Timothy Brindle

Timothy Brindle and his wife Floriana are living proof that God is sovereignly working all things for the good of His people and His glory, as He has interwoven their paths of life into one another, to display His Abounding Grace. In God’s gracious and wise providence He brought Floriana to Philadelphia from Botswana, Africa, at the tender age of 4, as her Angolan family was seeking refuge from the Angolan Civil War in 1984. By 1986 Floriana and her 6 siblings were soon placed in the foster care system due to challenges in their home. Meanwhile God was orchestrating her future husband’s life, as well. God used Timothy Brindle’s carnal desires to pursue underground rap culture and party lifestyle, to bring him from Pittsburgh to Temple University in Philadelphia in 1999. What Timothy meant for evil, God meant for good (Genesis 50:20).
Having both experienced the emotional pain and wounds of broken homes, Floriana and Timothy as unbelievers also naturally pursued sinful lifestyles, until being brought to faith in Christ around the turn of the millennium. This abrupt and glorious salvation interrupted Timothy’s secular solo album process, as he was recording with a well-known underground hip-hop producer from Pittsburgh, deejay essence. After meeting shai linne in late 2001, and being discipled by him the following year, Timothy’s rhymes began to be transformed in content, as the focus shifted onto the glory of the Person and Work of Jesus Christ! Meanwhile, God was bringing deejay essence to Himself, and after he moved to Philadelphia in Spring 2002, his independent label, Lamp Mode recordings put out Timothy’s first release, ” The Great Awakening.”

After meeting in 2002 and getting married in 2005, Floriana and Timothy carried their brokenness into their Christian marriage where the Lord and Sanctifier of their souls highlighted their deep pain and sin issues, in order to further show them their deep need of His Restoring Grace. But He didn’t leave them there. “Where sin is, grace abounds.”

Timothy was admonished by his wife, pastor, and the other Lamp Mode brothers, to step back from hip-hop ministry in late 2005 to deal with his personal and marital struggles. Thankfully Flo and Tim were under the patient, wise, and prayerful care of the Christ Liberation Fellowship elders (now Christ Redemption Fellowship, PCA) , in which they gained the weekly encouragement of Gospel-centered preaching, close pastoral shepherding and biblical counseling, as well reliable and redemptive fellowship. Although it was a challenging (and at times painful) process, the Brindles’ eventually saw the All-Sufficiency of Christ in the Gospel of Grace to restore their souls to their Heavenly Father, as He magnified Christ’s sin-bearing, wrath-absorbing, Cross-Work and the imputed Righteousness of Christ–as the sole ground of their acceptance with God (2nd Cor. 5:21)!!! The LORD powerfully restored their marriage and family by His grace! All this was taking place while the LORD was steadily blessing them with 4 beautiful inter-racial children ranging from 5 years old to 4 months, building further confidence in Flo as home-school mom, and granting Timothy experience as an urban Social Worker in the City of Philadelphia, working with broken families.

Therefore, God was amazingly using all of these things to give Timothy a heart in his rhymes for the outcast and struggling soul (Psalm 147:2-3), while working in them both a burden for a gospel-centered family ministry. Now the ongoing theme of their marriage, family, parenting, ministry desires, and hip-hop music, is seeing the All-Sufficiency of the Gospel of Christ, restore ruined sinners to Himself, for their joy, and His Glory!!!

Soli Gratia!