Formerly known as Ray Bandz, Ray Rich has had an extraordinary life with violence, drugs, and instability. Yet, through all the curveball life threw at him, the inspiring gospel artist found his way back to God and now uses his platform and his inspiring story to encourage others to drop their troubles and embrace peace with Christ through Christian/Hebrew Rap music. The evangelist also offers in-person or virtual prayer, intercession, and bible studies and will be launching a podcast series.
When Ray Rich was five, armed individuals attacked his home and shot up the house on Pennsburg in Bloomfield in Saginaw, Michigan, on Halloween night. In the rain of bullets flying through the room window, young Rich lay unharmed and undisturbed, protected by a guardian angel. About a year later, Rich and his parents relocated to another part of the town, but once again, the family had a close brush with tragedy when a bullet came through the roof of the trailer to lodge between his mother’s leg where she sat on the new year 2007. After that, the family moved around a bit, but eventually, Rich and his dad relocated to Midland, MI, where they finally settled.
This is where past trauma, influence from street life, being introduced to violence, marijuana, and immorality at a young age silently spun out of control. Ray spent most of his rebellious teen years writing, recording, fighting, and selling weed to make an income to support his career, while his mom would always admonish him to get right with God.
During this rebellious phase, living his life to please his creator never crossed Ray’s mind, and frankly, the troubled teen had problems of his own. He was molested by two of his cousins and bullied in school. As a result, he became very withdrawn and barely paid attention in class. By the time he turned 17, he was using marijuana heavily every day as a coping mechanism for PTSD, anxiety, depression, sleep paralysis, and more. He also started diving into Xanax and would heavily overdose, encouraged to spiral out of control by the bad influence of people around him.
This destructive path eventually led him to jail two times for shoplifting and domestic violence. At a point in his life, Ray Rich craved change, so he took his mother’s advice and sought God. He prayed daily, asking for a revelation, and like this, two months went by. He was about to give up when a series of sleep paralysis and nightmare scared him straight. “I decided I need to get right with God and turn to Christ,” shared Ray. He started a daily prayer life, reading scripture and working on music while trying to get and maintain a job so he could stop slanging weed and drop his addictions.
He got right with God, and with the help of his mother and aunt, the renewed young man got baptized and was reborn in Jesus’s name. When lifted from the water, Rich recalled a burning sensation in a comforting way on the inside of his body and felt chains of condemnation of the devil, chains of worry, doubt, depression, anger, hate, lust, and more disappear, and he felt light as a feather. “No one is perfect, and I’m far from it. I’ve made mistakes since I came to God and I’ve asked for forgiveness and he forgives me, he can you too but we cannot sin habitually or make a plan to sin. We have to strive to be like Christ every day, every day we wake up God blessed us with his grace and wants us to repent, ask for forgiveness and follow his son Jesus Christ,” he says.
Fast forward to today, Rich is now 25, a single dad of two amazing young kids and is living his best life following Jesus Christ. The renewed young man now preaches the gospel to all who would listen, sharing his inspiring journey from addict to gospel evangelist. On his latest evangelical mission, Rich will perform live on August 6 in Saginaw, MI, at Ojibway Island for gospel fest. At the event, he will be performing tracks off his upcoming mixtape “Spiritual Therapy.”
