of November until the twenty-sixth of December that year, but I was still doing something. I flew home on Tuesday, November 15, with strict orders from the doctors to stay in bed, take my medication, and not do anything that would raise my blood pressure. But the very next Sunday I was in church preaching. I knew God had given me an opportunity. He had done what I knew in my spirit He was going to do that night. He let something happen that would change our lives forever.
Altogether, I eventually took six weeks off the tour, and that was great because it was over the Christmas holidays. But we reprogrammed all the tour dates that had been canceled after the accident and went back on the road the last week of December 1996.
We picked up with New Orleans and made the full circuit, playing to crowds of from five to ten thousand people everywhere we stopped. Since that time God has prospered our ministry, our music, and our message in a way no one on earth could have anticipated. And He has done a work in me that has truly made me a new man in Christ.
When I cannot hear the sparrow sing
And I cannot feel a melody,
There’s a secret place
That’s full of grace.
There’s a blessing in the storm;
Help me sing it!
There’s a blessing in the storm.
When the sickness won’t leave my body
And the pain just won’t leave my soul,
I get on my knees
And say, “Jesus, please!”
There’s a blessing in the storm;
Help me sing it!
There’s a blessing in the storm.
When I cannot seem to love again
And my burdens seem to never end,
I get on my knees
And say, “Jesus, please!”
There’s a blessing in the storm;
Help me sing it!
There’s a blessing in the storm.
Words and music by Kirk Franklin.
Copyright © 1998, Kerrion Publishing / Lilly Mack Publishing (BMI).
Used by permission.
9
A Blessing in the Storm
There has been so much drama in my life the last few years—the music, the traveling, TV and radio appearances, the various awards and recognition of what God has accomplished with us, not to mention the fall. And along with all of that, getting married, and then the new baby coming along, plus all the business aspects of what we do. Being on the road as much as I’ve been the last three years, I’ve had very little time to myself.
Tammy and I sometimes have had to go months before we could slow down enough to take time out for ourselves, but there is a price to pay for this kind of ministry. You simply don’t get time to focus on things when you’re running this fast.
Just sitting down to work on this book has been a major adjustment for me, but it’s also been one of the first times I’ve had time to sit back and reflect on what it all means. And it’s been a learning experience.
I can honestly say I am not a media person, because I see how living in the spotlight takes over people’s lives. The spotlight can get pretty hot, and the media can be pretty cold. I know if that’s where I put my hopes, sooner or later I’ll be very, very disappointed. So I work at keeping my focus on other things.
I remember watching Tiger Woods on TV one afternoon. Of course, Tiger’s a great golfer and a young man who has taken an important first step for black athletes.
He won several huge tournaments back to back and proved that golf can be as much a black man’s game as anybody’s. But he didn’t win that day, and I noticed that the media’s vibe was very different from what it had been just a few weeks earlier. The vibe was different because Tiger didn’t win.
When he had won at Augusta and then later at the Byron Nelson Tournament, the reporters were all saying he was the best to ever play the game. But the minute he dropped back in the pack at the next couple of tournaments, those same reporters were gone, chasing some other celebrity. So much for fame.
But maybe that’s only fair. After all, modern society is about winners. But not everybody who’s a winner in the eyes of men is a winner in life. Not everybody who’s being chased by the media and not everybody who’s in the spotlight today will necessarily be the real winner when all is said and done.
In fact, the guy who came in last may be the real winner.
The guy who got the trophy and all the media attention may have cheated. Maybe he was on steroids or cheating on his wife or playing fast and loose with his income tax. And maybe the guy who came in last wasn’t in the winner’s spotlight because he wasn’t on drugs. Or maybe he was up late helping his daughter with her homework. Maybe he was spending time helping somebody else instead of helping himself. So who’s the real winner?
I decided a long time ago that the only way I could stay right with God was to limit what I do with the media. Not my sanity, not my emotions, not my mentality, but my salvation. I know people who would sell their soul for good press, but I won’t do that. As much as we want to get the message out, there are some things more important to me than good press.
FINISHING STRONG
When I finish the race, the relationship that will mean the most to me will be my relationship with God. After that, God expects me to hold up my wife and children, to be there for them, to love an
d bless them and give them the best of my love.
Yes, I do have a ministry of music, and I do love to perform and touch people with it. But I realize that in the big picture I can’t allow that work to take me away from my first responsibility to God and my family.
I’m hard on myself already for little things, for comments I may make to the mailman or to a salesclerk. I’m always checking myself because I never want to come across wrong. I never want to hurt anybody or seem arrogant or proud. I mean, I’ve been up and I’ve been down, and I’ve met some rats at both ends. But I never want to be like that. I don’t want to lose my perspective or my ability to stay focused on the things that matter most.
I’m glad to say that everybody in the Family agrees with me on this; they feel the way I do about it. We all struggle with time and work and family pressures, but we have a much better idea today than we did a couple of years ago about what really counts.
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. That fall in Memphis in 1996 wasn’t just my fall. It was the Family’s fall too. It was a fall for all of us.
It was everybody’s fall because it opened our eyes to some things we hadn’t thought about until that night. For example, right before Memphis they loved me, and we’re very close as a group of performers and friends; but when you’ve been around somebody for so long you start to take a lot of things for granted. Just like me. I was taking each day for granted.
Sometimes you take God’s love and His grace for granted. But Memphis taught us not to take anybody or anyplace or anything for granted. It taught us to appreciate each day and everything in it in a way we never had before—the good stuff and the bad stuff, the easy days and the hard ones. The sunshine, the rain, and even the storms in our lives. Suddenly everything had value that had just been business up until then. We saw life and all that it has to offer with new eyes, because life is both good and bad.
As I said earlier, Memphis was my graduation. I didn’t get a chance to graduate from high school. A lot of other things got in the way, and I never did walk across that stage in Fort Worth. Instead, I walked across a stage in Memphis and that’s where I got not only my diploma but my education.
When David Mann told me later what I said while I was lying there in blood—“Speak, Lord! Give me a word!”—that told me something I really needed to hear. It showed me where my heart was. You know how the enemy is. The enemy makes you doubt yourself in so many ways. He says, “Ah, man, you’re not really in the will. You’re not humble; you’re just in it for the money!”
But knowing that I was talking to God at that moment helped me to know that, even lying there in a semiconscious state, absolutely helpless, I was looking to God for a word. You see, that’s my personal commitment, to never let the enemy take my joy away from me, to never let him steal my peace. He’ll do it if I let him. He’s always trying. So now I say, don’t let the devil steal your glory.
When he fights me now it’s not about women or money or power. He fights me in the little secret places. He’s always whispering doubts and fears and trying to weaken my resolve. But he’s out of his league because this isn’t just my ministry. It’s God’s.
For the Family and my family and for all of us, Memphis was a wake-up call. For one thing, when I fell, everybody had to go home, and there was no work for the next six weeks. It was like being laid off a job and having no pay. Nobody was making anything, and if I hadn’t recuperated it might have all been over right there that night.
I wouldn’t say we were a different group when we went back out on the road that December, but I think that, spiritually and musically, we were all a little hungrier and there was a little more sense of purpose to what we did.
I understand better now what the fall was for. The fall wasn’t for the stuff onstage; the fall was for the stuff offstage. Because the stuff offstage is what we’re judged by. I’m not judged by that stuff onstage. Anybody can put a suit on and do that. There’s a lot of talented heathens out there. But that’s not what gets God’s attention.
He has His eye on the stuff offstage, and when we get the personal and private stuff straightened out and start living right every day, then He gets excited about what we’re doing. I truly believe that.
The stuff God cares about is the stuff at the house, the stuff with the kids, the stuff when you’re driving home from the studio at 1:30 in the morning and instead of going straight home you know there are opportunities to take the next exit and go down that side street and go to that certain house where the devil would be glad to lure you in.
That’s when it counts, when you are accountable and honest and you turn your back on those temptations because you love God more than you love this world. When you no longer have any interest in calling up that old girlfriend or stopping by the dirty video place or always just looking for that little something on the side like so many people are doing these days.
That’s the stuff. That’s what God cares about. How are you walking when it’s time to be completely transparent about all that? I’ve been there. I know what it’s like to be onstage, performing God’s music and thinking about who I’ll be going home with that night. But never again. Now I go home to my wife, because to truly love and serve God is to love her.
SHAKING THE RAFTERS
I don’t want people to read this book and think that I’m just a carnal Christian, but at the same time I want to be honest and real. I’m not proud of where I’ve been, what I’ve done, or who I was at one time. My past still troubles me today, and I wish it had never happened. There were times when my sexual identity dictated all those things— who I was, what I did, and where I went. But no more. God is putting it all behind me day by day.
The hardest part of this for me, however, is not so much that I failed, but that at this moment there are people in churches all across this nation, in every city and town, who are still caught up in that lifestyle of promiscuity, that compromise with sin, and they’re pretending it doesn’t matter at all.
Well, I’m here to tell you, my friend, it does matter. I know from my own experience that it matters. It matters a lot. And Jesus Christ is saying to you today, whoever you are, wherever you are, no matter how successful you’ve been, that you had better give it up right now and get right with God right now, while you still can.
I want to shake the church with this book. I want to shake every pastor who’s compromising with sin. I want to shake every deacon and elder who’s looking the other way while sin crawls through the doors of that church every Sunday morning. I want to shake the world and those in it to say, “Truly listen to the message.”
I want to shake the mothers and fathers who pretend they don’t know what their boys and girls are doing out there every night, sleeping around, using drugs, messing with stuff that will kill them and rob them of their joy. And I want to shake up every one of those young people with this book and with every lyric I write.
I’ll shake the rafters if I have to and say: “Look, brother! You gotta get right with God right now! Please, for Christ’s sake and for your own sake, get your eyes back where they belong, while there’s still time!”
I’ll say, “Satan has laid his hooks into you, young person, and you’re not free. You talk about slavery and you talk about your rights and you talk about how somebody’s holding you down. But look here, boo: It’s you! You’re holding yourself down with your addiction to sin.
“Unless you give it up right now and get right with God right now, you’ve let the enemy put his handcuffs back on your wrists. Actually, you put them on yourself, so the devil did it with your help. And you’ve made yourself a slave to sin. Young man, you better get right, right now. Young woman, young person, do it now while you can.”
I want every young person, every mother and father, every grandparent and pastor and friend to understand that I was like that myself at one time, and I’m still dying daily. But I wasn’t doing those things because I wanted to; I was doing them because I just thought
that’s the way it was. Then, when I found out that it doesn’t have to be that way, I was already in so deep it took me years to break free and get out of that prison of sin.
It breaks my heart to realize it took me nearly ten years to break out.
I also want to get into this book how important my wife is to me. I call Tammy my sanity. And Jessie Hurst—the guy who jumped down into the pit to get me when I fell in Memphis—Jessie’s my covering. We’ve been together a long time. And Gerald Wright, my business manager, is my friend, in the sense that a true friend is somebody who is always there for you and always cares.
Every now and then you have to get back on track when you have a lot of things shoved in your face. When you love God, you have no choice but to be accountable. Tammy and the Family, all fifteen of them, help me do that. They know me, they stand with me, but they remind me of my word and my witness whenever I need a little push. I love them for that and for many other things.
I want to get very vocal about the way I was raised because I know I’m not the only one. Sometimes onstage, without any rehearsal or any deliberate plan to do it, I feel the impulse to just share my heart about those things.
I was born out of wedlock to a mother who would have aborted me if a godly aunt hadn’t intervened. I grew up on the poor side of town and was taunted and teased and beat on as long as I can remember. But God was there for me. He didn’t let me go. And that’s where I am.
I know that’s what I have to say because that auditorium or theater is filled with people who know just what I’m talking about. Either they’ve been there or they know somebody who has, and they need to know that they can beat it. They don’t have to live like that because Jesus can set them free.