The Price of Purity (pruning, consecration, & temptation) w/Ezekiel Azonwu - 113

The Deep End w/Taylor Welch - Taylor A Welch

This episode of The Deep End with Taylor Welch features a deep conversation with Ezekiel Azonwu, a spoken word artist and author, exploring themes of spiritual warfare,

Key takeaways

• Ezekiel Azonwu's journey of surrendering personal ambitions for God's will.
• The importance of spiritual purity and the cost of consecration.
• The impact of temptation and divine pruning in one's life.

Main topics

• Spiritual warfare and the role of the Holy Spirit in daily life.
• The cost of purity and the importance of consecration.
• The impact of temptation and the need for divine pruning.

Notable quotes

"Your mourning is tied to your affections. A stranger on the street passed away. It's sad. But if grandma passes away, oh, it's going to destroy me."

"I love stability. I love success. I love having things and money. Wow, that's what you mean. When I realized that. brought me the lowest, not my being disconnected with the Lord, but me not seeing the manifestation of my labor, that disturbed me more."

Conclusion

This episode offers a powerful reflection on the cost of purity, the importance of surrendering to God's will, and

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) My kids told me, they said, Daddy, we love that you have a job. We just wish it wasn't this one. My son said, Daddy, do you work at Elport? My other daughter, I told her, hey, look, if Daddy doesn't work, then you guys can't eat. He said, Daddy, we don't got to eat all the time. Bro, let me tell you something. Your mourning is tied to your affections. A stranger on the street passed away. It's sad. But if grandma passes away, oh, it's going to destroy me. I love stability. I love success. I love having things and money. Wow, that's what you mean. When I realized that. brought me the lowest, not my being disconnected with the Lord, but me not seeing the manifestation of my labor, that disturbed me more. That bothered me a little bit too much, so much that it made me question. He said, stop being nice. I didn't call you to be nice. He said, everybody knows me as nice, Ezekiel. He said, niceness is not from me. I called you to be righteous, and in my righteousness, you'll find kindness, because kindness has nothing to do with you. Niceness is all about you. Temptation that you fail by the enemy today makes way for you to be tempted without Satan's input. Translation, if Jesus would have done what an enemy tempted him to do in the wilderness, he would have called down legions of angels on the cross because the precedent was in him. We live in a culture where if you can do it, you should do it. Come on! And Jesus is reversing that. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Everyone wants to get to the high places, but if you want to go high, you first have to go deep. What's up? Welcome back to the deep ends. How are you, sir? I'm doing wonderful, bro. Ready to go. People don't know what's about to happen. They don't know what's about to happen. It's been a while since you have someone this famous. Oh, my gosh. Oh, come on, chill. Chill. Yo, we have Ezekiel Azanwu. Yes, sir. Did I nail it? Yes, you got it, man. Let's go. My Nigerian brother, you're adopted, man. Come on. Taylor Chukwu, Ezekiel Azanwu. Who is going for it. Wutatatatashi. I shared with a Nigerian Dr. Foy. I said, Wutat Tatashi, when he got it. He said, what is that? Is that Japanese? I said, bro, that's Nigerian. He said, that ain't Nigerian. I said, Wutat Tatashi is Nigerian. It means the fire has come. He looked it up. He looked it up. And he was like, Lord, forgive me. I'm so embarrassed. I had never heard. A white kid. A white kid from Louisiana knows your language. That's crazy. Come on. If that's Igbo, I never heard nothing like that. It's a cool, the fire has come. Oh my gosh. That's like what Nigerians are known for you. Oh, hell. Absolutely. You pray different. Yes. You talk different. Come on, man. Everything's different. We got to have you impersonate or do your Nigerian. Oh, we have to just start it the right way. If I go down fire in this place. Now, if you want me to start, I can start. Where are you? Where are you? Stop hiding. You're doing your rest. Okay, I can teach you guys how to do it. Please. Okay. So Nigeria is speaking melody. So when we speak, it always starts high and it always ends low And then you got to add aggression to it So an American would say, I'm going to the store to get a candy bar We don't realize it, but we speak very monotonously in this land But in Nigerian would say, I am going to this store To purchase a candy bar You see what happened that started up That's amazing But now I am going to this store Yeah, it's different The Australians are like, I'm idea, everything sounds an apology It's like everything's like I mean, how do you want this? It's like always an top of the end. See, if you paid attention to the intonation, then you know we start high and then we end low. But then with our prayers, it's just, you just add aggression to that. Satan, wherever you may be hiding. You see what? You're a musician. You got to hear it. Yeah, yeah. I come on fire from heaven to awfully destroy all of my enemies. You see what I'm saying? Praise God. You got this. Oh, dude. And that's so simple. There you go. It's very easy. Thanks for you. You can find him at we need to talk.com. We're going to end right there. Okay. Ezekiel is a spoken word artist, author. He's the host of a podcast called We Need to Talk. I'm going to talk about that in just a second. You've become known for tackling some of the most difficult conversations in faith, relationships, culture, sexuality, discipleship, spiritual warfare. Yes, sir. You've just demonstrated for us. and personal transformation. Before this, you started the Poets in Autumn tour, which was, I think, the largest Christian spoken word tour of its kind. Yes, sir. That went for four years. Yes, sir. And then you lead today, Band of Brothers International, discipleship community for Ben. Yes. And then real quick, talk to us about that we need to heal. What is this? We need to heal, man. It's a movement, man. We're just getting people together who love Jesus to equip the body, to know what it means to stand on the word of God, to walk, not just to cast out demons. Yes, we cast out demons. Yes, we pray. Yes, we worship. Yes, there's warfare. But to equip people to know how to use the word that has been given to us to not just get themselves free, but get everybody around them free. So it's really going to be a time of equipping, time of teaching, time of learning, and time of fellowship to actually see and witness what God does when we let him do the work. We don't believe in people using their egos, using their titles to try. And even their formulas to try to get stuff done. We're like, Spirit of God, do your thing. And that's, we need to heal, man. So we believe we're going to see 100% healing and deliverance in the room. That's what we're standing on faith to believe. Yeah, you will. Yeah. If God's in charge. Yes, sir. I was, I want to talk about the podcast for a second, but I was talking with a mentor of mine about prison ministry. Yes, sir. And we're interested in like make, we want to see people be able to integrate back into society with businesses. and faith and all of this stuff. Because that way they're not just incarceration is a business model, unfortunately. And I was trying to recruit some people to help me. And one of the people who does prison ministry was like, how long does it take to teach someone or to heal them in prison? And I felt the Holy Spirit say, well, ask him how much of me is involved in the process. And so I said, well, how much of the Holy Spirit is involved? And he said, well, a lot. I said, five minutes. if the Holy Spirit's not involved three months, three years, I don't know. So when you're doing these, we need to heal. You got 100% when the spirit is in charge. It's so good. It'll be fast. Yes. And it'll be 100%. That's good. All right. So guys, we need to talk is a huge. It's become movement. It's huge. Man. I don't know that you started it with the intention of it being what it is. No, not at all. But I will tell people this because people that watch this show, they say things about the show that are crazy to me, where they're like, this show brought me back to Jesus. This show, I got healed from this or that or the other. And it's awesome. We collect those and we want to praise God for them. But I think your podcast is the only, I don't watch a lot of podcasts. But I think yours is the only one that does to me what people say that our show does to them. Wow. I was leaving an event a couple of months ago and I got an Instagram. And I think God just wanted me to like heal for a second. And I probably sat and watched through parts of your show for like an hour and just cried in my truck in the driveway. I was telling you about this. You lost his mind, dude. I'm sending him stuff. I'm like, who's this? What is this? Like, what's on this video? Because the words are awesome. Yes. But there's something on the video. And like, I know what that's like, but you're anointed for something. You have a unique spirit of revelation. They almost just like, it breaks people, you know? So I think it was like, this guy talking about leaves. Yeah. And I was like, God, I repent. Man. I was listening to the one of them that came up was some, I think it was ortho being in a shower. Okay. And it wasn't the Holy Spirit's voice. And I was like, put my phone down and I said, God, I need your mercy so bad. Like, I just need mercy. That's hard to do for someone like me. Wow. Who's just like integrated into the revelation and reading the books and everything. So you've sort of marked me through what you're doing. Wow. And so I think first of all, just to honor you. for the cost of that is amazing. And I want people to watch your show. Man, thank you, man. Thank you. And I, when I saw you doing, first of all, I was shocked when I, because I come from, like, I spent a lot of time in the spoken word world, so I avoided my upbringing. But my upbringing was spiritual warfare and all this stuff. So when I started talking about it, people were like, oh, now you're into spiritual warfare, but they didn't realize that's what I came up in. But I saw a white man. having these conversations in depths in ways that I never saw. And I'm just like, y'all, we used to think, Nigerians used to think that they own spiritual warfare. But when you see people from all different walks of life, being able to just have these conversations, command these conversations in this way, I'm just like, Lord, have your way. There's something that God is doing. So when I saw you guys, it's like, I locked in. I think I followed you instantly, probably before you ever knew my name, I was already locked into the things that you were doing. And I'm like, we're on the same page. We're doing the same stuff. I never thought I'd be able to talk to you because this dude has a huge page. He's doing a lot of stuff. You got a lot of people. Like, when I was still coming, like my page was still growing, I was just watching what God was doing yours. And I would never imagine that we would be doing the same thing in the same way. I'm just like, God, do your thing. Yes. When you see the comments and people are like, yes, I'm getting checked. getting transferred. I'm like, go, God. And so the fact that I'm in this room, the fact that you invited me, I honor you for even being able to see me in that way and see the lower work in me and through me in that way. Oh, you're going to cook, bro. I'm just going to get out of the way. Can we go back? Can we go back? Because we talk about your upbringing. Yes, sir. And then that coming full circle. Yes, sir. And like, maybe even before, like, the podcast, because I want to know how you started that. And like, was it a wrestle? Was it tough? But like, can you share us your upbringing? You were born here, but you've got roots that are in different places. Yes, sir. Just give us the package. Yes, I'm going to do it as quick as possible. But both my parents are from Nigeria, migrated to the United States in the 80s, had us in the states, raised us in L.A. until a point that my dad said, you know, he was starting a church. We thought it was a terrible idea. I had no idea that our lives from that point on would change because our lives was in the church from that point on. We were always committed. We were at early morning prayer. But this is where we learned spiritual warfare. Just that terminology, even that idea of spiritual warfare, realizing that none of my friends at school talked about this. Nobody, you know, Nigerians are hyper-spiritual. I could have a whole conversation about Africans and spirituality. And I believe the people of Africa having a gift to spiritual sensitivity. I believe that nations have a level. of gifting as a body and just as we would individually, I believe that there are people that can reveal a side of God that you might not experience another nation. So I might go to Asian experience a side of God that I might not have experienced if I was in Africa. And I believe that Africans and their sensitivity to spirituality is not a mistake, which is why I believe that's why the enemy has capitalized and done so much chaos as it relates to Africans and spirituality. So that's a whole other conversation. If you want to talk about it, we can. But my upbringing exposed me to so much of this conversation that it made me want to repel the idea of having conversations like this. Like my dad would talk about, oh, I just got out of the spirit realm and I was being attacked heavily. I'm like, you know what? I don't really want problems with the devil. I'm just trying to preach the gospel. I'm trying to stay out the devil's way. I don't bother him. He don't bother me. So that was me trying to avoid. I'm like, I think God has gifted me to be able to speak and do creative stuff. And I'm just going to do that. You do all that demonic fire missiles and launching. I'm just going to focus on the Lord. And so I didn't realize that the spoken word was just, I think what it was doing for me was it was dealing with the parts of me that wanted to share the stage with the Lord. And so God had to get that out of my system all the way to the point that when, When I started a Band of Brothers in 2020, I said, God, everything that I've done for you or I've done with you, I've been able to profit greatly from. I've been able to be known by. I've been able to, I mean, people recognize me from. I said, I want to serve you in a way that costs me and gets my hands dirty. And he sent me to men. Because nobody, men is just the least profitable demographics in the church. No one deals with the men. The conferences are not for the men. If they are, they're not that big, they're not that sponsored. So I want you to serve men. And so my life has been committed, and to this day serving men, pouring my resources into men behind the scenes in small groups with small activities, doing the intimate work. And that's kind of my day-to-day life. So if you ask me, what do I do day-to-day, it's working and serving men. And so the podcast, the way that came about is my wife and I, we, as soon as we met in 2008, we had a passion for just helping people get together to learn marriage, learn love, God's way. And so that was kind of an extension for that. Like by the time we got to like maybe pandemic season, we were starting to have conversations on Instagram about, you know, the difficulties and the challenges with marriage and dating. And so I was just like, okay, I need a hub to have these conversations because we want to talk about these things and talk about the stuff that people are not talking about. People, they're not talking about sex. They're not talking about sex in this way. They're not talking about divorce and what that looks like and how to navigate purity as believers, all of these things. And so we said, let's do this podcast. We need to talk. It spawned from the name of a poem called We Need to Talk. It was a poem that dealt with the frustrations of marriage. And so when we started it, I started the pod with my wife and we started the frustrations of marriage and how to navigate that as godly, as a godly couple. Because The Lord himself said, I want you to start this podcast with your wife. And so foundationally, I realized that it wasn't my podcast to begin with. And that foundation was necessary for me to make the pivot because I could not design the framework of the show. God did. And so I was like, hey, God, like, there are other conversations that I want to have. And I know they're going to be a small part of what we do because nobody cares about these testimonies and all of these conversations. But I want them to be a part. So God gave me the green light. by the time it was like April, May, we started to have those conversations. And immediately, I felt the shift. Everybody that was watching felt the shift. What year was this? This was 2024. Started the podcast early January, 2024. April, May, 2024, I had kind of my first kind of like conversation dealing with a man who had come out of a lifestyle, homosexuality. I'm like, these are the conversations that we need, people need to hear. And I just continued to press the button. and I continue to get out of the way. And so my podcast is a testimony of what it looks like when a man gets out of the way. I'm known as Words by Ezekiel on social media. People knew me by spoken word, I guess in a small section of the world, knew me as someone who uses words. My name is Words by Ezekiel. But on my podcast, I listen. My podcast, I shut up. On my podcast, I invite guests that I may not know or may not be known. and it's like, it's like anti-logic, anti-rational. And I just get out of the way and allow God to move. And I feel like my podcast is just a display. What you're watching is a filmed episode of a witness. I am literally a witness. I do nothing on that podcast except allow God to do everything that he intends to do. And I just feel like, man, in this season, God has. literally sent people like you and sent people like me for a specific reason. There's a little bit of I don't care in our spirit that he had to just, he's using, that allows us to have conversations that we know some people may raise their eyebrows to. We know that we potentially could be persecuted for. It might not be mainstream with every church that we go to. You go to certain frameworks and certain churches. They might look at you as like, he's the guy that has the weird people. Yeah, he's a crazy one. That's what I'm talking about. We have to not care enough to be able to be comfortable with God doing what he's doing with the marginalize. I mean, I've had ex-prostitutes. I've had ex-trans. I've had all types of people from all walks of life, people that are known, people that are not known, and they're sharing their testimonies. And I'm being blown away. And I'm in school as I'm doing a podcast. There's nothing better than this. I'm like literally like, this is heaven. I'm in school. I'm learning. I'm growing. People are getting changed. Like, what more can you ask for? So that's how we arrive. here. Got it. All right. I got some questions for you. Okay. All right. So you sit down and you said, God, I want to do something that costs me. That's a real dangerous prayer to pray. What people sometimes, I think, need to, I know this because I run this. And you know this because you run what. But when a podcast has the purity that yours has in the spirit. Wow. And it's big. That takes a special amount of trust from God to put you at the helm of that. So first, my question is, why did you pray that prayer? Was there something that got your attention? Because I want to know what you went through to be trusted for this. It had to have been more tough than people know. And that's a great question. I think the only thing I can say is I just paid attention. I paid attention to me doing it myself, trying to do it myself. I don't know if you've ever experienced God sabotaging your life. I believe that God has single-handedly sabotaged certain ambitions that were just, it made too much sense. This was just way too profitable to not work. Oh, yeah. I had everything lined up for it not to work. God, like, stopped things real time for me to say, like, you thought you were the engine. You thought you were the favor. You thought you were the formula. It has always been me all along. So I've learned that. When I was 1819, I met my wife. Man, three months in, I'm like, Lord, I really want this woman. I like her. The conversations are amazing. And I said, I've dated a few girls that I thought were pretty good. I've done a few things that I've thought were right. And they've ended me in places where I've had to ask you for forgiveness. So I said, God, I like this girl. And if you give me a few months, I will marry her without. your permission. I will lock in with her whether you want me to or not because that's how good she is for me or to me. I prayed, God, if this woman is out of your plan for me, take her out of my life now. I don't want what I want at the expense of what you know I need. I started praying, I mean, I'm 19 years old. I'm like, I pray prayers like, I know I wasn't a beautiful woman, but God, if you don't want me to have a fine woman because you see something else, help me to like what you like. I say this type of stuff when I preach to other people. It gets real quiet in the room. Because I realize, man, I just don't know. Like now I'm almost 40 this year. There were things that I was too immature to pray for at 19. I didn't know I needed my wife to be a good mother. I didn't know I needed my wife to be secure in herself. so that I could fail in front of her terribly and so that I can win immeasurably and she still be anchored. We don't think about that. Lord, give me the type of woman that will be resilient enough to love me when I fall. That will be a good mother towards my kids when I'm incompetent in these areas, that loves her family and mine. Like these are things I wasn't able to. I was just like, okay, her body has to be like this. Face got to be like this talk like this. We're dresses like this. That's what I was thinking. And so it was a practice. I began to start praying like that, man. I began to start praying against myself. Praying for God to rescue me from my ambition, from my intentions. When I get excited, I'm like, God, this is an opportunity. But Lord, shut it down if it's not you. And so when this podcast came around, it was all out of my system. I had already experienced some level of, okay, yeah, this is what it is when you do it your way. I'm just like, I have nothing in me wants to be somebody anymore. I don't want to be nobody, man. When the pandemic happened, and that was right at the helm of me shutting down the podcast, it was at the height of me podcast, and my kids told me in 2019, they said, Daddy, we love that you have a job, we just wish it wasn't this one. My son said, Daddy, do you work at Elport? That's how gone I was all the time. I had to send my kids to L.A. because I just wasn't there enough. They needed to be supported by the family. My daughter said, oh, yeah, my other daughter, I told her, hey, look, if Daddy doesn't work, then you guys can't eat. She said, well, Daddy, we don't got to eat all the time. That destroyed me. I said, I will never full on tour again. I got to figure something else out. And I asked the kids, so when, when, we? was your best moments with me because we didn't took you all around the world we didn't took you Disneyland we done Disney this and Disney that we didn't got you all this stuff tell tell me what you loved and they said oh oh yeah I remember remember when you had the water holes and then we had the water guns and was in the backyard and then we were eating the noodles bro broke me I realized that I thought I was doing it for them but I was doing it at the expense of them. And so, man, I committed, I said, God, like, I realize my way ain't it. I made peace with being obedient to God with nothing. And you're talking to a Nigerian here that loves the idea of success and hates the idea of failing. But I had to make peace because if my kids, if their souls were at jeopardy with my definition of success, then I have to make peace. just don't want it, man. I literally don't want it. And so when people say, oh, Ezekiel, your podcast is blowing up, I don't care. Like, yes, it's cool. I love people that are people are being reached and stuff like that. But it's not, it's not, it's not in me. When I go out and people are stopping me left and right, I forget that I'm known, like, how do you guys see this podcast? It's like, you guys keep seeing this podcast. It's so crazy to me. Because I, I'm so disconnected from the glory of that because I've been. begun to recognize that it's not true. Yeah. For me, like I've disconnected from the idea of me drawing power, glory, significance from the things that I do. And I've made a habit of saying, God, whenever you say, this is flying high right now, that's cool. But I really think I tell my wife, I'm like, tomorrow, if God say shut it down, let's be ready to shut it down. Period. Like I refuse to be outside of God's will. And so that's where that comes from, man. The cost is, it's the cost of me. is the cost of my ideas, the cost of my experience, the cost of my definition of success, the definition of my glory, the definition of my own significance and meaning. Like, I have to let that go. And once I do, God never had any intention of killing Isaac. He wanted to kill the potential of idolatry in Abraham's heart. Wow. He didn't want to rid Isaac from Abraham. Yeah. He wanted to make sure that the relationship. was so intact so that when the promise is being fulfilled, I know that this chord is not broken. Abraham was more married to the voice of God that called him out of the land of his father into a land that he did not know, then rationale, then the relationship with the promise, then the goodness of his life, then the thing that he loved the most. That's why he was God's friend. I just want to be God's friend, man. Dang. Don't make me cry up in here, man. I'm not trying to go there. Hey, you're telling the truth. I think because you talk to so many people, and I talk to so many people, you can see these patterns that pop up and people who have been used by God, but who know God. And I think that that's a dangerous thing. Everyone's used by God, but you want to know God while he's using you. And you have that. I think one of the patterns that I'm picking up that you're, I know you're telling the truth, because I feel this. by the time a man or a woman is ready to be raised up by God, they no longer care if they're raised up. And then the people who are raised up before they're ready, it's not God raising them up. And I think we've both seen this. So you're not chasing anything. No, man. You're chasing Jesus. Seriously, bro. I mean, I'm not going to lie, man. Some of the perks are cool. But I'm not married to this. You can't be married to this stuff, dude. You can't be married to this stuff, man. And I like, and I love God, man. I love God because he's the type that really Matthew 633 is your life. Like, seek him in this kingdom. And he's not even just going to add, like, he's going to slap you with blessing. He's going to slap you with favor. Like the best things that I've received from the Lord, I never prayed. I couldn't pray for. I've told this testimony before and I'm just going to be transparent. And I know you've done business and you've done different things. And I know probably when you started this podcast, it was just you pouring your resources into this thing. And that's kind of how it was for me until like I said, talked about that sabotage. God, start sabotaging my businesses, bro, in ways that did not make sense. I'm just like, I was number one in these industries doing killing it. And then all of a sudden, it just, if I showed you on paper, it just didn't make sense. And I was like, all right, God. So maybe you just want me to get into the corporate world. you want me to kind of figure it out because like I've built a great reputation I've made people a lot of money maybe you just want me to kind of just switch things up and when I tell you I tried to get into the corporate world and put myself out there I was on indeed.com job market putting myself out there no one called me I said all right say less I started reaching out to the competitors of the competitors I said okay I had friends that was CEOs and and they said I was a shoe in And then they ghosted me. I started to reach out to so many people, hundreds of jobs, hundreds. No one called me. I said, okay, I got you. Home Depot. This is 24 when the podcast was blowing up. Whoa. All right. I just need to make a few extra dollars to make it for the businesses that were collapsing. So I'm like, all right, Home Depot. Whole Foods, man. No, till this day, none of them called me. And I, you know, I was strategic. I didn't, you know, I didn't, I made sure that my resume reflected what they wanted. Oh,