Loving Others Towards Jesus . That ’ s an underlying theme within Stephen ’ s call towards worship and evangelism . With over 70,000,00 views across social media , he has recently signed with Capitol Christian Music Group , releasing the single , “ O Holy Night .”
[ Alex ] So let ’ s start off here . I ’ m intrigued by your background . Like you , many worship leaders today have been preachers ’ kids , and many graduated through the ranks over the years beginning by leading in worship for their youth groups , and now serving the main congregation , But not you . You rejected the hypocrisy that you saw . Referring to the woman being judged as being sinful , Jesus said to the Pharisees , “ Therefore , I tell you her many sins have been forgiven as her great love has shown , but whoever has been forgiven little , loves little .” How has this dynamic impacted your ministry ?
[ Stephen McWhirter ] The dynamic of forgiveness or the dynamic ?
[ WM ] The dynamic of actually having a testimony . In other words , you didn ’ t just grow up singing songs in the church . You have some meat in your testimony .
[ Stephen ] Well , yeah , both unfortunately , and fortunately . Sometimes people will say to me , I wish I had your testimony , and I ’ m like , “ Why ?” My dad was actually an evangelist and traveled , which is equally as hard in a different way than kids who grew up as a pastor ’ s kid . And let me just say , I don ’ t think every pastor and child scenario is a bad one . There ’ s some that are done really well and they ’ re healthy and it ’ s fine . I ’ ve met many families since , and the kids are really grounded and it ’ s done really well . But also , there ’ s quite a few with some battle scars . And I think for me growing up , it wasn ’ t so much like being worked or having to just do a lot . I would see my Dad get up , preach about Jesus , and then behind closed doors , I would watch him physically abuse my Mom . And that was the thing that made me ... as I became old enough to get past the trauma and old enough to think , “ You know what , if this God guy ’ s real , I don ’ t want anything to do with Him , and I definitely don ’ t want anything to do with this Jesus character .” So yeah , my earthly father … my heavenly Father became the villains in my story .
And so I had a pretty hard severing from all that , both emotionally and relationally and all the above . I think the hard part is , the hard part is separating what you experience from such a big figure in your life , like a polarizing figure , like your father . And I think making amends with that and God as a Father . And I think that the tough part is that sometimes people only see the Lord through the lens of a broken relationship that they have with their earthly father or any other parental figure in their life that claim to represent Jesus or whatever . And that can be a very difficult thing . It can send some people in some really far , dark directions , like myself , as I ’ m sure we ’ ll get into .
[ WM ] But in your mind , in your heart , the dynamic of being forgiven for so much , and we ’ re all forgiven for so much , but being
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