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MR. TODD AGNEW: For me I think the Bible really needs to be the foundation that we’re building all our stuff on. It’s always been funny to me because people came, even after the first song I ever had on the radio, and were asking, you know, wow, where did you come up with this idea that, you know, God speaks with thunder and lightning and that, you know His voice shakes the mountains, and you know where did that come from. You know that’s such an amazing description. I’m like, that’s not me, man, that’s Psalms 29. I was like, I’m like I wrote the verses but you know the powerful part that you’re connecting with that’s the Word of God.

And I think we find that throughout our songs I think if we go through the lists of our favorite songs many of us would be surprised at how much of that comes almost directly from the Bible, you know whether it’s Your Love of the Lord by Third Day you know jumping out of the Psalms, or you know all these different songs.

And then for the second record you know I had written “Grace Like Rain,” and so everybody was waiting and asking anytime they heard the second record was coming out they’re like, well is there another “Grace Like Rain?” You know is there another song for the church to connect to. And I’m like, well I don’t know. I didn’t mean to write that song, it just kind of came out. I don’t know if I can do that on purpose.

And so I just started really studying the scripture and studying a lot of my favorite scripture passages about worship. And I was studying one of my very favorite ones which is Isaiah the 6th Chapter, as Isaiah swept into Heaven and it, you know, sees God on his throne and just what that experience was like for him. And realized that in the story there’s angels around the throne singing a song over and over. As a worshiper I was going, man, that’s amazing our God is so worthy that He creates beings to sing a song around His throne all the time. And I was just amazed by that.

But as a musician, as an artist, I read that same passage and went, man, there is a song sung around the throne of God all the time. Who got to write that song? I didn’t even get to submit anything, you know. How do you write songs like God does? You know, where does that come from? And as I started studying it I realized that I didn’t want to try to write something that would tear people’s emotions up or that would make them feel like they were worshipping. I wanted them to worship. And apparently what God has created to worship around His throne was this song. So why do I need to try to create something else right now.

So what I ended up doing was taking Isaiah 6 and just putting it straight to music. And we just pulled it straight out and put a tune to it. And so for the last two years that’s probably been the most powerful moment of worship in our shows, is not seeing it as something that Todd Agnew came up with, but seeing the Words of the Lord describing Himself and honoring Himself and repeating those with the angels. And we probably have a different tune then they do but, and we’re probably definitely not as good singers, but still just the experience of that has been very powerful for me and the guys that play with me.

TODD AGNEW: My parents were just amazing Christians and so my mom really raised me, you know I had my little ABCs of Bible memory verses book, and as a little, little, kid I was already memorizing scripture and it really became a part of who I was. I didn’t really even realize how integral it was until years later, just a few years ago I had a friend that was my age that just kind of went, “How do you always know the Bible answers to things?” I was like, “I don’t, I don’t know the answers to lots of stuff.” He goes, “No, I don’t mean you know everything but you just have an innate knowledge of the Bible, you just respond with verses and those kind of things.” And that’s just from growing up, that was just ingrained in me as a child.

Then I hit a really tough time in my life at about 27, 28 years old, and you know thought I was going to get married and it didn’t work out, and I’d moved away from my friends to another part of the state and was by myself. It Christmas season and I was doing youth ministry and wasn’t very good at it, and it was just a rough time, and all my students, I couldn’t be a part of my lives right then, ‘cause they all had to study for finals. And the college group I was working with, they were all studying for finals, and all the sudden for the first time that semester, I was really just alone. I was like, “God, I’m really having a hard time here. I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how to focus this.” I just went, “You know what, if they’re going to study, I’m going to study. What should I study?” So I decided to memorize Philippians. I was like, “I’ve never tried to do anything like that before. I’m pretty sure I can’t do it, but I’m going to try. While everybody else is studying, I’m going to try and study this.”

So I’d go get on the treadmill in my apartment every day, and would put out all note cards and I’d sit there and try to memorize stuff, and ended up memorizing the entire book of Philippians.

And to this day, it’s still one of the most powerful things that I’ve done in my life, not because I go impress people with it or that I taught amazing sermons after that, but when you place the Word of God in your heart, he is faithful to place it in your life. By me putting it in my heart, God was able to stir it into my life all day. It was one of those life-changing things that has happened to me.

Actually I was sharing with a friend awhile back and had to confess like, you know, I haven’t done it again. I don’t know why we do things like that. I don’t know we find that God works in powerful ways, especially when we put scripture in our lives, and then we say, “Yeah, but I’m getting too busy now, and that was a great experience for them,” but that’s so easy to do, so that’s still right now really one of the things that I’m starting to try and figure out again, how can we make that work in a day-to-day kind of thing.