When God wants our attention, He sometimes sends us subtle messages to get His
point across. For Aaron Shust, the Lord gave him the lyrics to one of his most
popular songs while sitting at a traffic light. By the time the light turned
green, the chorus was written. Aaron explains the writing process for
My Savior My God.
“I was thumbing through a book of old hymns and came across the title of one
that really stuck out to me, I Am Not Skilled to Understand”, he tells
Apostles That Rock. “I thought, what an interesting title for a hymn, and as I
read the words it became so clear to me that we can’t comprehend God’s Grace
even when we try. I loved the idea and held that in the back of my mind for
quite some time.
Two years later, I was at a traffic light at 11 at night and it was like God
smacked me upside the head with the lyrics to the chorus.”
Since the release of his debut record, Aaron has been playing across the country
on over 200 dates this year. Even the story of how his record came to be has
God’s fingerprints all over it.
“I was
leading worship at my church and over time I was looking
at the church body and
trying to imagine what they might be wanting to sing, the words that they would
want to share with God, this mysterious thing in approaching the children of God
and addressing God Himself in song. So I would get some ideas that would
come out of my quiet time as I would read the Word, the Psalms or Paul’s
letters, books that would inspire me.
A phrase would jump off a page and there seemed to be a
melody attached to it already. I would sing out and then it would come together
and I used some of the songs as an offertory.
Aaron just finished recording his second CD, Whispered and Shouted, which was a
very different experience then the first time he recorded his music.
"One of the guys on my worship team would come to me time and time again,
and complement me on the songs, he’d say he never heard the songs
before. When I told him I wrote them, he said he was thinking of
building a studio and we should record some of these songs.
I had seen his basement before, it was cobwebs and cinder blocks and a
whole bunch of cardboard boxes, so I’m picturing him hooking up a little
drum kit in the corner with some microphones and a little eight-track
on board, but to my surprise he actually poured some good money into it
and made a great studio. I was thinking, man, this is a really
nice place.
We brought in a producer and recorded the
CD; and I was the first person to record there. It happened just like that. We did
it in 23 days.
Originally I wanted to record these songs that were going around in my head just
for posterity sake, give a copy to my mom, maybe we’ll sell some in the church
bookstore, we’ll make 2,000 copies and maybe through the course of a year in the
bookstore and I’ll take them on the road when I go and do little things,
retreats, weekends, stuff like that, and sell a few there. Within a month, a
label in town picked it up and things snowballed from there.
I never felt like I had to really reach out, I never had to push the album, I
never begged for a manager. God was just opening doors and people came to me
through other friends.
There’s a verse in Proverbs that says: Don’t draw attention to yourself, let
others do thatfor you, for whatever reason God brought managers my
way and booking agents and just great people surround me. It’s all God.”
Listen to Aaron
and other Christian artists on Apostles That Rock Radio
