by David Dodd

At 15, Jonny Lang opened for The Rolling Stones and Aerosmith.  His hit single, Lie to Me was screaming up the Billboard charts.  He had an unprecedented talent on the guitar, so much so that blues legends BB King and Buddy Guy often invited him on stage to jam.   He continued a successful secular   career  for  a  few

more years until one particular day when his girlfriend’s father died, and God stepped in.

“Her father had become really close to me, he was like a second dad and he was suffering pretty badly with cancer,” Jonny told Apostles That Rock.  “He was in hospice care at their house and he died.  I was probably fifteen minutes away from their house at the time when I found out. 

At this time in my life I really wasn’t seeking for God and had no real interest in getting to know Him at all, but this night, shortly after I had found this out, I was in the hallway of a friend’s apartment complex and I felt this wind just hit me in my chest.  I had no idea what it was.  It seemed to just fill my whole body and I had peace like I never had before in my life. 

I wasn’t thinking that this was the Lord or I wasn’t thinking of Jesus at the time, I knew it was supernatural and I knew something was happening to me.  Later on that night, my girlfriend at the time - who now is my wife - and I were sitting in her backyard talking about her dad, just kind of remembering some things, and out of that same place where I had felt this earlier in the day, it just came up out of my throat, right in the middle of our conversation and out of my mouth almost like I was throwing it up, the name Jesus just came out of my mouth.  When His name came out of my mouth, I started shaking … pretty violently.  I knew that it was the Lord, and I knew at that moment I was being delivered from every addiction I had to drugs and alcohol, which was my lifestyle at the time. 

I couldn’t go a day without being high on something and then the Lord stepped in and did this to me, then I had no desire for drugs and alcohol anymore.  He changed me in a moment.”

His newest record, Turn Around, is a great example of what God can do to our lives.  One particular song, Only a Man, the song you’re listening to right now, happens to be Jonny’s favorite.

“It’s a bit of an autobiographical song on how God touched my life and it’s a special song to me because my wife sings with me on it.  She’s sorta the voice of God in the song.

     It’s one of those songs where God was really moving when I wrote it because I usually can’t finish songs on my own, I usually need someone to co-write with and I struggle with lyrics most of the time but this was one of those songs that came to me in fifteen, twenty minutes and just poured out.”