BU’s Jewels Gray Launches Social Media Ministry
Some people are blessed with amazing skills. Some are great singers. Others are great athletes, while some are just amazing people in general. One such person is Bluefield University student Jewels Gray – an amazing friend, football player, person, and now minister.
Gray is a BU junior from Anniston, Alabama, who says he has grown a lot over the years, both mentally and spiritually. He said it’s been a long process becoming the person he is today. His upbringing, he said, played a big part in defining who he is today.
“I grew up in a not-so-good environment, where I was surrounded by violence, poverty, and complacency,” Gray said, “but my parents instilled the foundation of a relationship with the Lord in me early on.”
Gray said he always went to church since a child and even served the church as a dance minister, praise dancing at the age of eight.
“That was the first time I felt the Holy Spirit and the anointing that God had on my life,” Gray said.
Gray recalls as a child always having the presence of God around his house and family, but that he added didn’t’ make life in the real world any easier.
“I allowed the ways of the world to deter me away from increasing my relationship with God,” Gray said. “I continued going through the motions of singing in the choir with the church in my hometown or going to church faithfully, but I was still living a sinful life behind closed doors.”
Gray said he began using his gift of music to create music that he thought expressed his feelings or that he thought others where he was from could relate to.
“I was creating secular music that glorified what Satan wants to do, and that’s stealing, kill, and destroying,” Gray said. “He (Satan) was trying to get me to believe that there was a certain lifestyle that I wanted to live that in essence had nothing to do with our God. Satan was after my identity.”
In addition to pursuing a degree in Communication Arts at BU, Gray is also a wide receiver on the Rams football team. It was an encounter with God through football that he said completely changed his life. He had worked hard over the summer of 2021 to get in the best shape of his life, and as a result he had an extremely successful fall football camp in preparation for the fall 2021 season.
“I played so well during that fall camp; I was performing on all cylinders,” Gray said. “I got to the first game of the season, and in the third quarter I broke my hip. I said how could this happen when I’d dedicated my whole summer and the beginning of this fall to make sure I was ready for a full season of ball.”
Gray recalls how the pain from the injury prevented him from getting out of bed and putting on his clothes.
“I couldn’t even sneeze or cough without experiencing extreme pain in my body from the broken hip,” he said. “Then, as I went to the Lord and cried out ‘how could something like this happen?’ he said ‘son you’ve been trying to do it without me. He said I allowed it to happen because I needed you to understand that it doesn’t matter how good and talented you are or how much hard work you put in, if you aren’t using these things to glorify your father.'”
From that point on, Gray committed to putting God first in his life, and in the fall of 2022 he had an outstanding football season, earning All-Conference honors. But football is not the only place Gray is experiencing reward for putting God first. He’s finding tremendous blessing and reward in reaching other people, praising God, sharing his testimony, and changing lives through social media. In fact, he has more than 63,000 followers on TikTok and nearly a million likes on videos where he’s sharing his testimony.
“I just started sharing my faith on TikTok because the Lord told me that he wanted to use my platform to reach others,” Gray said. “He said many would come to him through it and me if I was obedient. So I just gave God my simple yes and he created so much out of it. He created a glorious Christ community and ministry, a family that those who are new or seasoned in their walk with Christ can be a part of from all over the world, and a platform that he is getting his glory through.”
Gray admits he has been through a lot — from poverty and being surrounded by violence to a painful and disheartening injury — but through it all he has never lost his faith in the Lord. He said he’s thankful for the experience he had with God that enhanced his faith and led him on a path of spreading the gospel through social media. The only thing remaining to see is what else God has in store for Gray in the future.
“He’s creating and growing my ministry,” Gray said. “He’s molding my spiritual gifting. He’s teaching me and showing me what balance, patience, and love look like. He’s preparing me for my next season and opening up doors for me to be of service to him and so much more.”