As long as there's breath in our lungs our story is still being written.
Bart Millard
I've been through difficult times where it just seems like hope is nowhere to be found, but those are some of the greater moments where we run to Christ a little faster and hang on a little tighter.
We are not disqualified or bad people trying to be good. We are holy, righteous, and redeemed. Sometimes, we spend more time on what we used to be and not who we are now.
I am just sitting back and trying to take in the idea that the God who created everything around us, He didn't call the mountains or the forest or the ocean to spend eternity with Him, but He called us.
A Little Hope' is a song we wrote a couple of years ago and hated the thought of it not getting at least a little attention. It's a song that just makes you smile.
I came to know Christ at the age of 13 during church camp at Glorieta, New Mexico.
Yeah, musically, from a production standpoint my favorite is probably 'Have a Little Talk with Jesus'. Just the way it turned out production wise with the clarinet and everything, it sounds like something from a movie.
Probably about 10 years ago or so I told my grandmother that I always wanted to make a record of hymns if I could ever make a career of all of this. She kind of held me to it. She passed away in 1999. I just never forgot it.
We never want to force the Bible down people's throats. But I want them to ask, 'What joy do they have that I don't have?' Let go and enjoy yourself and leave feeling like you can take on whatever you're facing in life.
We have jokingly said if you've got good hair, can sing and know three chords, you can lead worship at First Baptist Houston or wherever. But that's kind of scary, putting somebody on stage just because they have a good voice. Do they know theologically and spiritually what they're saying and why they're doing it?
When my father died of cancer in 1991, he left me with the assurance that he was headed to a better place. He used to always tell me that I was getting the raw end of the deal because I had to stick around here.
On Christmas Eve, it's my wife and my son and my daughter and I. We're home, and we open our presents together on Christmas Day, and then after we go visit the rest of the family.
After 'The Hurt & The Healer', we kind of hit a wall. I grew up in a somewhat legalistic church and it taught me that faith is enough, but here's three more things left just in case. There's always things left to do to be closer to God.
If you go to a Christmas concert, you take your wife on a nice evening, people are dressed up a little bit more, and it's definitely a sit-down event.
I don't know what it is, but St. Louis has always welcomed us with open arms.
I finally got the dad I always wanted and then he left. At 18, 19 years old, I was really upset and had to work through that.
I've never met an artist who was at a certain level of spirituality offstage and then lowered it onstage.
12 years ago all I wanted to do was sing the right songs and get emotionally wound up, but now I realize my job is to make Christ the center of attention each night.
What I view as worship now is certainly a little different than how I used to view worship. I don't see it as a verse in a chorus, on a big screen with words, like I used to. It's just trying to be as real as possible in front of an audience.
The popularity's got its pluses and minuses, and there are many days that I would rather just be a Christian and not known at all, but that's not what God has called me to do.
More than anything, whether it's my dad's fault or whatever, I wouldn't allow myself to be loved. I lived most of my life thinking that I was unlovable, that I was broken goods, or whatever.
My dad would do horrible things to me, but I was so desperate for his affection and his approval that I would keep coming back.
I think everybody's got someone in their life that they think is out of the reach of God, or unchangeable, unreachable, if you will, and maybe we think that way of ourselves sometimes.
As long as our heart's beating, there's a chance for us, or whoever that person is in our life, and I don't know how the story turns out, but I do know that no one is out of the reach of God, and that anybody's capable of change.
I just want people to not assume their story is over, especially when maybe they have somebody in their life that they've given up on or they think it's hopeless.
My dad was a monster and I realized if the gospel could change that dude, the gospel can change anybody.
It's kind of scary making a faith-based film.
I have one brother who's five years older than me and he was a huge part of my childhood.
Part of the tradition of the Christmas season is every night my son and I hit the town and look for every Christmas light we can find. This is something my son absolutely adores.
We started making independent records. We started in '94 until about 2000 when just kind of just did it ourselves... We'd write our own songs. No one cared... At some point, we decided to try and write our own original stuff and one of the last independent records is when we wrote the song 'I Can Only Imagine.'
The song 'Even If' is incredibly special to me.
My son, Sam, is 15 years old, and he's been a diabetic since he was 2. When you're a parent of a child with any kind of chronic illness, these things don't go away. You have a lot of good days, but some days you feel like you're losing bad.
I ended up living in fear for most of my childhood.
I think everyone, especially after the passing of a loved one, starts to hope that maybe there will be something better on the other side.
Whether you have an abusive father or the most amazing dad ever, every son is trying to find their way out from under the shadow of their dad.
Then, when my dad was diagnosed with cancer, I started to notice this crazy transformation, where he fell desperately in love with Jesus.
God was always a refuge for me growing up.
The only time I actually got mad at God is when my dad completely changed and was my closest friend, and then he was taken from me too soon.
We try to do everything that we can to make Christ the center of attention. Our goal is to kind of broaden the definition of worship. I know that God has always used us as a forefront for people to draw closer to Him and get into His presence.
I'm all into Jazz; I'm into New Orleans type music. There is country, there is southern gospel. I'm a huge southern gospel fan.
I have pretty much always been about - if I write that song or whatever, it is all for Mercy Me. Anything I want to do is for Mercy Me.
I'm not trying to shove anything down anybody's throat.
The second that MercyMe stopped being my identity, instead of quitting, I started falling back in love with it.
At some point, I talked about how I had never graduated college. I dropped out my sophomore year to start MercyMe 21 years ago. Part of the reason was I felt like I was treading water.
You didn't choose Christian music because it's more beneficial. It doesn't pay more. It doesn't make you more famous. There's some reason why you came to this. What changed your life at some point?
Writing Christian or worship music is just because I love Jesus, so everything I do is going to be an overflow of that.
Basically, there's not a single circumstance, I pray, that can derail me from what Christ is to me and who I am because of Christ.
If there's a moment on the record to reach people where they are, it's 'Even If'. We're ministers first. We're trying to reach the hurting first. This song wrecked us.
Our relationship with Christ is something we cannot just turn on and off. It is a part of us. On our best, and our worst, we are in this thing for life... and then some.
When I was a kid, my dad would let me stay up and watch 'Cheers' each week. Granted it's not the most 'kid friendly' show, but I could've cared less. I was getting to stay up past my bedtime!
