Hurting child: When rapper Pettidee was 9 years old, he was molested by an older man. That experience changed his whole life. "All that anger, bitterness and hurt built up," he says. "They say that hurt people hurt people. And that was me. I had a lot of hatred. On the outside, I was this hardcore thug. On the inside I was still that 9-year-old abused child who wouldn't tell anybody about my pain. I just cried myself to sleep at night."

Finding hope: Despite his pain, something was tugging at Pettidee's heart. "The funny thing is that whenever I'd get really drunk and depressed, I'd watch a lot of Christian television," he says. "I'd watch and say, 'Lord, if you are real, show yourself to me.'"

Despite his prayers, things seemed to get worse. When he was a senior in high school, his sister and a few friends went to prison. Unable to cope with all that life was throwing at him, he decided to kill himself. During his second suicide attempt, his girlfriend walked in to find him with a rifle.

"In that moment, I knew I had to turn my life around," Pettidee says. "A lot of stuff happened that I had no control over, but I realized I could still choose where my life was going.

I prayed, 'God, if you can do better with my life than what I've done with it, I will give it to you. It is yours.'"

Shining light: When one friend found out about Pettidee's new faith, he said, "Man, that's cool. I've been a believer all my life." Pettidee was shocked. Thinking about his painful life, he said to his friend: "We went to school together for three years, and you never shared the gospel with me?" The friend answered, "I didn't think you'd want to hear about God."

That answer made Pettidee sad. "He was covering his light of salvation because he was more worried about what others would think," he says. "I needed what he had."

One person in Pettidee's life didn't cover her light. An older neighbor used to always tell Pettidee: "I know what you're doing out in these streets, but I'm not going to judge you. God's got a calling on your life. You're gonna win many people to Jesus."

At first, Pettidee thought she was just crazy. "But she never stopped believing in me and I started going to church with her" he says. "She kept loving me and didn't cover her light."

Read more from 'Bands & Artists'

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