The Rusty George Podcast

0:00:00 - Rusty George
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Following Jesus isn't always easy, but it's not complicated. Join us each week as we work to make faith simple. This is simple faith. What do you do when your dream dies? For many of us, we feel like a failure, but what if the dream wasn't for you to complete?

Today we hear from one of the founders of Elevation Worship, a ministry of elevation church in North Carolina. Elevation Worship has written and recorded some of the most popular worship songs of the last decade and, just as it began to take off. One of its founders was told you're part of the dream has gone far enough. His new book, This Dream Is Not For You, is truly amazing, and today you get to hear his journey, which might be a lot like yours. Today my conversation is with Wade Joye. I want to say thank you to Subsplash for their support of the podcast, and here's my conversation with author of the book This Dream Is Not For You, Wade Joye. Wade Joye, thank you for joining the podcast. I am so glad that our mutual friend, Frank Beeler put us together. He's been a guest on the show and just all around. Great guy, Tell us a little bit about who you are, Just kind of the 90 second Wikipedia version of Wade Joye, and then we'll get into the book which I can't wait to talk about. So go ahead.

0:02:20 - Wade Joye
Well, thank you, Rusty, for having me. I'm really honored to be here and thankful for Frank. Frank knows a lot of people. He's an amazing connector.

But yeah, I live in Charlotte, north Carolina. I have an amazing wife, ferris. We've been married for 18 years and she's the best part about me. And then I have three daughters twins that are 15, my youngest daughter's 10. So I'm surrounded by women in my house. So the word count is very high in the Joye household, but I love it and I've been in ministry since college and usually in some type of music ministry or worship ministry. For 15 years I served as the worship pastor at Elevation Church with Elevation Worship in North Carolina, and for the past 18 months I've been on a new journey, stepping off of staff and spending time coaching worship leaders and pastors and preaching at different churches across the country, and have a podcast called Dreamers and Disciples and have this book. So I love teaching about. Basically, discipleship is what it all comes down to and how to keep our heart centered on God and surrendered to what he has for us.

0:03:40 - Rusty George
I love that. A couple things Where'd you go to school?

0:03:44 - Wade Joye
I went to school in Greenville, South Carolina, at a college called Furman University. Yeah.

0:03:49 - Rusty George
I've heard of that. Okay, so you're. You're a Carolina kid.

0:03:53 - Wade Joye
Yeah, I grew up in Columbia, South Carolina, spent there, spent all of my life in South Carolina until I moved to Charlotte for Elevation Church.

0:04:01 - Rusty George
Okay, and Charlotte's kind of right on the border right. It's kind of close to both.

0:04:05 - Wade Joye
Yeah, I mean, it's right there on the border of North and South Carolina and it's about if you're driving, it's only like an hour and a half to get to Columbia, to Charlotte. Okay. Oh wow, all right. Well see, I'm a Carolina boy through and through.

0:04:19 - Rusty George
I love that part of the country. It's beautiful. I think we all got excited about it because of Outer Banks on Netflix, but I know that's a different part of North Carolina, but it's a beautiful part of the country.

0:04:31 - Wade Joye
Well, life looks a little bit different than Outer Banks, but your wife's name is Ferris.

0:04:38 - Rusty George
She's probably too old to have been named after Ferris Bueller. Is that a family name or how did that come about?

0:04:44 - Wade Joye
So most people assume it's because of Ferris Bueller, but it has nothing to do with that. It's just her mom just liked the name. We wish that there was like a better story behind it, but we love it, so we just let people think it's Ferris Bueller, but it's not really.

0:05:03 - Rusty George
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, yeah, you should make up your own story on that one. Well, listen, I'm glad you're here because of a couple things Mainly to tell you. Well, not mainly, mainly is the book. First of all, let me say this Thank you for all of the work that you did with Elevation Worship, because we are all the beneficiaries of that. Some of the songs that you helped write from you know, come to the altar and resurrecting, and all these songs that a lot of us sing in churches and become the anthem for our Easter services you helped put together. So thank you for that.

But I really want to talk to you about the book, and I love and I love this title. This Dream is Not for You, and what I love about this is this is so different than a typical book that is put out there. That's a little bit self-help, a little bit. You know the parents on American Idol saying you can do anything and you're a great singer and the judges don't know what they're talking about. Right, but where did this book come from? Because I know it came from kind of a deep, painful place. But give us the genesis of this, the journey of this book, because it's just so profound.

0:06:16 - Wade Joye
Thank you for saying that. That's extremely kind. It's kind of funny because the message of this book on its surface might sound kind of depressing, kind of discouraging, but I actually believe the message of the book is extremely hopeful and it can actually cause us to dream better dreams and to dream healthier dreams and to trust God in new ways. But I think to get there it requires being willing to allow our dreams to die in the same way that, as a disciple of Jesus, like we're called to lay our life down. And that includes our dream.

And I think in my life the journey to this book really started when I came on staff at Elevation Church and I feel like I was going on two parallel journeys in my life with two separate dreams. I had my ministry dreams being a worship pastor and leader and songwriter and I was getting to live in those dreams in some pretty amazing ways. And then I also had my dream my wife and I's dream of having kids and having a healthy family, and God took us on a journey that we didn't quite plan for, with our kids as well. So, starting with the Elevation journey, when I first moved to Charlotte in 2007 alongside two other worship leaders a guy named Chris Brown and a guy named Mack Brock, and Pastor Steven cast the vision about what elevation worship was going to be Like. I said, I felt like I was living in my sweet spot, everything I'd ever prayed to be a part of. I was able to pastor the team. I was writing songs, I was leading worship. We started releasing albums for our church and it was a long process. Sometimes people think the whole elevation worship journey was quick. It was very, very long. A lot of albums that you can never find now as we were trying to figure out how to write songs.

But as we were getting to record these albums and tour and things like that, I remember pretty early on Pastor Steven had a conversation with me where he said Chris and Mack are amazing worship leaders and songwriters and vocalists and I think they have an anointing on their life and a very special way to do those things. He said you're good at those things, but I think you have a lid and you're going to hit that soon as we continue to grow. But I believe in you. There is the gifting to be a great pastor and shepherd and teacher and one day you're going to have to decide are you willing to let go of what you're good at in order to take hold of what God's called you to be great at. And that's not a fun thing for anybody to hear. I had all the ego and all the pride kind of kicking up saying, well, you don't really understand my gifting, you don't understand my, my calling and and all just the natural reactions to something like that. But I remember going home that night after a conversation like that, because this was a long process.

Pastor Steven led me well over the course of, honestly, several years of helping me arrive at that place. And so I remember getting home one night and I go up to my room and I'm frustrated, mad at God for letting this happen, and all that Like why would you let me get so close to the dream and right when things are getting good, why is it like? Why is the door shut? And so I looked at my Bible after a little bit of a pity party, and it was open to where I'd finished reading it that morning, and I don't normally suggest just opening your Bible and reading the most random thing there as a way for God to speak. But yes, Russian roulette devotion.

But the Lord really did speak something very profound to me, because it opened to the place where David wanted to build a temple for the Lord and he thought that that was God's dream for him. And in fact, when he first told Nathan the prophet to do it, Nathan said go ahead and do it, do whatever you have in mind. But then God spoke to Nathan and Nathan came back to David and said this is not for you to do. You're a warrior and you've shed blood. This is for your son to do. And although I'm not saying I'm David and I don't think I've ever been a warrior who shed blood besides my own, when I read that, I realized that you know, in the same way that God was telling David this dream in your heart. It's a good thing, but it's not for you to do. In the same way, God was asking me to trust God, to trust Him with my dreams, and was I willing to help build a space and a worship ministry and help build a church that was going to allow for other people to walk in the things that I once wanted to do? And could I die to my dreams so that other people could live in theirs and so that I could dream new dreams and see what God wanted to do through his ultimate dream of the church. So that was in that moment I felt like God said I've got you, I see you. Trust me. And it took years for me to really fully embrace that and it took a lot of like saying, ok, God, help me to faithfully walk this through, even if I don't feel it. But over the course of time I felt like I began to dream new dreams and really found so much Joye in watching new worship leaders come up and begin to do the things that I wish I could do but no longer was able to, or no longer I had to realize that they were actually more gifted than I was and have some more self-awareness. But God changed my heart as I walked through the path of letting one dream die and it left my hands open to dream those new dreams. So that was one path.

At the same time, with our family, we had these dreams for our family to have. You know, healthy children and you know all the dreams that you have as first time parents. And then our twins were born in 2008, three months premature, one pound 14 ounces, two pounds five ounces. And that was not the dream that we had dreamed for. As first time, parents, like the doctors, told us that they had very little chance of survival. It was an emergency birth.

Three days later after they were born, one of my daughters was diagnosed with a grade four brain bleed. They said she would never walk talk. They encouraged us to take her off life support or things got bad enough and that was devastating for us. And you know what do you do when the dreams that are most precious to you, like the people that you love, when those don't look the way you thought and when it you're realizing that, oh, what about the dreams that my daughter is going to dream one day and can't walk in? And so we, like, we prayed and fasted and believed for a miracle. And God did amazing things in the lives of our daughters. They came home three months later doing everything the doctor said they wouldn't do, but it's still been a journey. One of them has mild cerebral palsy weakness on the right side and about four years after they were born, we finally had the courage to dream again and to say, ok, god, this, can we have another child. And we went through that process and we got pregnant again.

And then Sydney was born not early, she was actually a week late but when she was born she had to get rushed to the NICU because her intestines ruptured. So we were right back at the place. We'd never wanted to be again in the NICU. And then five weeks later she was diagnosed with something called cystic fibrosis, which is a serious lifelong genetic condition. And I was probably at my lowest point then because I was really frustrated with the Lord and saying God, you gave us the faith to trust again. And then this feels worse than what happened last time. But it was in that just authentic and honest pain that my wife and I were navigating that we felt the presence of God and the nearness of God in a way I don't know if I've ever experienced before. And God just step by step, day by day, walked us through that journey, even when the days where I felt like I had zero faith, god was faithful, god was with us. And Sydney is actually doing on the scale of cystic fibrosis she's doing amazingly well.

But I think that journey, combined with my ministry journey, helped me see how often I define myself, myself, by my dream, my ambition, what I think I'm supposed to do for God, and I just hold on to that with all of my might, and sometimes circumstances are needed to force me to let go to truly trust and surrender to God, which happens to all of us. There are things that every single one of us have dreamed about that hasn't happened the way we wanted it to. And when we equate our dream with our purpose, which is ultimately what you do, when you define yourself by something and you don't get that dream, does that mean you don't have a purpose anymore? Have you missed out on God's call for your life, and that leads to a very dark place? Or you get your dream and it's not what you thought it would be, and you're either disillusioned or you think you brought it to pass in your own strength, and that can cause you to not be as dependent on God. So I think that's where the danger lies on both sides of it, and the reason that's antithetical to the gospel is the gospel is about what Christ did for us through his death and resurrection.

When we live as if we're chasing our dream and we're having to make our dream happen to give our life purpose, our life has then become about our works and our efforts and our achievements rather than what Christ achieved on the cross.

And so we have to make sure we define our dreams rather than our dreams defining us.

So your dream is one way that you can live out your purpose. Your dream is one vehicle, and you might have one dream for one season of your life and one dream for another, and you might hear and know to a dream that opens you up for the right dream for that season that you never would have expected. But the only way you can do that is to have open hands and realize that you can carry your purpose and your calling into any season, into a job you love, into a job you hate, into a family that's healthy, into a family that's picking up the pieces again. And so we have to learn how to carry our purpose and who we are as children of God into those scenarios, rather than trying to chase those dreams and those jobs and those ambitions, to try to give some meaning to our life. I don't know if that makes sense, but that to me, is the heart. It's really, what are you chasing? Are you seeking first the kingdom or are you seeking first the dream?

0:17:03 - Rusty George
Wow that's so profound. I think you're dead on to something here that our culture wants no part of. We only want to pursue the dream. As Christians, we adopt that mentality and assume that's what God wants for us, and so if the dream doesn't happen, then either something's wrong with God or something's wrong with us, and you talk about that in the book. Either God wasn't good or he wasn't great.

And you've walked through kind of the loss of several dreams. You had your dream of being a successful musician and band and being, as you said, best friends with Stephen Curtis Chapman, which we all dream of. That that didn't go. Then you thought it was worship ministry, which was great, until God said now, ok, you've taken it as far as I want you to healthy family, which has been difficult, with kids that were born too early and cystic fibrosis and different struggles that they've had. Boy, this seems like it's a crisis of, could be a crisis of faith, to be believing if God is good or if God is great.

And what I love in the book is and I'm going to tee you up to tell us about this one this is so good. David is told that his dream of completing the temple is not going to be fulfilled by him, but rather by his son, and his response is so different than how you and I would typically respond we would beg, we would plead, we would get mad, we run away from God. Tell us what David did instead. Hey, let me interrupt for just a second. If you're a church leader and your church does not have an app, or your app seems to be a little bit limited, check out subsplashcom as a great resource to really give your app all the horsepower that it needs. You can connect people, you can help them get access to messages and you can help them set up recurring giving, which is a game changer when it comes to resourcing your ministry Subsplashcom OK, back to our episode.

0:19:08 - Wade Joye
I mean. David's response, first and foremost, was to worship Right and to turn his attention to God and say God, you, ultimately is what we were just talking about I trust you, I surrender to you. And he put his dream into the narrative of God's story. So David wanted to build a house for God. God wanted to build a house through David, through which the Messiah would eventually be born, and so I think, as we worship, we begin to center our hearts and our minds on the narrative that we're a part of, which is God's kingdom, god's narrative, what he is doing in the earth through the gospel, and it's all centered on Jesus, and so it worship, takes ourselves out of the center of our own dream and acknowledges that Christ is meant to be the center. I think also, what you see David do and this is later on is he begins to equip Solomon to fulfill the dream, so he champions the person that is living in the dream that he wanted to be the one to bring to pass. And I think one of the best ways that we can actually shift our hearts in partnership with worship is then to do everything we can to encourage other people to walk in the fullness of what God's put in them, even if they're doing the thing we wish we could be doing. And I think there is a powerful, powerful transformative effect that the Holy Spirit does in our hearts when we get our focus off of ourselves and put it onto God and then onto other people, because your dream, ultimately, is never about you. It's meant to serve God and to help and serve others, and so I think that's one of the beautiful lessons that we learn from David.

David obviously doesn't get everything right in Scripture, but I think one of the things we see in David's life is how quickly he pivots his heart back to God, back to repentance, back to trust, and so I talk about that a lot in the book is how do we pivot our hearts multiple times a day? For me, I feel like I'm pivoting from the striving self to the surrendered self all the time, but it's learning to recognize. Ok, I'm putting myself in the center. God, help me get things back in alignment, help me to trust you, help me to pivot back to the surrendered self. So I think that is my heart, for the book is to help people identify when they're striving and what it looks like to be surrendered, and how can you quickly pivot your heart back to worship multiple times throughout the day.

0:21:45 - Rusty George
I love that. I was just talking to somebody the other day about how I feel like the boomers if I could use generational terms were all about, hey, we live to work, work, work, work, work. And then along came Gen X, which I think you're still at the tail end of. I think I am I'm a proud Xer myself when we were like, yeah, we don't like that. But then, like the generation after us, now they're almost hustling harder than a lot of us because they're starting their own companies on Etsy and Instagram and TikTok at the age of 12 and 14. And there's so much, so many more dreams that they're having. The striving self seems to be a lot more tempting for in this age than the surrendered self.

You give a prescription for that, and that's. I love that you brought this up because I was going to ask you about it. The pivot practice. You got three steps in here. I'm going to walk you through each of the three and I want you just to kind of break this down for us a little bit. The first one is let go of your position in the dream. Talk about that.

0:22:55 - Wade Joye
Yes, it's a bit of what I was just mentioning of how. Number one we have to realize that we are never meant to be the center of our own dream, and so we have to acknowledge that Christ is the center. And really I don't talk about this as much in the book, but one of the things that I've taught is that a healthy dream is always meant to be more of a mirror. I mean, sorry, it's meant to be more of a window than a mirror. So a mirror reflects yourself back at you that's so good Whereas a window you're looking through it at other people. And I believe your dream is meant to be something you look through to see the people whose lives you can help make better, who you can serve through it. It's not meant to just reflect your own image back at you. And so I think we've got to.

Number one realize the right focus for our dream, but then also we have to be willing to let go of where we will end up playing a role within the dream.

So it could be something that you start but, like you said earlier, you're not meant to finish.

Or maybe you know I helped start it elevation worship, leading worship but where I needed to eventually transition to is being more of a pastor who could help shepherd the team.

And as long as I was unwilling to let go of that and just cling to what the position I thought I needed to have, that's where jealousy creeps in, that's when envy creeps in, that's when I get defensive and then I don't have open hands to actually be available to move into the new thing that God has for me. You know, I've for so long defined my life as Wade, the worship leader, and there's been so many things that I've experienced since laying that dream down that I would have missed that were beautiful gifts and amazing dreams if I just held on to that one definition of my life. So I think we have to be willing to say, ok, if this dream really is of God and if it's something that is going to help further his kingdom in the earth, then do I care enough about that to be willing to shift to whatever role I need to play to make that happen? I think that's a practice of humility. So yeah, that's the first thing. Let go of your position in the dream.

0:25:07 - Rusty George
So the second one is let go of your silence around the dream.

0:25:13 - Wade Joye
Yes, so I say in the book that dreams always incubate and silence. They always start in our heart. I believe David had been dreaming about that temple for a long time before he ever went to the prophet Nathan about it. But I think sometimes we declare a dream dead prematurely because we've never even given birth to it yet. We were too afraid to talk to somebody about it. We're too afraid to take a step, and I think the first thing that we have to do to really surrender a dream to God is begin to talk about it to other people and to begin to take tiny steps towards it, because the word of God says that the Lord directs the steps of the godly, and I think that direction happens as we're taking steps and as we're willing to look a little awkward and for things to not be perfect.

Because I think some people they sit on a God given dream because they're afraid of how silly they're going to look, trying to bring it to pass, and then it never happens. Or they think they have to have the right bank account, the right team right away. Or sometimes we sit on it because we're afraid of what other people are going to say and maybe the hard truths that we need to hear, that God's going to speak to us through someone else, and so I think there's a vulnerability and a trust and a humility that happens when you say hey, this is on my heart. What do you think this is on my heart? Will you be a part of this? Doing a lot of research and taking a step and making it public? I think when we put it out there like that, then we are more open to the direction that God wants to give us.

0:26:53 - Rusty George
Okay, last one, let go of your expectations for the dream.

0:27:01 - Wade Joye
Yeah, that's when I think that all of us can relate to, whether we like it or not, and that is your dream will never look in reality the way it does in expectations. Sometimes it actually looks better, it exceeds your expectations and sometimes it doesn't live up to them at all. And so I think we have to be willing to say God, I'm going to trust you in this, no matter what it looks like. Because sometimes in my life I've realized that there was a dream in my heart that God used to get me started just moving and it was in the process of moving that the Lord redirected me to a different dream and a better dream for that season. But you know, if we just hold on to the dream, it has to look exactly the way I thought it would.

Then we're going to experience a lot of frustration and resentment and it's going to be very hard to be content when we hold God to our blueprint and our expectations.

And so I was just talking to somebody last week. They're like why would God have me step out to do this, for it to fail? And we had to talk about how it's too early to deem something a failure because you have no idea what God used that experience to teach you, or the connections that were made through it, and you have no idea how God is going to use the seed that was planted through what seems like a failure. You have no idea what that's going to blossom into later on in your life, and it might not look like what you expected it to, but God uses all of it, and so I think we have to not label things too early in our, both in the expectation phase and the initial implementation phase. We just have to be open-handed, which is really the posture of the book that I talk about is just being open-handed for whatever God wants to bring to pass. So good.

0:28:56 - Rusty George
Well, I love the book and I highly recommend it. This Dream is Not for You, by Wade Joye, and that's J-O-Y-E, j-o-y-e. Yep, yeah, Joye with an E. It's a great read. I want to ask you this, though, and then I want to get into some other questions that are a little bit unrelated, but you've been through what some would refer to as the loss of a dream or the death of a dream several times now, and a lot of us have been through that. How do you keep dreaming Because God still wants us to, for lack of a better term dream big and think about big expectations for the kingdom, advancement, and how do you not just become cynical and say whatever, and just sit back and let life pass you by?

0:29:45 - Wade Joye
Yeah, that's a great question. I think it all depends on your vantage point, because, yes, there are deaths to certain dreams that I talk about in the book and that I've had to walk through. But I've also lived a lot of incredible dreams and I think I mentioned this in the book that when I was wrestling with that whole thing about laying down leading worship and not writing songs anymore, I was still part of an amazing worship ministry and church that was sending songs to bless people around the world. I had gotten to lead worship in some amazing just through some amazing years of our church. And I remember that years before, when I was trying to make it as a Christian artist, long before I even knew to dream about Elevation Church, I had prayed God, let me be a part of writing a song one day that your church sings around the world. And there was nothing I could have done to engineer my path to make it look like Elevation Church or Elevation Worship. And I realized, as I was grieving one dream, I was actually living in the dream I'd once prayed for and I got to experience that and I got to be a part of it, and I think we have to learn.

Yes, there are times where we have to let go of some dreams, but that doesn't diminish the dreams that we've been able to walk in and that, yes, I got to walk in that dream of being a worship leader for some incredible experiences. And now God was saying okay, I gave you that, can you trust me in this next season of my life? And so I think, when I talked about narratives earlier, when I take back and I look at the overall narrative of my life, what I see more than dead dreams is I see God's faithfulness, I see answered prayers, I see God's goodness, that even in the painful seasons of crying in a hospital room, I see God's presence there. I see God's grace there, I see the miracles he's done in my children's lives and I think all of us there are people that are listening to this they're like, well, god didn't give me that miracle with my child and there's nothing I can say to take away that kind of pain. But I still encourage people to step back and look at your life and identify where God has been good to you, identify the grace that he's given you when you didn't think you had the strength to make it through the next day.

Begin to tell the story, to recount God's faithfulness and begin to expect his goodness in the present day, because God's goodness is in the present tense, it's not just in the past tense. And so I think we have to just get a better narrative for our life and really say, okay, as a Christian, I have banked my life and my eternity on the fact that God demonstrates his own love for us in this while we were yet sinners. Christ died for us. That right. There is an incredible life changing truth if we can just hold on to that in the middle of our disappointments.

And so I think, getting that narrative for my life across centered Jesus centered resurrection center narrative, and then looking at just the goodness of God in my life and not just focusing on this one season, because the chapter you are in is not the full story of your life and I think where we get stuck is when we think that this chapter is the end. This chapter is the whole story. That's good. Well, look at the chapters that came before and realize that there are chapters yet to be written, and I think that helps us dream again.

0:33:35 - Rusty George
Reminds me of an Elevation song. I will look up, for there is none above you. I will bow down to tell you that I need you, Jesus, Lord of all. I will look back and see that You're faithful. I look ahead, believing You are able. What you have created, there is an expression of your life, which is certainly evident in this book. So, on behalf of many, many churches that have been blessed by the worship ministry that you helped start, thank you. It continues on.

0:34:09 - Wade Joye
That's very... I just I'm grateful for the fact that I just, I'm grateful just to play a small part in it, that Pastor Stephen would invite me into it, and then I get to be surrounded by so many amazing people, so that season was definitely a gift in my life. So, yeah, thank you.

0:34:27 - Rusty George
Okay, now I want to do something that I'm going to referring to and this is not original with me referring to as the lightning round, all right and I want to ask you just a variety of off the wall questions and you can sum up in an answer, you know, in a sentence or two. First ones might be a little bit difficult to sum up, but the biggest difference between writing a song and writing a sermon go.

0:34:50 - Wade Joye
Oh, wow. Songs live on in people's hearts longer than sermons do. That's true, and so you have four minutes to communicate a truth about God and make a personal connection that you want people to be able to hang on to for a long time. A sermon feels weighty because you are attempting to explain at a deep level and, at the same time, a practical, helpful level, something that is creating and shaping someone's faith and their character and is helping get them through low points. So it's very. It's similar in some ways, but also exercises very different parts of your brain.

0:35:37 - Rusty George
I feel like Mm that's great Favorite Steven Curtis Chapman song. You can't say the great adventure.

0:35:46 - Wade Joye
I won't say the great adventure. I won't say I will be here. I sang that at a lot of weddings. Oh man, the first one that comes to mind just because it's our. I have a distinct memory singing this for a youth group in Greenville, south Carolina, was King of the Jungle. That's a deep gut, wow.

0:36:07 - Rusty George
Yeah, track track three on welcome to the real world, or whatever, Heaven is a real world.

0:36:13 - Wade Joye
That's what it is. I don't think that's actually my favorite, but that's what comes to mind right now.

0:36:18 - Rusty George
I'll join in. My favorite is boy. This is a really deep cut from more of this life. The last song more than words. I just think that one's brilliant. All right, you're a Diet Coke fan? Yes, diet Coke, and I know you've kicked the habit because you had to. But Diet Coke or Coke zero.

0:36:38 - Wade Joye
Well, I haven't kicked the habit. I still, I still, you still indulge. I have my healthier version, ziva, but if I'm out for dinner I'll get a Diet Coke. Diet Coke over Coke zero every time. Really, no question.

0:36:51 - Rusty George
Okay, yes, Favorite elevation worship song that you helped write oh wow.

0:36:59 - Wade Joye
There were three songs that were written as part of my kids being in the hospital that all hold a lot of personal connection. There's a song called Lord is my Rock early song and that was written about the twins. And then with Sydney there's two songs called, one called Last Word and one called the love of Jesus. Those all hold like a very personal side to me and then, if I'm going to take that aside, I would say so I feel like I'm cheating. I've given you four answers. It's fine. I was just grateful to be in the room for a song like Oh, Come to The Altar and just play a very small part in that song, because I've just seen that song do really special things in people's lives all over.

0:37:54 - Rusty George
My favorite part of that song is the bridge.

0:37:56 - Wade Joye
Yeah.

0:37:57 - Rusty George
Oh, what a savior, isn't he wonderful. That's just so cool. I love that part. Okay, last one for many of us who know only by reputation alone, and by watching countless hours of Instagram reels of Pastor Steven Furtick, it seems like he is becoming more and more like Dwayne Johnson in his physique. Is he on steroids? That's the big question.

0:38:24 - Wade Joye
He is not on steroids, I'm joking.

0:38:28 - Rusty George
Of course he's not.

0:38:30 - Wade Joye
I. For several years we had a group that would work out with him on a pretty regular basis. Let's just say I always had to have a different partner than him because the weights that I use are not quite up to his level.

0:38:46 - Rusty George
Oh, that's hilarious.

0:38:47 - Wade Joye
I'll say this he and this applies to songwriting, sermons, weightlifting. Whatever he sets his mind to, he's probably the most disciplined person I know and just focuses and gets in a routine, and I think you see the fruit of that in a lot of areas, whether it's songs or biceps.

0:39:08 - Rusty George
That's a good word to end on. Well, Wade. The book is called This Dream Is Not For you. It's coming out in September of 2023. So by the time this airs, it will be out telling everybody to go and purchase it right now. What's the best way we can find you and even find the book?

0:39:28 - Wade Joye
Yeah, I'm very active on Instagram at WadeJoye with the E and you can go to wadejoye.com for more information about the book or just search it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Target, any place like that, and you should be able to find it.

0:39:44 - Rusty George
Awesome. Well, thanks so much for your time today, buddy, and I really appreciate you being a part of this podcast. Thank you so much, Rusty. Well, next week I can't wait for you to hear this. Had so much fun talking with this guy. Legendary pastor and leader, Dave Stone joins us. He's just great. We're gonna laugh a lot, we're gonna learn a lot and we're gonna hear what he does with hate mail. You're gonna love that. So make sure you subscribe and share and leave a review and, as always, keep it simple. Hey guys, I'll see you next time. Take care.