Rededicate 250 | Ep. 01: Lorenzo Sewell

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the Jonathan Shuttlesworth Podcast. To stay connected, go to revivaltoday.com. And now, here is Evangelist Jonathan.

SPEAKER_02 0:13

Great to have you on. Thanks for coming on. You might know these next couple.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

It's the fervent effectual prayer of the righteous. Yes. At the end of the day, sometimes prayer can become the rhythm of religion. And we just do it because it was nice to hear a non-red prayer.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

Totally. And then these people have been making in the sun at 5 p.m. I was telling the crowd while you were, or the people on TV, they don't understand. There was no energy in the crowd because everybody's been laying and you brought the energy. So great job.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Thank you. You know, I feel like our forefathers and foremothers required that because they say you still believe. You believe in the sacrifice we've made. You believe in the sacrifice of Jesus and to pray fervently, even though we've been here since 5.30 in the morning. You have? Absolutely. But you know what I realized? My ancestors, they walked for 385 days to get rights on buses. I realized my ancestors went back down to the south to free people so they can be able to experience the greatness of this country. So my question is if I can't survive for 12 hours in the hot sun, I don't deserve to be able to have the blessing and the benefit of this country. It's a great, it's a great perspective.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

Tell me what you mentioned up there that you were mentored by murders and stuff. How did you start out in East Detroit?

SPEAKER_01 1:31

Yeah, my father is in prison for murder, and I was literally reared and raised by the best friend game. And if you look in the FBI and you look at who are the top gangs, the best friends game was a murderous game. And I remember 11 years old getting into a fight, and my friend said, Well, let's go and get some guns and shoot the guy. I remember, you can imagine that 11 years old. I was in the drive-by playing Atari video games before there was Xbox, before there was PlayStation, right? It was Atari and Atari, I was playing a game and a house got shot up. So I was mentored by that. So only in America could a president, I mean, think about that. I'm not a prestigious man. I don't come from an amazing legacy. I don't, I'm not rich. But for a president to come and talk to a pastor, that's only can happen in America. It can't happen anywhere else.

SPEAKER_02 2:18

So where where did that connection come with President Trump?

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Literally, he came and you know, I thought it was a I've always voted conservative. Never considered myself a real Trump guy. Tell me why you voted conservative. Because I believe the Bible. I've always just believed in traditional marriage and I've always believed in sanctity of life. Those are my two pillars. If you had an RNX in your name, I'd vote for him. Because of those things, absolutely. I didn't even check it out now. At that point, I wasn't as politically astute as I am now in terms of righteously regulating resources. I didn't understand the importance of fair elections. I just voted. I did it because I was told that my forefathers they sacrificed for me to be able to vote. It was literally that simple. So when he came, I was like, the first thing was I didn't believe he would come. Because I didn't ask him to come. But his team reached out to me, his advance team would say, Yeah, he's coming. And I'm like, so when we met, he was like, Yeah, I want to listen to you. Like, okay, you don't want to check, right? You don't want us to raise money because my mindset was politics. You want us to raise money for you, but I forgot he was already rich. Okay, that's true. That's why I believe he's the only real president we've ever had because he really didn't need anything.

SPEAKER_02 3:20

Right.

SPEAKER_01 3:20

And so for him to promise me I would pray at the inauguration, I would preach at the RNC, and for me to have a stage like this, only you can do that in America.

SPEAKER_02 3:28

And he kept his word. Absolutely. Which not everybody does. Right. They just say what they need to say when they're in town. So, when um when did you have your encounter with God that took you out of a life of drugs and all that?

SPEAKER_01 3:37

Good question. So it was I'll never forget it. It was April 18th, 1999. I was allegorised. I was um cutting myself. I was on all types of drugs, ecstasy, acid, shrooms. My dad being in prison, I was searching for somebody to validate me in the midst of the pain and the pressure of being a young man. Mom did all she could. She's my hero, but there's a point where a man's gotta look at a man to make them a man.

SPEAKER_02 4:02

Right.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

And I didn't have that. And the only surrogate fathers I had were drug dealers. And I was in Daytona Beach, cutting myself, and it was a security guard. He came up to me and he said, Can I pray for you? Really? And I thought, and really to be frank with you, I felt like I was offended because I was like, Who do you think you are? You know, I pulled out money I had, I'm like, I mean, what do you got? He said, No, no, I'm not trying to offend you. Can I pray for you? And he laid his hands on me and he prayed for me. And at that moment, it was the first time I ever felt in my life that drug dealing was wrong. It was the first time I was convicted, right? We talk about the conviction of the Holy Spirit. I was convicted of my sin. And then I went back to Detroit, talked to all my boys, and they're looking at me like they're like, yeah, right. I said, No, man, I'm done. I tried to put in my two-week resume, that didn't work out. Right? No. So I talked to my distributor and he's like, What's wrong with you? And I was like, Man, I really he was a murderous man. And I was embarrassed.

SPEAKER_02 4:54

And that could be trouble asking the lead.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

I was afraid for my life. Yes. I mean, literally. And he was like, I respect you. He said, I respect you. And even though I didn't know the Bible from a blunt, I would smoke weed, I would smoke weed out of Bible papers. That's all I knew about Bible. Seriously, we'd run out of blunts. I'd grab a New Testament. I mean, that's what I did. So, but I knew the God of the Bible. I knew it with, and this is the Holy Spirit, right? I just knew that He was real. And so for me to stand up on the stage and kind of declare Jesus is the only, I'm not doing that because it's something nice to say or I'm afraid somebody's gonna get offended. Saved your life. Totally. I mean, if I'm in the middle of an ocean and you come and you throw me a life preserver, I'm gonna say you're the one that saved my life. So it is. I wasn't raised in church, I had an encounter with Christ.

SPEAKER_02 5:42

So then tell me this: you got you had an encounter with God, and that got you out of sin. Where did you get like the impartation to preach? Because you're not a you're not a talker, you preach, so where'd that come from?

SPEAKER_01 5:53

That's a good question. So I literally, that's how God works things out, right? So I became a janitor. So I'm gonna start working at the church, you know, and I'm just working and cleaning. And my what kind of church? It was a so my Bishop Andrew Jonathan Davis Merritt, Bishop Merritt, he was, which I didn't know. We had the largest church in Detroit, which my grandmother went to, but you don't know, it's from the streets. So I mean he'd go into a church thinking this is what a church is about, right? So my first encounter with Christians was three-hour prayer. So I didn't know, like you couldn't. My my encounter and my definition of Christianity was three hours of prayer every day. Right? So in those fervent prayers, that's where the preaching came from. I see.

SPEAKER_02 6:34

What when would they pray? What three hours?

SPEAKER_01 6:36

Nine to twelve? No, no, from 5 a.m. to eight. Yep, every and it happened every day. So you gotta remember I'm an 18-year-old kid, right? So you are you walking to something, you're like, this is what Christianity is. You don't have you have no reference for Christianity. I wasn't raised in a church, I just didn't have any reference. So my reference was prayer and intercession and crying out to God. So on a stage like this, it's just it's just natural that you've already been doing.

SPEAKER_02 6:59

Yeah, I like I like that. I like that you didn't read your prayer and it was anointed. You know, you can feel it. Thank you so much. I'm glad you were a part of it. So tell me what you have going on. Okay, so then now you have your own church. Yes, I do. You you uh how long have you been the pastor there?

SPEAKER_01 7:13

Yeah, so I got over then when I was 19, pastoring my first church when I was 21, the pastor that I'm at, the So hold hold on.

SPEAKER_02 7:18

When was Daytona? How old were you there? 18. So you got saved and you got like right in.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

I really, well, you know what it was? And this is how God and his goodness I lost all my friends, right? Because I'm not a drug guy anymore. So God strategically set it up where the only thing I had was the Bible. So the only, like for me to study the Bible for five hours a day, it wasn't like you'd probably look at that today, or I would look at it today and say, What are you doing? Well, then you gotta remember my 18-year-old kid, I didn't have anything, no cell phone, the only thing I had was God. All my friends were gone, and that was a little bit of what God used to drive me to his word was the fact that he used the wilderness, right? The wilderness experience. All of God's friends go to the wilderness. So he put me in the wilderness, and that's where I was able to learn the Bible school or anything. I was able to learn the ways of the Spirit, the soul of the Spirit.

SPEAKER_02 8:11

Right. So then you took the church in 21?

SPEAKER_01 8:13

Yeah, so the church that I have now, we've been there since 2018. And then I've also pastored in other churches. I've been assistant pastors, but my wife and I, we've been able to start churches, dream centers, it's been very humbling, it's been God's word.

SPEAKER_02 8:25

When you took the one in 2018, what one if you looked back, I'm sure a lot of good things happened. But what was like a day or something that happened where you're like, you knew you hit your breakthrough at that church, and it went from being like a one of many churches to like a top one.

SPEAKER_01 8:39

Yeah, you know, that's a very good question. When President Trump came to my church, you know, because I'm in the I'm in a ghetto. Like, if you if we were in front of my church right now, you'd see women get in human traffic, kids can't read, write, do math, you can go to the store and lose your life. Like, I'm in the hood. Like I'm in the place that you tell your wife not to stop there and get gas, type of thing, right? I mean, I'm in I'm in the hood, right? So when President Trump came, it was that was the moment where I felt like God was like, I haven't forgot about you. Because you know you hustle, you pray, you believe God, you raise money, you do everything you can, but you're you can't keep asking poor people to give to transform a community they don't even want to live in. So that's when I was able to get involved in politics. So now I teach actually on politics three hours a day. So I have a political mentor at my church. Way to go. God brought him there because he was voted for illegally in the election. So he got this black guy. I mean, you gotta think about this. He got this, I mean, like, this guy's from like our area, which, you know, these guys kill people, man. I mean, these are these are murderous men. These are men I was voted for illegally. I'm like, what do you mean voted for? He said, I moved outside the city of Detroit, I moved to Ohio, I was re-registered back to my old address, and I was voted for illegally. Pulled out the voter rolls, his name's on it, shows me his Ohio ID. I'm like, what? So that put me on a trajectory in terms of politics. So that was the defining moment. It was really the day after President Trump's birthday. That's interesting. Like, I know I got saved April 18th, 1999. If you would say, who was the demarcation in terms of me knowing that this wasn't just a regular church? President Trump's birthday is on the 14th of June. It was the 15th. That's the day came.

SPEAKER_02 10:15

That's a great story. For everybody that's watching on Real America's Voice that liked what they heard, both at the inauguration and today, and your interview, and they want to know more about you, where's the best place for them to go?

SPEAKER_01 10:25

So, what they could do is I'm on Instagram, you know, and before, you know, I was uh praying, I never was on Instagram, I never was on TikTok, or but I'm on all those social media handles now because it's a ministry now, right? X and all that. So I'm on everyone, just my name, Lorenzo Sewell.

SPEAKER_02 10:41

S-E-W-E-L-L. That's it. Thanks for coming on with us. Thank you, so glad I got to meet you.

SPEAKER_01 10:45

It's an honor. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 10:49

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