Christian speaker Kirk Franklin confessed there were a lot of hurdles he had to overcome first before he was able to release his 11th studio album "Losing My Religion."

"To be transparent, that's what took me so long to do the album. A lot of it was fear, and then I really began to learn that spiritually fear is a form of pride," Franklin told The Christian Post. "It was pride that I would never be able to live up to 'I Smile.' I would tend to just kind of stay away, because I was scared of not being accepted like I was with 'I Smile.'"

Because of his pride, it took him four years to complete "Losing My Religion." But now, Franklin has embraced his new work wholeheartedly and feels confident that fans will love the new "romantic" album.

Franklin also hopes people will be inspired to look further beyond their religious beliefs when they listen to his new album. "Religion is man's systematic approach to try to keep the rules. The problem is that when man's ideology and thought process gets involved, sometimes what he does is change the rules," he explained. "A lot of times the thoughts of religion are not all bibliocentric; sometimes they're cultural. Then it becomes cultural to say, 'it's wrong to do this and it's wrong to do that.' It becomes a misinterpretation of scripture."

He clarified that there is nothing wrong when people claim to be a Christian. However, people should know that there is more to being a Christian than just its label, and they should also work hard in promoting the relationship aspect of Christianity.

"The definition doesn't define the relationship, meaning you can be married and still not know intimacy. You can be religious and not know relationship," he said. "There's a lot of people like me who the system never introduced to the love of God. Knowing God as a loving father is very foreign to them. I think most people in mainstream America, they don't know God. There's always more picket signs (saying) 'God hates gays' or 'God hates abortion.' But when have you seen a picket sign that says 'Jesus loves you?'"