During an interview with Joe Rogan, Oliver Anthony shared his testimony of how God’s Word changed his life and led him to put away his past addictions and pursue the talents he’s been given as a musician.
“On paper things were great,” Anthony said to Rogan. “I’m nobody special and I’m not here to preach to anybody, but I’m telling you, like, giving things to God…I had this breakdown moment and decided that I was going to let whatever… I had go, and just at this point it’s like I knew I didn’t have much left in for me anyway and I wanted to serve whatever purpose it was that I was here to serve.”
For Anthony, deciding to give control of his life over to the Lord took him to the next level of what God had for him, starting from his very first experience of encountering the Lord on a very personal level.
“You get this overwhelming feeling, just crying like a baby, just this very like warm feeling throughout me and that really hasn’t gone away since,” Anthony said.
Anthony told Rogan that he came to a place of full surrender. It was after this ultimate surrender to Christ and His will that Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond” exploded, providing him with a platform to tell his story.
“I just told God, I was like, ‘just let me do it,'” Anthony said. “I’ll give up the weed, and I’ll quit getting drunk and I’ll quit being so angry about things…I’ll start over again and I’ll make Him the focus and not me.”
For Anthony, the breakthrough from depression and anxiety came by allowing himself to decrease and allow Jesus to increase in his life. It was the Scriptures like Proverbs that allowed him to see life from an entirely new perspective. He also believes that realizing we all idolize something is a key for readjusting our focus onto what really matters because we have to make a decision about what we will place first and foremost in our lives.
“Inherently all human beings idolize something,” Anthony said. “It talks in the Bible about false idols. We all have false idols; whether it’s our phone or it’s a celebrity or it’s something we do or it’s our addiction to food or drugs…we all serve some master whether we realize it or not, so why not let it be the Master that is above all?”
In a world where we continue to see musicians fall for the flare of the demonic whether it’s Demi Lovato, Taylor Swift or even the Christian music charts, it’s refreshing to see someone rise up onto the charts not because they gave their soul to the world, but rather because they fully surrendered to the plans and purposes that God has for them. Only time will tell how God will continue to use Oliver Anthony and how his story will impact Joe Rogan and millions of others. {eoa}
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Abby Trivett is a marketing copywriter and coordinator for Charisma Media.
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