Right. I wish (laughs). . . I wish that was for everyone, but we live in a place that's not. . . I feel like God finds those people who have those stories and once they get redeemed, He uses them to the fullest to hopefully stop others from experiencing the same thing.
Yeah. So what advice would you have for someone who feels like they're stuck in a hard time right now? Well, in my opinion, the best advice that I can give. . . For me, the thing that kept me from experiencing this earlier is that I'd never heard about Jesus. I didn't hear about Jesus until I was about eighteen years old and that was the first time I had heard anything about Him. So I didn't ever have another option. All I ever knew in life was this garbage and I didn't know that there was actually hope and there was actually another way. Then when I actually experienced that, like I said, it was like this whole new world opened up to me. So, my advice to anyone going through hardships or difficult situations would be: Don't forget that you have another option if you choose to take it. You know what I mean?
Yeah.
It doesn't mean that those other things will disappear right away, but having the feeling of having a God behind you and knowing that you're living for a bigger purpose, that you're not just created with nothing and created with no purpose. All those things are good things to help you get through those hard times so that they don't feel as heavy as they would if you didn't have God behind you. So, my first priority for anyone struggling with that stuff would be to make them look towards God not away from Him.
That's pretty interesting. As you were saying that, it occurred to me that when you think about free will. . . Most of the time you hear about it as though we're given the option to sin, but since we're already bent towards sin at this point, it's almost more that our free will gives us the option not to sin. Yeah it's like that's the first natural thing, to choose the dark side (laughs). Follow your sin. Follow the natural ways of your flesh, but I think if you're challenged to go against the grain, to go the other way, I think you start seeing the results, right away.
Yeah. The moment I was challenged to follow God. . . When I got saved, I made a deal with God and it was a pretty simple deal. It was more like: If you can change my situation. If you can change my family. If you can change my life. Then I'll do whatever it takes to follow You. That was the deal that I kind of laid out there. And God, (laughs), He didn't have to, but He followed through. He changed my family. He changed everything about my life. And that's the reason why I'm still going today.
And now you're out to influence others as well. Yeah and I'm hoping that it doesn't just stop there. It's supposed to be a chain reaction where those people go on and become the evangelists and change other people. It's supposed to have a multiplying affect. That's why no one person is supposed to get the glory.
Well alright, we'll kind of wrap this up. You're celebrating Thanksgiving with your inlaws, do you have plans for Christmas? Yeah, we'll actually be back at home. We kind of took December off, except for a few little things here and there. And we'll actually have Christmas at our house for the first time this year so our families will come and visit with us.
That sounds like fun. It's such a good time to just stop and recoup. We've been traveling for the past two-and-a-half months straight on a tour and then we came right out here, so I'm glad that the holidays are right around the corner. We can just relax and just have the month of.
Alright so the album is out already. It's called Masquerade. Yep, it was out on October 30th.
Very cool. Have a good time off.
(laughs) Thanks. Have a good night.
For more on Lyrycyst, visit LyrycystMusic.com, MyCCM.org, and MySpace Masquerade available now at: Amazon, CBD/ChristianBook.com, or iTunes