A Joel Osteen & Kanye West Conversation

- [Joel] Hey everybody, come on let's welcome

Mr Kanye West today. (loud applause and cheering)

awesome to have you, all right guys y'all can be seated.

So awesome to have you at Lakewood and just feel blessed.

(loud applause and cheering)

All right guys y'all can be seated.

Kanye was

so kind to come for tonight's

Sunday service and when I heard he was coming I said,

man you gotta come on Sunday morning, at least say hello

to the people so.

Here we feel blessed to have you Kanye and Kanye

just some thoughts maybe.

We've all seen, you know, something happen in the last year

or so, you're not where you were back then.

Maybe you can just speak a little bit to the transition

and you know, how are you here today at Lakewood?

(loud applause and cheering)

(audience member cheers)

(loud applause and cheering)

- Well I know that God's been calling me for a long time

and the devil's been distracting me for a long time.

(loud applause and cheering)

And when I was

you know, at my lowest point

you know God was there with me and sending me visions

and inspiring me.

And I remember sitting in the hospital at UCLA

after having a mental breakdown and

there's documentations of me drawing a church

and saying, writing, start a church in the middle of

Calabasas and even after that I went and made the

The Life of Pablo album.

I said this is a gospel album and I didn't know how to

totally make a gospel album and the Christians that were

around where too,

I would say beaten into submission by society and not

speak up and profess the gospel to, you know.

To me because I was a superstar,

but the only superstar is Jesus.

(loud applause and cheering)

So as I sat there saying, you know I'm gonna make

a gospel album, there where Christians that were there

that were not.

Excuse me brother,

I go into these strings of consciousness when I'm talking

and when you're speaking in the middle of it,

it distracts me.

I really appreciate support but I would like for everybody

to be completely silent so I can let God flow through me

as I speak to you guys today.

(loud applause and cheering)

So in the studio,

and this studio, it's good to compare to places

that you're in in life, where people tell you to

quiet your voice and not talk about

Jesus, you know, so loud.

But everything else is so loud around us.

When I'm in California, when I'm in Vegas they got posters

up advertising, you know, sex trafficking because if

there's a advertisement for a strip club

that is advertising sex trafficking because at the end

of the night when they close up, the manager says

how much traffic do we have?

So,

if it's a man that's going through things with his family

or going through things at work and he feels

he has to go there.

We all end up participating, whether it's the spirits

that get advertised to us all the time.

Alcohol is, they call it a spirit.

So we get constant advertisement for spirits.

We get constant advertisement for strip clubs and other

things like that but then we bring up the name of Jesus

we're told to be quiet.

Quiet that down.

So, even for someone who's professing God and saying,

this going to be a gospel album, the devil's gonna come

and do everything he can to distract people

from knowing how to fully be in service to the Lord.

And,

all of that arrogance and confidence and cockiness that

y'all seen me use,

before God, it's now using for him.

(loud applause and cheering)

Because every time I stand up,

I feel,

that I'm standing up and drawing a line in the sand.

And saying, I'm here in service to God

and no weapon formed against me

(loud applause and cheering)

shall prosper.

- [Joel] That's so good Kanye.

You know Kanye maybe one of the most powerful, I've heard

a lot of your interviews but maybe,

can you speak any to, you said you use to worship the god

of fame and the god of some of things and that didn't

fulfill you, can you talk a little bit about that?

- Yes because it's presented to us on TV.

There's a rumor I heard where

someone had sat down with Sammy Davis Junior and this is no,

you know, knock to his family but I wanna use a specific

name that we know of because it's a celebrity name,

we have these icons, we use it.

And he leaned in and he said, you know,

Satan is as powerful as God.

And that is the mentality

that people have a lot of times when they're in service

to fame, money, manpower.

You start to feel like Satan is the most powerful

and you start to feel like if you're in service to God

that in life it means you will not prosper.

And the only way to prosper is in service to fame

and it, you know.

It's like devil stole all the good producers.

The devil stole all the good musicians.

All the good artists, all the good designers.

All the good business people.

And said you gotta come over and work for me and now

the trend

the shift is going to change, Jesus has won the victory.

(loud applause and cheering)

Because now, and I told you about

my arrogance and cockiness already.

Now,

the greatest artist that god has ever created

is now working for him.

(loud applause and cheering)

- I thought Kanye, you know, I grew up,

I'm a preacher's kid.

You didn't grow up like me, how, you know,

maybe speak to, a little bit, to your upbringing

and you know, how that all, how all the effected you?

- Well my dad had me in church

three times a week.

For me as a kid,

you know going to church on Wednesday instead of going

to basketball practice or getting to play video games

got to be, you know, a little bit boring.

And my mom had me in church twice a week,

or definitely on Sundays.

We actually grew with the church, it was a pastor named

Johnny Coleman and we grew from a small church to

a mega-church, a Chicago version.

I think it grew to like five, 6 000.

And my mom always had the records in the house and we would

be playing a lot of R&B records but then we'd go and hear

the gospel and hear worship.

So you know, as I now have a family, I'm 42 years old

and married for five years.

(loud applause and cheering)

There's a blatant responsibility for me to become more like

my mother who's gone to heaven and more like my father

who has a, who's working on building a water purification

center in the DR.

(loud applause and cheering)

You know with rappers there's so many things that we've done

where,

to maintain the idea of coolness.

You know we have our own daughters and we still be

rapping about trying to hook up with somebody daughter.

Like not taking the responsibility as a man,

that's why I say the song Closed On Sunday, is the hardest

record ever made.

It's hard as a NWA record because it's talking about

protecting your kids from the indoctrination of the media.

The thousands and thousands of images

that are fed to children by the age of six or seven.

And within those images,

there are images mixed in that we don't know about

as parents, that are purposely mixed in to lower

the kids' superpower and esteem so that they can be

more susceptible to consumption and feel that they need to

consume and became a part of the robotic,

numeric system

that controls so much of the media.

Did I?

You know I just had to say it like it is, you can rewind

it and then do research what I'm talking about but.

(chuckles)

- Kanye one my favorite songs on your new album

is that song God is.

In that middle you've got that part where

I mean, you're preaching in the middle.

It's very very powerful and you know, maybe not everybody's

heard it but I just ask if I could play maybe this

30, 40, 60 second clip and listen to this,

I'll get him to comment on this but guys

roll that if you would please.

♪ Revelation, this aint about a dead religion ♪

♪ Jesus brought a revolution ♪

♪ All the captives are forgiven ♪

♪ Time to break down all the prisons ♪

♪ Every man, every woman ♪

♪ There is freedom from addiction ♪

♪ Jesus you have my soul ♪

♪ Sunday service on a roll ♪

♪ All my idols, let 'em go ♪

♪ All the demons, let 'em know ♪

♪ This a mission, not a show ♪

♪ This is my eternal soul ♪

♪ this my kids, this the crib (loud applause and cheering) ♪

♪ This my wife, this my life ♪

♪ This my God-given right ♪

♪ Thank you, Jesus won the fight ♪

- How about that, wow.

(loud applause and cheering)

You said more in 60 seconds than I say in my

30 minute message right there.

You know what, that's really powerful man.

The addictions have to go, the demons have to go.

You wanna speak to it all, speak to it at all?

- Yeah those addictions are

are on us, even when you are saved and fully delivered.

You know when I started Sunday Service I started my church

which people told me I could call a church because you aint

got no pastor, so it aint really a church.

But it was church fOR us, it's all we had.

And you know,

(loud applause and cheering)

we didn't really have a place to consistently go,

you know, every week and bring the family and we started off

by just, you know, having records that were good

and I'm gonna get to the addiction part.

(laughter)

you know nice,

easy to listen to records and good feelings.

I had a friend that came by and said,

but you have to say the name Jesus, you can have

you know, all of this good sounding stuff but eventually

people are gonna need solid food.

So we, we started to (loud applause and cheering)

then incorporate that.

And those addictions, these different addictions

that all of us have

are things that can bring, I like to say bring our

Christian score-card down.

And they'll hit you sometimes, you'll just go ahead and

just pour that drink

and then

repent for it.

So we're all human, we all gonna fall short

of the glory.

I aint seen nobody with a 23 play as good as Michael Jordan.

So,

Christians are not going to be Christ.

We are going to follow Christ and be Christ-like

and repent for our sins.

But there's a lot of times when people don't wanna come

to Christ, they try to point out

the worst Christian they ever met.

But when you play basketball you don't point to the worst

basketball player, you point to the best basketball player.

So with these addictions that hit us,

it's that constant

you know, being in constant repentance.

A lot of people who don't wanna accept what the Bible says

is because they don't wanna accept that

they are in the wrong or that they are basking and living

and capitalizing off of sin.

We all have sin,

it's another thing to just be selling drugs

in the children's parking-lot.

(loud applause and cheering)

(laughter)

- Finally, couple of things I was thinking there, let's see

(laughter)

- You know one of it is this, we got two more things

I wanna get to.

I heard, well let me go to the second one first.

What would you say to the younger Kanye?

You know there's some young people listening, maybe they're

where you were 10 years ago or something.

You know, any advice for them?

- You know.

It's not that

that the younger Kanye.

There's nothing I could say to the younger Kanye

through words, I could speak to the younger Kanye

through music. (loud applause and cheering)

So we on they neck!

This music gonna come every month.

We dropping that heat, we in the studio.

God is strengthening our hands, we have writers,

we have producers, we taking all the most fire producers

and bringing them back to God.

(loud applause and cheering)

All the best voices, all the best dancers.

All the worship,

for us to see that it's through Christ.

I mean following the Bible can free us all and it was,

you know, interesting you'd think.

You know when we were at the prisons to you know,

professing how Jesus can set you free.

And it's a.

It's true, the more and more this entire country

follows Christ and sets the example that we are

a Christian country.

(loud applause and cheering)

They're attempting to take prayer out of schools.

When you remove the fear and love of God, you create the

fear and love of everything else.

(loud applause and cheering)

so let me word that not in a negative way,

but in a positive way.

Reinstate the fear and love of God and eliminate the fear

and love of everything else.

(loud applause and cheering)

What I got that from, that slight difference of wording,

I got that from Joel.

(loud applause and cheering)

Because,

there's a lot of people in the Christian community

that try to give Joel a hard time because when you turn on

the radio, he keeps on showing you good God is.

(loud applause and cheering)

God is not the enemy, God is not the negative part.

God is not just a perception of fire and brimstone,

God is love, is the greatest, is the glory.

God is family.

God is friendship, God is prosperity.

Keep our eye on the sparrow, keep your eye on

the beauty and the love and the grace of God.

The grace that allows us to be here today

with all of our sins.

That,

we know that when we accept Jesus Christ

as our Lord and savior, we will be granted eternal life.

(loud applause and cheering)

- That's so good, I love that.

When you got Kanye defending you, you made it man,

all right, okay.

(loud applause and cheering)

a couple more, because I wanna stay on that Kanye

because it's not just about turning over a new leaf.

It's not just about, you know, being good or being positive

it's about a personal relationship with Jesus.

Knowing that he died for our sins, we repent of those sins

and we say, God I'm gonna walk with you.

You know Kanye, you can speak to that, I don't know

if you wanna pray for the people or I'll pray for them

or however you wanna do that.

But let's just make sure, you know the main point is,

what you stand for is, not just you've turned over

a new leaf.

You told James Corden and I don't wanna steal your words

but James Corden said, well how do we know Kanye is just not

you know, it's just not for a minute or something like that?

You said, you know, when you're asleep, that's one state.

When you wake up that's another state and Kanye said,

I woke up to God, so I'm awake now so I love that.

That's powerful (loud applause and cheering)

you wanna say anything, you wanna pray over them,

anything you wanna do?

- Oh absolutely, Lord, Christ, Father God.

Thank you for this moment, thank you for

the anointed words and the mission that Joel has been set on

the amazing, the thousands and thousands.

Hundreds and thousands of people that Joel has brought

to Christ and being that often times,

that first step that invites us to let us know how

good Jesus is and how good your love is.

Thank you for bringing me up in the church, thank you for

the opportunity to have given me a platform that is so

vast that no one can take it away once I've turned over

everything to you.

Thank you for the opportunity to stand on this stage

without judgment.

Next to (loud applause and cheering)

one of the strongest voices

in the Christian community.

Thank you for having my family here today,

the West side of the family, Jaden it's his brithday.

We're gonna go ice-skating, thank you for.

But then he said he aint wanna go ice-skating so now

we gonna go go-karting (laughter)

and also my prayers do sound like this, they are somewhere

in the Ricky Bobby territory. (laughter)

Thank you so much God for this opportunity,

in Jesus name we pray, Amen.

- Come on Lakewood (loud applause and cheering)

love you man, I love you so much, thank you.

Thank you for being here.

(loud applause and cheering)

- [Joel] Hey guys can we make Kim Kardashian and North

feel welcome right here in the front row.

(loud applause and cheering)

So awesome to have you, Kim Kardashian West, sorry.

And North.

Thank you so much, thanks for being here guys, we love you.

It's gonna be an awesome night tonight.

You may be seated if you would please, thank you so much.

(loud applause and cheering)

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