Interview with Lou Chikuni - The Here I Stand Theology Podcast

Ladies and gentlemen, can I please have your attention? I've just been handed an urgent news story, and I need all of you to stop what you're doing.

Yo. Yo. Assessing the damage, collecting the data to stow it, analyze the code to see the anguish of the average soul, that the spirit inhabits, diminished and famished, was supposed to be hard as granite but was ravaged by the status quo, reexamining close cracks in the pattern shows, what was meant to be intrinsic was simply mechanical, motion without devotion sinking till it vanished slow, we was running hard before like Giannis when he slammed it though, now the plan to restore the balance and establish hope, means we gotta go back to the matters of the path we chose, that chose us before the planets and inanimate particles and animals revealed in the manifold, wisdom of God from the beginning of time is worth the grimace and grind to hit the finishing line, should be spending our lives with giving and lifting them high so we rebuilding the faith that we live a brick at a time, uh.

Bring it back, bring it back, a faith that never lasts, you can't live with that, bring it back, bring it back, rebuild the foundation when it's getting cracked, bring it back, bring it back, a faith that never lasts, you can't live with that, bring it back, bring it back, you constructing every brick of faith, let it stand.

Yo. If the spirit's the one who set it off, put the spark in our heart, the ignition that would get us off, the path to perdition, tripping the different to the cross, how we think if we walk in the flesh that we better off, we let it talk, the voice of the age trying to rearrange what we have claimed to maintain, but strange things with new slang made to say plain, that you walking away from the faith that ain't sane, you call it deconstruction there's a deep discussion that we need to have about this path and the repercussions,

I need to come with grace and humility when I speak on the subject, I ain't coming with no judgment, but of this world we are not so we uplift the name of Christ in everything trying to hover above it, securing with cups, taking captive with objects, every thought or opinion there's nothing that could contest, bring it back, bring it back, a faith that never lasts, you can't live with that, bring it back, bring it back, rebuild the foundation when it's getting cracked, bring it back, bring it back, a faith that never lasts, you can't live with that, bring it back, deconstructing every brick of faith, let it stack.

Welcome to the Here I Stand Theology Podcast, we are live on the YouTubes, on Facebook, we're on the

Truth and Love Network as well tonight, so we want to encourage you if you have any questions for Mr.

Lou Ciccone, we want to encourage you to tune in, go ahead and start sending those things in, we'll start hollering back at you, sending shouts out to you as you come on, in any case, nevertheless,

I've done, as they say in the country, let the cat out of the bag, we have Mr.

Lou Ciccone on with us tonight, without any further ado, let's go ahead and bring him on, alright

Lou! Oh man, that was kind of overwhelming right there man,

I actually started to get kind of shy, I wanted to tell the people to sit down for a minute man. It's like this, y 'all sit down,

I'm just a man. Right, right, glory to God, please! So glad to have you on tonight sir, how are you doing?

Absolutely, bro, I am doing fantastic man, it's an honor and a pleasure to be on with you tonight, been looking forward to connecting and just having this conversation with you for a while now man.

Yes sir, we have been certainly looking forward to that, and so I totally want to respect your time tonight, so let's see some, oh wait, here we go, our friend

Daryl King's on with us, he just got off a solid CCC interview, he had

Haps Addison on, you gotta go check that out if you've not heard Haps' testimony. I have not,

I have not, no, D. King got the really good testimonies going on man, appreciate that brother right there.

He really does, he's a good man, I love him. So let's just go ahead and get right into things here

Lou, okay? So my first question is this, so what we're going to do here, we're going to go into a section of the podcast where we call, what

I'm calling the nucleus, and what we do here is Lou, we want to find out about you, we want to find out who is

Lou Chikuni, what makes Lou Chikuni tick? But beneath the clothes, we find a man, and beneath the man, we find his nucleus, yes.

All right, so who is

Lou Chikuni, so tell us about Lou, the man, the husband, the artist, so on and so forth, tell us about yourself.

Oh man, well, let me see, I guess I'll just start with obviously, so my name is

Lou Chikuni, I am from Malawi originally, which is a little country in the southern part of Africa.

And so I have a pretty huge family, and I'm the last born, okay?

I'm the last born of, there were 10 of us, one, my sister passed away two years ago, so there's nine of us now, but there's still a lot of us left by God's grace.

And I'm the last born, so aside from that, I'm married to Violet Chikuni, my wife of 14 years now,

I'll be, we'll get into, I guess, the testimony part a little bit more deeper later, but that's essentially me in a nutshell,

I am, I guess, I just describe myself as far as like my passion, man,

I think I'm just a overall, just a creative, that's just what I am, I just like to make stuff, and I always thrive off of creating new things, so whether that's music, whether that's content on YouTube, whether that is even clothing designs,

I love that too, videography is another thing I do, so it's like anything in the creative realm, it's my thing,

I just love it. So it sounds like you're a busy man. I try to stay busy, yes, yes, yes,

I try to stay busy. That's wonderful, and so you said you're the last born, so that makes you the baby.

Yes, absolutely, baby brother. So I am sorry to hear about the passing of your sister.

Thank you, thank you. But your other family, so how is that split up? Majority brothers, majority sisters?

You know, it was five boys, five girls. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah. So that was an equal split.

Yeah, yeah, you know. So when did you come to the U .S. from Malawi?

Yeah, so I was born in Malawi, and then first came to the U .S., I was like a year old, and spent my early childhood in the

U .S., so my father was in the foreign service in Malawi, so you know, as a diplomat, and so we lived basically really in the, well,

New York, I was like really young when we were in New York, but we lived mostly, my early memories are from the

DMV, what we would call DC, Maryland, Virginia area, so this has kind of been the hub for my family for, you know, decades, and then after, you know, my early childhood, kind of traveled around with them, so we lived in Kenya for two years,

I lived in South Africa for two years, um, ended up going back to Malawi, did like my high school pretty much in Malawi, and then

I lived, I did college in England for a few years, and throughout that time, yeah,

I always had family, you know, here, so I would, you know, come periodically, spend some time, holidays and things like that, you know, and then it was really 06 that I made a more sort of permanent move to kind of, you know, stay here, and I was actually living with my sister, who

I mentioned earlier at the time, and she was like, man, just come, just come, because I was in Malawi, and it was like,

I wasn't doing too much, she's like, trying to, I guess, trying to keep me out of trouble a little bit, so she's like, just come, just come, just come, so, yep, so.

Oh, that's wonderful, so how old are you? Man, I am 44.

Okay, okay, yeah, so you're moving on up, that's good though. Yeah, yeah, yeah, by God's grace, man, you know,

I don't deserve to be here. And you said you've been married 14 years.

Correct, yep, yep. Praise the Lord for that, man, that is awesome, which makes a perfect segue for our next segment.

All right. So, in this segment, this is where I'm going to ask you one question.

Okay. Okay, and you may have to think about it, you may not have to think about it. So, my wife and I have been married for 30 years, right?

So, there are a lot of dumb things that I've said to my wife in 30 years.

So, my question to you is this, what is the dumbest thing that you have said to your wife in the 14 years that you've been married?

Man, man, ah, that's a tough one, man, because I mean, yeah, yeah, she probably have a quick answer for that, man.

I'm trying to figure out, man, what is the dumbest thing I ever said to her, man? I mean, there's a lot of dumb stuff.

I can tell you one of the dumbest things I ever did, maybe that's even, that's better. That'll be perfect. Let me tell you one of the dumbest things that is still kind of embarrassing today, but I'm going to just kind of, you know,

I'm going to be truthful about it. So, there was a time, right, when we had our first apartment, and in that apartment, man, for whatever reason, they could not get rid of the mice in there, man.

You know what I'm saying? They could not get rid of the mice. Now, so, as I said earlier, man,

I'm kind of more of a technology guy. I'm not a real sort of like outdoorsman type of dude who, you know,

I don't go hunting and things like that. That's kind of, that's not me. I mean, I think that stuff is cool, but it's not me.

So, you know, handling animals is not really my forte, all right, you know, of any size, right?

So, there was a time, man, that there was this tiny, so, you know,

I bought these mouse traps to get rid of the problem we were dealing with, and they started to work, man.

And so, the first time that this happened, right, I wake up in the morning, and there

I see a tiny little mouse, and it was small, man. It was a small, tiny little mouse stuck in a trap, and I look at it, and I'm like, man, okay, how am

I going to get rid of this? Because I don't want to grab the trap. I'm like, I'm really thinking about what

I'm going to do here, and I'm sitting there, and then my wife walks out of the room, right? And then she's like, what's going on?

And I'm like, you know, maybe there's a dead mouse here, you know, there's a mouse, and I'm trying to pick it up, trying to figure out what to do.

And she just looked at me like, dude, are you serious? And she just walked up to it, just grabbed the mouse trap, threw it in the trash, and kept it moving.

And I just, I just stood there, I was like, wow. So this, this is likely what she wanted to say to you.

You big dummy, you big dummy, big dummy, see what you did? Oh no, you big dummy.

Absolutely. So wouldn't that be accurate? That's the look I got, man.

That's the look I got, for real. Oh, but thank, thank the

Lord for our wives, right? I mean, so how did you and your wife meet? Um, again, man, it's just,

I keep bringing up my sister again, but she introduced me to my wife. Yeah. You know, yeah, they had met at a party, um, in the area.

It was actually like a Malawian party somewhere. And my wife happened to be there and, you know, my sister invited her, you know, to the house.

And I literally walked in from work one day and there she was, you know, there she was.

And I just said hi to her real quick. She said hi. And then I just ran upstairs to take a shower, clean myself up and come back down and find out what's going on with this girl.

You know what I mean? So that's how we met. That's awesome. So it's been on since then, right?

Yes. It's been on since then. Literally, man, it was like next, got her number, you know, and then next week we went out on a date and we were both, you know, at a place where we're like, look, man, um, and this is, mind you, this is before being saved.

I was, we were both, both at a place where it's just like, look, man, if we're going to get into anything, we want to get into something that's serious, you know, and, uh, by God's grace.

Yeah. He, you know, uh, we connected and here we are. So, so talk, tell us about your salvation.

Then this is, this is the perfect place. Uh, tell us about salvation, when and where that occurred.

What, what, when, what went on? Yeah. Yeah. So I will back up a little bit and say, so in my teens, right.

Probably at about 14, 15 is when I got interested in hip hop.

Right. You know, I was like a lot, I love playing basketball, doing some other stuff, other sports and this and that, but I just wasn't that good, as good as I wanted to be, you know?

And although all that was fun, I just discovered, like, it was actually freestyling that, that started everything where there was a, a buddy of mine at the time who had a whole bunch of records.

He had just come back from, um, England and had all this vinyl at the time I was in Malawi actually.

And he started, you know, introducing me to all kinds of like underground rap and other stuff.

And then it was like, when I went to his crib and he would play beats and just start freestyling off the top of his head.

And then I was like, yo, yo, yo, is this, is this like real? Like people actually do stuff like this. And then that fascinated me and that opened the door, started my curiosity.

And then I got into it myself and I just kind of fell in love with, you know, the art of hip hop from then onwards.

And so I really had just a strong desire to be, you know, an

MC, you know, a known, popular MC, make, you know, the usual, make the money, all that stuff, sell a bunch of records.

That was my plan for basically my whole, you know, teen, teenage life and into my early twenties.

And so I ended up being in a group with three other guys and the group was called

Real Elements. And so at the time I was in England and we started doing, you know, started making some moves, man.

We started, you know, touring the UK a little bit, got connected with some other DJs, you know, went on tour with them.

So made some moves, you know, made some moves and things were going good. Things were going good.

And then along the way, so there was one of the brothers named David, right? The youngest in the group.

The whole time we were doing this music, he always said he was a Christian. Okay. He always said he was a

Christian and he never did the stuff the rest of us would do. You know what I'm saying? Like he would never cuss, never drank, never smoked, nothing, you know?

And so the whole time he had said that and as time progressed, we're in the things are going good.

And then at the time we were actually in South Africa and we were there because we had connected with a dude whose mom, actually his name is

Jared, rest in peace. His mom used to work for BMG Records in South Africa and she was starting like her own label, you know?

So he actually brought us over there, was taking care of us, kind of like managing us and all that stuff. So this is like a potential deal is on the table, right?

When we're there. And during that time, David turns around and says,

Hey guys, listen, I've been telling you guys that I've been living like a Christian, that I'm a

Christian and all this stuff. But I realized that I was just faking, you know?

I wasn't genuinely walking with the Lord, but now I am walking with the Lord. And because of that,

I'm not going to be able to continue with the group, you know? And so this happens and now nobody was really offended by it.

Of course, we're kind of like, ah, this is a bad time. You know what I mean? Can't you wait till at least you get some kind of money first or whatever.

But, you know, so he ends up leaving the group and that started a period of me just kind of soul searching.

And because I had heard the gospel a few years prior and had made a profession of faith, but it didn't last long at all, right?

Yeah. But ever since I had made that profession of faith, even though I turned away very quickly, I was always aware of the fact that, you know what?

If I die doing the crazy stuff we're doing right now, if I happen to die, whatever it is,

I'm going to hell and God has justified in sending me to hell. So I had this weight of that just over my head, you know?

And I lacked true peace in my life because of that, you know?

And so for years that went on and then, you know, fast forward,

I'm over here. This is 2008. I've been dating my wife for, you know, almost a year now.

And she always went to church every week, right? Even though she wasn't saved, but because she was raised in the church, she would always go to church every week, all right?

And mind you, this is another interesting part of the story, which we'll get to, but she grew up seventh day of Venice.

Oh, wow. Yeah. So she grew up seventh day of Venice. And so no matter what we do

Friday night, you could trust that Saturday morning, this woman is going to church.

It was just automatic because she kept the Sabbath, right? And so I started going with her to church.

It just started off as just going with your girlfriend to church is really what it was. But by God's grace, he started using those times of me going with her and me started to hear the gospel being preached to really break down the hardness of my heart.

And then just one Saturday, I mean, yeah, one Saturday, it was actually the Saturday after Thanksgiving in 2008, we went to church as normal.

They had a guest speaker that day, he preached. And then at the end of that, he made an altar call.

And I just felt like tremendous conviction. Why am

I even bothered about this? But I just knew it was just... I couldn't just walk away from it.

And my wife as well was experiencing something similar. And so she gets up and then

I just get up as well. I'm like, I got to get up. I get up and walk to the front.

And I kid you not, bro, before I said any prayer or anything, when

I got to the front, the dude that got to the front of the church and the dude that was sitting in the pews, that was a different guy.

That's it. I just knew that everything changed. And so that was how the

Lord snatched me out of the world, man. Praise God. If we call to mind Psalm 34, as you were testifying there,

I'm going to read that. The psalmist said, I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth.

My soul makes its boast in the Lord. Let the humble hear and be glad. Oh, magnify the

Lord with me and let us exalt His name together. But this fourth, fifth and sixth verse,

I sought the Lord and He answered me and He delivered me from all my fears.

Those who look to Him are radiant and their faces shall never be ashamed. And the psalmist said this, this poor man, this poor man cried and the

Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. Sir, I appreciate that testimony there.

How powerful and how true that is for regeneration, the new birth.

But most folks don't even, I don't think they really think about that. They think about salvation as being time.

Now, certainly conviction takes place over time, but man, regeneration, it's like that.

Right, right, right. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. When it happens, it happens and you know it's happened.

Yes. Praise the Lord, man. That is awesome. So from there, in turning in the

Lord, regenerating you, making you born again, making you a new creature in Christ, how did that affect your approach to your music from then on?

Yeah. So, you know, it's funny because I had reached a point, you see, music was a huge idol for me, right?

Of course, right? And so it was like, even in all my years of wrestling or whatever, it was like,

I always kind of had this in my mind where it's like, you know what, Lord, you know, I could give up smoking weed.

I could give up doing this. I can give up doing that. But this music stuff, man, I got to still be able to do music.

You know what I mean? And I would kind of sit there and ponder about life sometimes myself, that reason with myself. But at that point, when the

Lord saved me, I had reached a point where I feel like I had kind of let go of clinging to the music thing.

And even just considering that, hey, this might not be what happens in my life. Like, I may not ever be that guy.

You know what I mean? The dude with the big house and the gold chains and whatever. I may not ever be that guy, thankfully.

And so once I got saved, it was ironic that I now felt like a freedom to actually rap.

You know, I actually felt a freedom to rap. And one of the first things I did was I wrote a rhyme about my testimony, right, what had happened to me.

And then I started calling up my friends and saying, yo, yo,

I got this verse. Let me spit this verse for you, man. Now, sadly, I don't remember any of the bars at this point.

But I would rap this verse to dudes, and they'd be like, especially my

Christian friends. Because obviously, I had friends who were believers who had been praying for me and everything. But it wasn't like that because I was still in the world.

But now I'm turning back. And actually, David, the guy who I mentioned earlier, right, who was in the same group as me, he was one of the first people

I called. And when I called him, man, he just, oh, man, it was crazy. He's like, what?

Like, yo, this is crazy. Because he had been praying for years, man.

And so, yeah, I felt a freedom now once the Lord converted me to make the music.

And I understood that, you know, you know, whatever gifts we have should be used to glorify

Him, man, and just to tell people of this great salvation, you know. Chris Amen.

Have you thought, and you'll have to excuse me, a lot of the stuff that I'm hearing you say right now,

I mean, it's like the Lord just recalling mine scripture. So again, Psalm 40.

You probably know it well. But for those that may be listening, the psalmist said,

I waited patiently for the Lord. He inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and he set my feet upon the rock, making my steps secure.

And then the psalmist said he put a new song in my mouth. That's right. A song of praise to our

God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the

Lord. So to that now to kind of transition,

I know it's not necessarily hard hitting for you, but for some who are listening.

So you're addressing on your channel, you're addressing a lot of the issues and challenges in CHH, in Christian hip hop, right?

Right, right. And a lot of the mentality. Now, we all know the names. I can say them, right?

Lecrae, right? I think kind of he's been the one because he's been kind of, he's been in the limelight over the years as even saying,

I don't want to be known as a Christian rapper. I just want to be known as a rapper who is

Christian. And in the meantime, he's left off the Lord. So your newest song is done with The Apologist, right?

So as far as Christian hip hop goes, do you see, do you think there's a trend in Christian hip hop that's moving back to like glory of God centered,

Christ focused music, or do you see it kind of still waning?

Yeah, no, that's a great question, bro. I mean, I feel like, so what

I would say is the people who are doing more explicit, you know,

Christian content, right? Like explicit gospel centered, Christ centered music, the people who are doing that are definitely the minority.

And though they're out there, they're not getting the kind of, you know, airplay or notoriety that the guys who are doing the lighter sort of more,

I would call it biblical worldview music, which is not necessarily always, you know, gospel, you know, explicit in its theology or in speaking of, you know, just things of the

Lord, right? Yeah, it's just not there. It's just a dude, you know, dude's talking about their experiences, and they're doing it as Christians, right?

So it's more of that, right? That is more trendy. That is definitely more trendy.

That is more appealing to the masses. And sadly, I think that that is because, well,

I mean, there's a few things. Obviously, one is, you know, wokeness has just kind of come in and just has just been wreaking havoc in, you know, the church period.

But, you know, now just if we talk about zero in and talk about like CHH, it's been ravaged by that stuff.

And now because you opened the door to these ideologies that are opposed to the gospel, now other stuff has crept in and has become more acceptable.

So it's moved on from just, okay, you know, let's all treat each other right.

You know, let's end racism or whatever it is. It's moved on from that to now everything can be questioned.

And now there's room for, you know, and I hate this word. I really hate the word nuance now.

Like I can't stand, like, I just, I actually don't even like, I don't like using that word. And it's not the word itself that's wrong, but it's just like progressive

Christians just abuse that word. Right. So the connotation. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Oh my gosh. So it's that, you know, it's like everything has nuance now. And so it opened the door to a whole bunch of, you know, crazy stuff.

But yeah, in short, I think the guys are out there who stood, who are still doing like solid music, but they're not as popular as the other people.

And I have some other thoughts on it, but I don't want to ramble on. So I'll let you hop in there. Hey, that's fine.

That's fine. So along those lines, so obviously you've talked about, you know, getting into rap and becoming interested in like freestyling and all that early on.

So again, the reality is that it's likely that you,

I mean, me, for example, me. So as I told you, I was an old dude.

So when I was young, so I came up on like, before I got saved,

I was like ghetto boys, right? Scarface and those guys, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

It's a small time dope game. Cocaine. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, by the way, this is a side note. Did you hear the gospel album that Bushwick Bill did?

I never did. No. Oh man. Look it up on YouTube. Really? I'm gonna check that out.

Yeah. Cause he actually, he actually did riffs off of my mind's playing tricks on me.

Wow. Okay. I might check that out. Yeah. So in any case, so who, who were some of your early influencers?

I mean, outside of the personal connection that you had, you told us about that, but who are some folks that you kind of even still to this day when you're writing and when you're rapping, you think about that you would like to somewhat and reasonably, so this is not a trick question that you want to, that you still think was that, that their talent was worth emulation.

Absolutely. Yeah. So I was, so in terms of hip hop for me, for,

I guess, you know, by God's grace, I didn't have to, you know, pretend to be a gangster.

Like that was never my thing. I was more into dudes that were just like super like lyrical guys.

You know what I mean? Like that was my thing. So it was like, I, you know, I was really into like a tribe called quest.

All right. So I was really into tribe called quest. I like Fife, Q -Tip, Keith Murray earlier on.

Then it was like, you know, Wu -Tang as well, obviously pretty much everybody in Wu -Tang,

I would say, you know, met the man and inspected deck was just crazy to me as an

MC. Redman. And then further on the line, there was like,

I really, really liked Big Pun's style. Like Big Pun to me was like one of like the dopest,

I wonder what he would have been if he had still been alive just as an, as an MC and what would happen to him. But yeah, so Big Pun was huge to me as well.

Yeah, there's quite a few names, but yeah. So, so the, and again, to stay on the music track, so the lyrics, if folks hadn't heard your new song, bring it back.

So we played it at the beginning as at the intro. So folks can catch that on the replay and all that.

But man, those lyrics are strong. Thanks, brother. I mean, they are strong.

Again, folks, you know, a lot of, a lot of folks think that church music, you know, has to be a certain, you know, in a certain key on, you know, blah, blah, blah, whatever.

But man, I was hollering amen. I was hollering amen to them lyrics. That was strong.

So, so, so talk to us about, about those lyrics. Maybe beginning, maybe jumping to the middle, that's where my mind is going right now to the, to that middle, middle set of lyrics right there.

So you were, you talk about the, basically the importance of bringing it back and maybe it's the last verse into the, to the, to the flip side, the converse of deconstruction.

Exactly. Exactly. Tell us what was going through your mind as you was writing that. Yeah. I mean, in general, just that whole, the whole project, cause it is a project

I'm working on with Will, the apologist, shout out to Will, shout out to Price Centric and all the brothers there.

So that's something that started when we were, you know, deep in the pandemic and there was a whole bunch of stuff going on, right?

Like people were, you know, just, first of all, we were all kind of beaten down by what was going on, right?

Like mentally everybody, people were exhausted. And then, you know, as in the church, like the church

I was attending at the time for, for much of the time, it was, you know, online only.

I would go because I was serving in the sound team. So I would still go to church. Right. So I would still kind of get to see people and whatever.

But, you know, so you, you were losing fellowship and then you're seeing other stuff going on and then you're seeing prominent

Christians, you know, abandoning the faith. So there was just a lot of stuff going on.

And over time, I really started to look at that, the term deconstruction and just to learn, okay, where did this come from?

You know, where does, where does this come from? And then you start looking at the origins of it with people like, you know, like Jacques, Jacques Derrida and the whole ideology where it's like, look, if you really follow this thing to its logical conclusion, what he's saying is like, anything can be torn apart.

And what the aim of tearing it apart is to make it have no meaning. That's really what you're doing. And so when

I was writing this song, it was me really saying like, look, trying to appeal to, to, you know, the brethren out there that look, you may be going through some stuff, you may have legitimate even questions and stuff that you're working through, or you may be beat down a little bit, but the way that you're going to get right with the

Lord and get back to a place of peace and, you know, thriving in your faith, right? It is not by looking for stuff that's outside.

Like you need to go back to the scriptures. You need to go back to the scriptures and allow the scriptures to, to rock you and change you as opposed to you trying to come with your own stuff and put it on, try to find a place in the scriptures where you can fit your ideas on top of it.

And so that's really, you know, the heart behind it. And, you know, just in the spirit of, of the

Lord saying like, you know, come let us reason together, like in that spirit of like, look, you can go to God and, and go there sincerely and find answers.

Like the answers are there, you know? So, yeah, so that was, you know, the motivation behind it.

Praise the Lord. Thank you for sharing that. So back now to your channel.

So real quick, I will put it in the links on YouTube after we're done here.

But while we're in the middle here, real quick, just tell folks where they can find you, where they can get your music, so on and so forth.

Absolutely. So in terms of the channel, the channel is called Seek Things Above TV. So you can find me on YouTube and also on Facebook.

Facebook, we don't tend to stream as much because I have, you know, sadly found

Facebook to be a little bit squishy and, and, you know, people are a little sensitive. So I think

YouTube is more where we post a lot more stuff and even go live and, you know, without, you know, somebody getting too mad or whatever it is.

So yeah, that's where you'll find that. And then music wise, it's, yes, it's my name. So Lou Ciccone.

So you can search for that on Spotify or whatever platform you're on, the music will pop up.

And yes, the latest single is Bring It Back. That's with Lou Ciccone and The Apologist.

So search for that on any platform that should pop up for you. I think the only thing

I've got against him is he's a Dallas, any Dallas cowboy fan. Yeah, man.

I'm always like his heart, man. We'll got the hats and he got the, I mean, and he's in there, man.

He's not, yo, he's, he's dedicated, man. He's boys. Maybe not.

All right. So on your channel there, speaking of your channel on your channel, um, what, what are some of the favorite episodes?

So first of all, how long have you been, uh, on your channel on YouTube? Uh, Seek Things Above.

Seek Things Above TV. Uh, I think the first episode was like early 2022.

I think it was. Yeah. So we've been on going on to, you know, two years, I guess by the time we get into 2024.

Um, so yeah, I mean, we've been on that long got, uh, a hundred or so, maybe it wasn't 116 or something like that.

Uh, videos on there thus far. Um, and some of my favorites would be,

I mean, I gotta say the ones that, you know, cause, okay. So here's the thing, man, as content creators, like you just make stuff and you don't really know, especially when you first start, man.

And I just want to encourage anybody just, if you're thinking about doing this, don't wait too long to get it perfect, man.

Just go ahead and just start. I know you hear it sounds like a cliche, but you've got to just start with this stuff, man.

Because no matter what happens, man, your early stuff or whatever it is, you may have a vision, but you're not, you don't have it all together.

Let me just put it that way. And you're going to figure that out. You know what I mean? And so you're going to have to make a few bad videos or stuff that, you know, make some mistakes here and there.

But I think my, my favorite ones are some of the ones that I, you know, were like,

I was like, Oh, okay. So people actually watching this, right. People were actually watching this.

So I think it was maybe when I commented on Kendrick Lamar and his, his last album, that was one of my favorites right there.

And he had, you know, he wore like a crown of well, a diamond crown, but it was supposed to look like a crown of thorns and did the whole performance with the bloody shirt.

And just, it was, you know, just blasphemy of the highest order, you know? So I think that was one of my favorites when

I commented on that and some of the response I got. And I started to see like, Oh, okay. Like people are watching and they're interested in my take on this.

And then really, I'd say another good one was like the Donnie McClurkin one, when he called out like a bunch of gospel people, not to say that he's perfect, but he called out the gospel industry.

And the engagement I got from that was really good. The episode on The Chosen, I've only done one on The Chosen so far.

And for some reason, I mean, I mentioned it a bunch of times, but I've only really done one on The Chosen, but it was actually a short that I did on The Chosen, which was like my highest viewed video period of all my videos.

And I got like a lot of interaction. I mean, people love

The Chosen, man. People love The Chosen. I don't want to necessarily offend anybody who loves it, but hey, like, listen, the people who love it, man, they will come after you.

And so, yeah, so that's another one. And then obviously I'd say the other ones are some of the more recent ones where I've commented on Lecrae and his whole situation with the t -shirts that he recently had, his thing of being righteous and ratchet, and that whole conversation involving him and another rapper named

D1. So those I'd say are some of my favorite videos right there.

Very cool. So let's pretend for just a moment that we play the psychology game.

So I'm going to play a clip and you tell me what you think right off the bat. All right, sure. Most people call me a apostle, but you guys can call me

Pagani. I'm okay. How about no? Yes.

How about no indeed? Yeah. These guys drive me crazy, man.

The Demon Slayers, all of them. Pagani, Isaiah Saldivar, what's the other guy's name?

Vlad. I mean, they drive me nuts, man. I just feel like they're deceiving so many people.

I can't stand fake apostles. It's a terrible movement and they're misleading so many people.

And these are people that we try to... There's no being soft about when you call these guys out.

You have to be firm and warn people to mark and avoid, period.

That's right. So as far as that goes, quick question as far as theology.

So would you call yourself a reformed Christian or just non -denominational?

How would you approach that? Yeah. I would call myself reformed. I know that...

Well, there's people who use the reformed term where it's like there's certain things.

If you don't hit all those things, you're not reformed. For me, it's like I would still say I'm reformed.

So real quick, just to talk about my transition out of... Because I did say

I got saved in the Seventh -day Adventist church, right? Yeah. So I got saved in the Seventh -day Adventist church and everything was going great.

I was walking with the Lord. I was zealous. I was serving in the church, whatever, whatever.

The pastor loved me, pastor's wife loved me, all that stuff. Me and my wife were just going hard in the church, basically.

And so I started... What happened was the pastor's wife handed me this book, and it's called

The 27 Fundamentals of the Seventh -day Adventist Church. I mean, this thing looks like a systematic theology, basically.

It's a thick book, okay? So she hands me this book, and I am like, okay, this is awesome.

She gave me this book. She gave me some of the writings of Ellen White, who is the prophetess of the church, false prophetess of the church, later found that out.

And so I'm reading this book, and then I start coming across things that just don't agree with what I'm just reading personally in my own time in God's Word.

So I started having questions, and then long story short, I decided

I just can't stay at the church anymore. I had to leave. And that was really difficult, because obviously, so my wife is happy.

My wife's mom is happy. She's like, because she's a Seventh -day Adventist, and she's a true believer, but she's in the church.

And I have to tell her like, look, this is not going to work.

And I ended up leaving the church, and I was going to a different church while she was still there, and that went on for about two years.

And the church I went to ended up being a

Reformed church. It was actually under Sovereign Grace Ministries. And so I go there and start to hear all this teaching, and I was already curious about Reformed theology.

And one of the things that really stuck with me was when one of my friends he said, hey, man, do you really think you could lose your salvation?

When you look at yourself, do you really, really think that you could lose your salvation just the way you are right now?

And to be consistent at the time, I had to say yes, right?

But in my mind, I was like, nah, that just doesn't sound right, man. It just doesn't sound right.

It just feels like whatever I have now, whatever the Lord has done, that's permanent. And so I started looking into other theology, into books and reading as I'm going to...

It was Covenant Life, was the name of the church. I'm going there, and by God's grace,

I get rocked by the doctrine of justification. When I finally understood it, I just sat there,

I was like, wow, this is crazy. This is crazy. We have peace, therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God, right?

And access. I was like, what? And so it just completely blew my mind.

And then now it was like, okay, I need to know everything about Calvinism. I want to learn everything.

Start reading Puritans, start reading just everything. Give it all to me. And so that allowed me to start speaking to my wife and challenging her on some of these things.

And by God's grace, man, it was like two years of doing that. And then we moved out of the area we were in to another church, which was a sister church to the one

I was going to at the time. And she decided to start accompanying me to church.

And by God's grace, man, the small group I was in was fantastic.

It was led by one of the pastors, and we had never really had a really strong community with relationships within the church.

And that was the first time where I experienced that. And for her, it was great too. And through that and through listening to, sadly to say he's a little bit squishy now, but J .D.

Greer had this series called The Gospel Revolution, and there was a book and some

DVDs that came with that. And I actually think in hindsight, we now both think in hindsight that it was actually at that time when we went through all those videos, somewhere after that, that she actually got saved.

Praise the Lord. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Lou, here's the thing. A lot of folks,

I know you were hesitant in mentioning J .D. Greer's name. A lot of folks, or whatever, we get timid about mentioning folks that have come to be proven not so solid.

But the fact of the matter is this. The gospel saves men, despite of the presenters of the gospel.

The gospel is the power of God unto salvation. It is perfect.

It is pure. He is able to save to the utter most, despite where it comes from.

I love it when Paul said, you know, some folks preach Christ out of envy and some out of contention.

But Paul said this, I just rejoice that the gospel is being preached. Hallelujah. Right.

Because my faith doesn't stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Yes. I did spit all over the microphone there.

Sir, I truly, truly appreciate you being on tonight.

I want to respect your time. I don't want to keep you any longer. I want you to get back to your wife so that you can ask her the question when you go to bed tonight and just kiss her and say, honey, dear,

I call my wife dear. Dear, can you tell me if I've ever said anything dumb to you?

I'll come back with a whole A4 for you. There we go. There we go. So before we leave tonight, would you do us the honor of sharing the gospel with those who are listening and who will watch this on the replay so that God is glorified that they might be saved and they might look back and say, hey, call you in 10 years and say, hey,

Lou, you know what? You're 54 years old now. You don't even remember it.

It was a small bunch of folks watching this on the interwebs, but you shared the gospel and I got saved.

Hallelujah. So would you care to do that, brother? Share the gospel with us and then we will play the outro.

And after that's done, you just, if you would just hang tight for just a minute and we'll say our goodbyes after that.

Absolutely. No, it's a well, first, it's just been a pleasure and an honor, bro, just hanging out with you tonight.

And yeah, so for anyone listening, if you have never heard the gospel, man, the gospel is the good news of the

Lord Jesus Christ saving sinners by dying for them in his place, he died for them.

And so the truth is we are all sinners.

We're all sinners. We have offended a holy and righteous God. We are born adversely, just opposed to obeying

God, following him and surrendering our lives to him. And that's because we're born in sin.

And that sin comes from our first father, Adam, who disobeyed God. And as a result of that sin entered the world, everything, the whole creation was subject to corruption because of that.

But God in his grace, God in his grace, even in, and this is in Genesis three, if you have the time, look it up, please read

Genesis three. And you will see how God even then promised that the seed of the woman, that's

Eve's seed, the seed of a woman would crush the serpent's head.

And the serpent was Satan who deceived her and Adam into disobeying

God. And so that seed, that promise seed is

Jesus Christ. Angelica Amen. Miles The son of God, the second person of the Trinity who came was in human flesh, fully

God, fully man, 100 % man, 100 % God. He did not lose his deity, but lived like one of us and lived a perfect life.

And that perfect life of his is important. It's not just his death on the cross, but the perfect life of his is important because we not only are guilty of sin and offending

God, but God's standard is perfect righteousness. And so in order for us to spend eternity with him and be admitted into heaven, we need perfect righteousness.

And the way we can, the only way we can have that is if we put our faith in Christ. And then not only has he paid for our sins paid for by him on the cross, but then his perfect righteousness is imputed to us as well.

So I mean, this news just gets better and better. This is so good. And so how do we access this?

Well, you have to repent of your sin. You have to repent of your sin, go before God humbly and turn away and put your faith in Jesus Christ.

You must believe in his death, burial, and resurrection for your sins. And if you do that, if you do that,

God's word promises that you will be saved. And so that, my friends, is the gospel.

And don't wait. Today could be the day of salvation for you. If you have any questions and want to holler at me about it, find me.

Find me on the internet, man. I'll be more than glad to talk about this with you. Hit me up via email at luchacoonymusic .com

and definitely hit up brother Claude. This brother right here has got a heart for the

Lord and would love to talk to you if you have any questions. Amen and amen.

Let me play this and then we'll play the outro. So what he just said was the truth.