Kanye West calls himself 'the greatest artist that God has ever created' at Joel Osteen service

Kanye West took the stage at Houston megachurch pastor Joel Osteen's service Sunday, zigzagging through an interview about his shift to a much more religious ideology, his Sunday Service performances and new gospel album, "Jesus Is King."

After claiming the "devil stole all the good producers, all the good musicians, all the good artists, all the good designers," West told the packed crowd of Lakewood Church worshippers that he sees a major shift coming in the world because "now, the greatest artist that God has ever created is working for him," referencing himself.

The rapper threw out handfuls of half-explained ideas throughout his talk, at one point calling strip clubs a form of sex trafficking and later claiming images are being fed to young children through "the media" with subliminal messaging to make them more inclined to join society's "robotic, numeric system." The latter was met with silence from the stadium audience, after which West told listeners they could rewind a video clip of what he had been saying and "do research" on the topic.

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He also lamented things like alcohol, promiscuity and other pressures for rappers to look cool as "distractions" and "addictions" that "bring our Christian scorecard down."

"They'll hit you sometimes. Sometimes you'll go ahead and just pour that drink and then repent for it," West said. "We all fall short of the glory. ... Christians are not going to be Christ. We are going to follow Christ and be Christ-like and repent for our sins. ... We all have sins, it's another thing to be selling drugs in a children's parking lot."

Now 42 and the father of four children with wife Kim Kardashian, West's public persona has switched gears from the provocative hitmaker he was once known as to a more clean-cut follower of the Bible.

What advice would West give to the old Kanye? The rapper told Osteen he didn't have any verbal messages that would have helped his former self because music was his saving grace.

"This music don't come every month," West said. "We dropping that heat, we're in the studio. God is strengthening our hands. We're taking all the most fire producers and bringing them back to God."

Tickets for West's planned Sunday Service performance at Lakewood were distributed through Ticketmaster and gone within minutes, with resellers asking hundreds of dollars for them.

Osteen’s televised weekly TV program is viewed by more than 13 million households in the U.S. and millions more in more than 100 nations around the world.

Contributing: The Associated Press

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Kanye West rants about sinning, Christianity at Joel Osteen service