shareyourstorynow.org

GREGG HIONIS: I’ve been a Christian since I was a kid, and I think that’s a great testimony in itself. And a lot of these guys have, too. Josh has a different kind of a story behind that, but…

JOSH BROWN: I used to be a hard-core drug addict, and you know I started reading the Bible just kind of to look for some kind of peace, and you know God came alive to me through the word. You know, I had a two- or three-year time period where I constantly just fed on the Bible every day, all the time. You know what I’m saying? And those verses came alive in my heart, and I still carry them around like–from that period of my life, those words constantly swell up in my heart and my mind. It’s cool. Like I always had a grandmother that would give me a Bible and send me Bibles and stuff like that, and I’d gone to church a few times, you know. I knew what it was, but I just really didn’t know what it was. Does that make sense? I didn’t know it could be alive, I just thought it was a book of rules, you know. It’s amazing how, as we go through life and we read that you can find your life in there and it was written–it’s amazing that a guy wrote about me 2,000 years ago. It’s from the principles.

ZACH SIMMS:It is. From a perspective of anybody out there growing up in a Christian home, somebody who maybe doesn’t even remember, like, when they became a Christian, for me it was more of a process. I know the Bible really came alive to me when the grace of God impacted me. I mean, that’s the good news. You know, I could help a million old ladies across the street, and without that grace it really means nothing. I’m just a good person, that’s all. But like with grace, I could push down a thousand ladies and that grace still covers me. I’m not going to do that, obviously. But when that grace impacted my heart, that’s when the Bible really came alive and that didn’t happen until college, really. ‘Cause I think sometimes those of us that grew up in churches grew up in a very protected environment, almost overly-protected, because if we follow the example of Christ we need to move outside of that protective environment. With the covering of God with the people around us to encourage us and keep us in prayer, once we move out of that, you start to see the grace of God, because Christ is behind the eyes of those marginalized people in society and so as a band those are the people that God has really put a passion in our heart to go and be with and spend time with and love.