Singer Mike Posner has revealed he gave his life to Christ a year ago after a series of extraordinary experiences led him to embrace Christianity, immerse himself in the writings of Christian authors like C.S. Lewis, and, more recently, be baptized.
The Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, who shot to fame with hits including “Cooler Than Me” and “I Took a Pill in Ibiza,” shared the announcement Wednesday in a lengthy Instagram post accompanied by a video of his baptism in calm waters at sunset.
“A year ago, I got down on my knees and gave my life to Christ,” Posner wrote to his 1.4 million Instagram followers.
The 38-year-old artist said his decision followed what he called “a series of Christ-based synchronistic events.”
Among those experiences, Posner said a friend accurately spoke about events in his life without prior knowledge, he experienced what felt like “electricity” shooting up his spine during a small church service that left him with “a deep feeling of Oneness,” and another Christian friend unexpectedly referenced an event from his past that he had been thinking about moments earlier.
“I interpreted [these] signs as signals for me to take a step towards Christ,” he wrote. “I did so.”
“The veracity of these events and whether they could be pure happenstance versus ‘signs’ from God is not that interesting to me,” he wrote. “What is interesting is what happened afterwards.”
After committing his life to Christ, Posner said he immersed himself in reading the New Testament along with works by Christian thinkers including C.S. Lewis and Mother Teresa, though he admitted he initially struggled to understand what it meant to be a Christian.
“Some of the doctrine I heard espoused in church felt true to me, and some didn’t,” he wrote.
Over time, Posner said his understanding of Christianity became more focused on theological systems and on living like Jesus.
“For ME; To be a Christian means to aspire with all your mind, body, and soul to live as Christ did,” he wrote. “To forgive all other people. To treat ALL other people, especially the least among us … with an impossible level of compassion, grace, and most of all LOVE.”
He added that following Christ means “LOVE CHRIST BY LOVING PEOPLE” and striving toward “an impossibly high standard of goodness towards others” that requires God’s help.
“It means listening to the little voice inside me (that I believe comes from God) that tells me to do [the] right thing, even when I don’t feel like it,” he wrote. “For me, if it isn’t causing me to LOVE MORE PEOPLE MORE FULLY, it isn’t God.”
Posner revealed that he was baptized several weeks ago, sharing footage of the ceremony, which concludes with him reaching out his hands to the sky, as the final slide in the post.
“Christ has not made my life or my heart smaller, but much, much bigger. I’m working on developing more and more of a personal relationship with God.”
“Do I think that my job as an aging pop star qualifies me to tell you what to believe? I do not,” he wrote. “But to not share this would feel inauthentic and like I was hiding a part of myself from my audience and I am not hiding this part of my life. But I am proud of this part of my life.”
In recent years, Posner, who has topped music charts and collaborated with artists including Wiz Khalifa and Talib Kweli, has become increasingly vocal about feeling empty despite success.
In 2019, the “Cooler than Me” artist walked across the U.S., surviving a rattlesnake bite during that trek, and later climbing Mount Everest; experiences, he has said, deepened his spiritual search.
“It was all those things. It would be crazy to complete this trip and not have some major self-growth. I spent a lot of my life trying to make things as comfortable as possible. In the walk, I was trying to do the opposite. What happens then is that you become a better, harder, more authentic version of yourself,” he told Time magazine at the time.
In February 2024, on the 10th anniversary of writing “I Took a Pill in Ibiza,” Posner reflected that “none” of the song’s lyrics were true of his life anymore. The song opens with the lyric, “I took a pill in Ibiza to show Avicii I was cool/ And when I finally got sober, felt 10 years older/ But f— it, it was something to do.”
He wrote that he had become “a completely new man,” saying he no longer sought validation through drugs, material success or unhealthy relationships and had instead found joy.
His faith became even more explicit over the last year-and-a-half. Last summer, Posner said his “relationship with God is on a whole new level” and that he no longer identified with the worldview reflected in “I Took a Pill in Ibiza.”
Earlier this year, he debuted rewritten lyrics to the song: The opening line changed from “I took a pill in Ibiza” to “I went back to Ibiza,” while later lyrics reference being “10 years sober,” moving away from Los Angeles to start a family and deciding to “give my life up to God.”
Leah M. Klett is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: [email protected]
