After his dad died, he turned to crime and drugs in Newcastle England

When Kirk was a drug dealer, a friend committed suicide after he sold him drugs. After Kirk became a Christian, another friend committed suicide. He never told his friend about Jesus.

Now, the Newcastle, England, man feels the urgency to share Jesus with everyone.

Up until his father’s death, Kirk had an ideal childhood. His family had few serious problems; his dad held a good job.

But when a drunk driver killed his father, his tranquil life turned nightmarish. His mom started drinking and hooking up with other men. There was no stability.

Kirk turned to running away from home, committing crimes, and abusing drugs.

“Between 16 and 19 I basically lived in a drug filled haze,” says Kirk. By the age of 24, he was a drug dealer.

One night a friend was in a bad place and came to his house. Kirk did what he had always done, sold him drugs.

“That night someone upset him,” Kirk recounts. “He went home and killed himself.”

As a result of the tragedy, he realized drugs are not an answer.

“Life just got too much,” he says. “My faults were consumed with horrible thoughts. I got really depressed and I just didn’t want to be here.”

One day Kirk met a woman named Dionne who preached about Jesus.

But in his world, there was no such thing as God. If God existed, he couldn’t love someone like himself.

The next day Kirk intentionally overdosed.

“I really just didn’t want to be here,” he remarks. “I didn’t have any strength left, not even the strength to just get up in the morning. In the middle of the overdose the phone rang and woke us up.”

The following day Kirk received a visitor that shared Jesus with him.

When the person left, Kirk got on his knees and prayed for his dad to come down and take him and his family away with him.

Then something remarkable happened.

“All of sudden the room just lit up like a summer’s dayRead the rest: Christianity in Newcastle, England

Valedictorian Christian rapper aims for academia, urban mission

Ki’Shon Furlow was always conflicted. n the one hand, he graduated a 4.0 GPA valedictorian from high school. At the same time, however, he tried to traffic drugs to support his mom and five siblings in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Ironically and fortunately, it was the drug supplier who dissuaded him.

“You’re graduating high school. You’re an idiot. You have all these things going for you. You have a good family,” the dealer told him, according to Genius Lyrics. “Go to school, and be a good kid.”

Ki’Shon — whose latest releases are under the name YourWelcome Shon with Curb Records — is glad he, like so many in marginalized neighborhoods in America, ultimately chose Christ instead of falling into the dangerous life of risking death or jail.

Am. “God got the plan now.”

Simmering in the background of Christian Hip Hop for a few years, Ki’Shon came to a boil at the forefront with a cosign from Derek Minor in 2018. “One of my favorite artists right now,” Minor tweeted, according to Rapzilla.

He’s committed to getting out of the ‘hood with “clean money.” His play-on-words “Summa Hood Laude” celebrates the words that rescued him from selling drugs — ironically words from a drug supplier!

His “Lord+Taylor” still reaches back into the past as it portrays a romantic story of a bad boy changing for a good girl. It’s a hypnotizing ballad with clever lyrics. Behind the fairy tale lies an implicit call to kids from the ghetto to believe in God, believe in themselves, believe in doing good actions and believe in the chance to make it out through legitimate work.

“Ima about to make her fall for a gangster. She’s got my heart on lockup. You make me want to change up. I don’t wanna be a player no more. You don’t need nobody else, Ima get it right. Girl, you got me praying on my knees to the Father.” Read the rest: YourWelcome Shon Christian rapper

He threw bricks of cocaine out the window of his car

All CJ Blair wanted was to make enough money so that his mother could stop selling her body to abusive men on the streets of Washington D.C.

“When you offer the opportunity for me to make $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 a night,” he explains, “then I’m connecting that to my mother being able to stop selling her body and getting beat up by men.”

Growing up in the projects with a single mom, CJ only knew the father figure that was her pimp.

Only his great grandmother was a believer, and he saw her praying during the summers when he went to visit.

“My great grandmother believed God for everything, I mean, everything,” he remembers. “If it was rent money, whatever, she believed it. I was like, ‘Wow, this woman is serious.’”

In all the family, CJ was the most prone to get into trouble, but Grandma always spoke positively about him, unlike other family members who criticized him.

“She would say I was a man of God,” he recalls.

Two paths were in front of young CJ, the wild life of the streets that he was accustomed to or the way of Christianity.

“I was scared of Hell,” he admits. But he didn’t want to “play with God,” as he saw it, to pursue God in a half-hearted way.

CJ dropped out of school at an early age. At 13, authorities arrested him for assault. For the next 12 years, he was in and out of jail.

After a 6-year stint in jail for robbery and malicious wounding, CJ emerged from prison and decided to start a musical career in the hip hop industry.

“I was in the studio one night, and the studio engineer began to talk about Jesus,” he says. “If there’s a Jesus and you haven’t accepted Him and you die, you gonna be short.”

“God began to start dealing with me at that point,” he says.

Two weeks later after making a major drug deal, he was driving home listening to a rap group talk about driving a platinum car with the mark of Beast.

“When I heard that, something triggered in me,” he recalls. “All that talk that my great grandmother was talking about back then when I was like 8, 9, here it is now. He knew he was headed to hell if his life didn’t change.

His hands popped off the wheel. Moved by the sudden realization of God’s existence, he exclaimed, “Hallelujah. Hallelujah.”

Then Jesus spoke — audibly.

“CJ,” He said. “Take it out.”

Accordingly, CJ popped out the cassette tape. This automatically switched to radio. A man’s voice came through the car’s speakers.

“Do you know what miracles are?” the voice said. Read the rest: Drug dealer turns to Jesus.