Charles Kelley Says the Pandemic Made Him Connect More with His Faith
Through the low, my high was I really did connect a lot more to my faith. Through this, I think reading a lot of different things and you really only learn and grow through the lows and the hard times. And it really is true. I mean, when I’m riding high and everything’s good, I’m really not connected to my feelings much. I’m just kind of on the ride, on the rollercoaster ride. And then when you got to sit back and question and do those things, I really think that’s when you start having those conversations with God. And you’re like, “Okay, help me through this. What is this?” And it’s kind of sad that that’s what it is, but it really is true. I mean, I find myself when I really need help that I’m like, “Man, when I don’t need help, I’m just really not that connected to my faith as much.” So that was a high for sure.
Dave Haywood on What He’s Learned About His Faith in the Past Year
I think for me, the sort of theme was just kind of continually like relying and letting go, like you can’t control everything. You know, I wish I was in charge of getting rid of the virus. I wish I could figure all this stuff out, but you just can’t. And so I think that just became sort of smack dab right in front of my face, through the pandemic of like, “All right, I’m definitely not in control of a lot of things, of everything.” So you just kind of get up, have some gratitude and do the best you can every day. So that was pretty the glaring kind of theme for me, it was the forced like “Okay, you’re definitely not in control and you’ve just got to do the best you can and love people as best you can and do what you feel called to do. And stay true to that.”
Charles Kelley Reveals Why He Struggled with His Faith as a Kid
As a kid, I struggled really, really hard with organized religion, and church, and all these. I found it very… Yeah, I don’t know. It was a very disheartening thing, because like, this is a horrible way of looking at it, but as a kid, it was like, I would go to church and then I’d see these kids that were like all really strong faith. Then I’d see them partying and making bad decisions. It made me give this like hypocritical view of that. My wife was like, “That’s human beings.” And it gave me this like weird, flawed view of it. To me, I’ve found that faith for me is just like… He’s in everything, in what we are. I guess that to me is like, I found that I’ve grown stronger in my faith by not putting Him in this box of like, “Okay, well, to believe in God, you got to go to church, you got to do this.” I don’t know if that makes any sense… But I’ve grown a lot of like… I found His presence in kind of, I guess, a little bit of a different journey.
Charles Kelley on Writing “Who You Are To Me” with Chris Tomlin
I remember, because I was like, “Man, am I a fraud coming in here?” Because I was like, “I don’t know all the Bible verses, all these things.” You all grew up so much in that world. And sometimes I feel like a little bit of a fraud in that situation. And I was like, “Well for Him, this is who He is to me.” Like I said, I still struggle with some of the nuances of Christianity and what that is, but I know I have this relationship and I can feel it. And I feel God. And so I’m like, “Well, this is who He is to me.” And then we were off to the races. It was pretty cool to be in that situation and feel like I could kind of kickstart that, even a stronger relationship for me in my journey. Because it really has only been in the past probably two, three years where I really have felt connected to God.
