A traumatic crash helped lead Kelly K back to Jesus and now he shares the Gospel with over 500,000 people on TikTok each day.
Growing up as an avid music lover, Kelly tried his hand to make it in the music business.
"I wanted to be a famous punk-rock star. The problem was every band that I was in was wildly mediocre," Kelly shared as he laughed. "We could never get a record deal, but through that process, I had made a lot of friends in the industry."
Realizing that it wasn't going to work as he thought, he took a different approach. "I started calling these guys, Nickleback's manager and Red's manager, every day for six months and asked them, 'Will you give me a job?' For six months they kept saying no."
Not giving up, after six months he called again and said, "I'm selling everything I have, I am going to come work for you for absolutely free. I'm just going to show you I know music and I know I can do this. I hitchhiked to where their offices were where one of the guys let me sleep on his couch. Within three months, they fired their assistants and gave me their jobs, and then three months after that, I was on the road, touring with these big rock bands."
During his time out on the road with Red, Kelly shares that he, "Was very little Jesus. I was raised in a godly house, but I got to a place where I wanted rock and roll more than I wanted God."
Although he never doubted if God was real or not, he did want what he wanted rather than what God wanted. While he was on the road, he shared that he didn't really have a relationship with God, except every night, he would hear The Lord say, 'Kelly, I've got a plan for you. I'm still waiting on you.' It drove me insane."
While on paper he was living his dream, getting to go on tour where they filled arenas. "I had everything I thought I wanted but was so empty. I had no joy, no fulfillment, no peace. What God was saying was that He had something so much better than what you think you want."
Making that shift did not come easy.
"I was out with Red, and we were driving from South Carolina to Nashville, I was asleep in the back, it was 6 in the morning. There was a guardrail that a construction company had left on the highway overlapping into the road. Since it was 6 a.m. traffic in Nashville, our van couldn't scoot over, so he hit that guardrail going 70 miles per hour."
Kelly shared how it completely tore the side of the van open and how he woke up sliding on his back down the highway. "I thought I was on fire. I remember waking up in a full scream, thinking I was burning to death."
Realizing that he wasn't on fire, that the car had crashed, he had torn 90% of his back.
"That was the first event that God shifted me. I wish I could say that after that, I changed everything and gave it to Him but it still took a little bit."
After the crash, Kelly explains that, "My mind went to that I was deathproof and I can't die. God has a plan for you and He's waiting for you to fulfill the plan. Until you do, you're unstoppable."
Being off the road, was hard to figure out how to make a living. "My joy kept getting lower and now, thinking that I wanted this music life, was taken away from me and now I don't have anything." Ultimately leading him back to Christ. "All my desires shifted that day, what I wanted to watch, how I spoke, He just started to shift my desires and all I wanted was Him."
Now, Kelly gets to share The Gospel with thousands of people on TikTok and Instagram each day.
"God told me, 'Make videos and feed My sheep.' We live in the most Biblically illiterate generation of all time, nobody knows The Word but they're all on their phones." Kelly shared, encouraging people not to get mad, and just change what's on in front of them.
Now, getting ready to release his third book, a devotional, he shares how God told him again to, "Feed My sheep. The words of Kelly aren't going to change anything."
Since there are so many devotionals out there already, he didn't jump to the idea right away. "I saw that they all had the big hitters, Jeremiah 29:11, John 3:16, but every word in Scripture can change lives. I'm going to make a devotional out of glanced over Scriptures, and I'm going to show you how they can change your life as well."
