by David Dodd

I want to start out with something that really moves me about you, and that is the amount of time you spend in prayer.  So let’s begin with the element and the power of prayer, especially during the time you collaborated with Michael W. Smith on the Stand record. 

But even before that, you have often spent quiet time in prayer really focusing on where you want God to direct you. 

Yeah, definitely.  One of the biggest things I think we tend to overlook as Christians, and I’ve been super-guilty of it too in my life, is the value and the emphasis that we put on our own personal time with God - prayer and intimacy with God. 

I don’t mean you have to lock yourself in a closet for a million weeks and just pray, I’m just saying to actually develop the time, to take the time out of your day, whether it’s 10 minutes, 20 minutes, or 30 minutes out of your day to develop that intimacy with God. 

The more intimate you are with somebody, the more you begin to know about that person, and the more time you spend with somebody you actually begin to act like that person.  When we spend more time with God, we begin to learn the Father’s heart and His secrets.  We begin to get closer to God and His Word.

I’ll read a Scripture that I’ve read a million times and I’ll actually understand what it means for the first time after I spend time with God. 

Amazing things can happen in your personal time with God.  Turn on a worship CD and just sit there and listen to what God has to say to you, or talk to the Lord and tell Him how awesome He is.  Just spend that personal time with God, because that’s something that can never be taken for granted.  Time invested in that relationship with God is always the best time invested. 

A lot of us say we’re too busy, we’re married, we have kids, we have all the responsibilities of the job and our time needs to go to friends and family and we’re always so busy with errands and everything that life throws us.  Truth is, we’re caught up in ourselves.   Is it just a matter of making that absolute commitment with your heart to be intimate with God? 

Yes.  For me it’s a lot easier to get in the presence of God when I’m super busy on the road actually as compared to being at home.

When we’re on the road, like on the Casting Crowns tour, we’re going every night playing show after show and it’s awesome.  We’ve got a bus and a place to sleep and we’re excited about that because we’ve never had a bus before.  When you’re on the road like that, you’re so busy that you don’t have a lot of time for anything else, so for me personally, I have to spend time with God. 

I don’t mean to sound super-spiritual or anything, but if I don’t spend time in prayer two days in a row on the road and I just go and do the shows, I feel so empty by the time I get on stage.  It’s a lot easier to be in prayer when I’m on the road because I don’t have a lot of time and I want to spend that time with God.

I think it’s scary for me when I get home, like for instance now, I have all these days off and I can just veg out, I can do whatever I want, I can sleep in because we have a break from the first leg of the tour and that’s the scary part, when you have time off.  I’m far from perfect and I’m still trying to work to be disciplined as much as I can, but it’s definitely worth it.  Ten minutes into my prayer meeting with God and it’s so worth it, I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to do this, you know?

The main thing is just making yourself do it but you know, we should want to do it.  I think for me, I have a tendency to not realize how big God is, how incredible His plans are for our life and how deep we can go with God, how far we can go now. 

You don’t have to wait until we get to heaven to get to really know God.  We can really know God now on the Earth - right here - we can spend time with God and have that relationship with Him as our Father and we’re His children.  It’s the coolest thing in the world and I kind of forget all about that and want to go to a movie and veg out and stuff like that.

We kind of envisioned the song as when you’re a younger kid and you want to play kickball on the field and there’s this one group of kids that you really want to play with. They’re like the really good kickball players, and you’re not that great, but you hope they pick you so you can be on their team.

There’s a lot of things we want to be counted in on life, a lot of things that we want to do, and I think sometimes the world won't allow us to do because they think we’re not good enough, they don’t think we’re pretty enough, they don’t think you have whatever…
But the thing is, when it comes to concerning God, He counts us in on everything that He has for us which is so much better than anything the world has to offer.

Basically the song is talking about being counted in on God’s love and kind of realizing it from almost a child’s perspective and I want to be a part of that, you know? Pick me!

  Do you think the reason you crave the presence of God in your life is you’ve seen and felt the results of that relationship? There are so many people who ate two or three times your age and they have never felt the impact of The Lord on a regular basis.

I think for me there has been countless moments where in the middle of the night, it hits me. In life in general, you can just get going so hard and life can just beat you up, so for me, my solitude and my fulfillment and where I find most love and where I find exactly where I need to be is when I’m in the presence of God.

If you look back to the times like when John was in the presence of God, and I think the reason we feel that is when you think about those times , they’re the number one times in your life. The thing is we limit that to things like conferences and the like, but the thing is at one o’clock in the morning when you feel depressed about a situation or something and you’re alone in your room, you can turn off the music and you can cry out to the Lord and God’s presence can come right there and comfort you, right there in your room.
Jesus said, ‘I have to leave so I can send the comforter,’ and I would encourage people to read that in the gospels. Jesus told us He had to leave so He could send a comforter and He’s talking about the Holy Spirit.

In the book of Acts when they felt the Holy Spirit for the first time, that’s the Spirit of God, and that’s what we can have, the presence of God, and that’s the one thing we ask as a band to come, not that people are entertained when they listen to the record and when they see us live, but that the presence of God comes, because that’s when people are changed and that’s where hearts are transformed.

It’s not like a great band playing but it’s by the fullness and the presence of God coming into a building or where they’re at and ministering and checking the hearts of the people. That’s what we want through our ministry; we just want to put our hearts into this through a season as long as God wants us to be doing this. It just kind of fell in our laps you know, we didn’t go out looking for this, God has put us here so we’re going to do this with the fullness of our hearts. I hope this record really blesses people and really ministers to people.

When you talk about the presence of God I think it goes back to what we initially discussed in the beginning and that is how do we get so caught up in ourselves and not talking or crying out to God? You seem to have crossed that line of getting out of ourselves and into His presence by praying and crying out to God.

You get to that place where you’re enjoying that communion with God and just living your life with God. Things are just so much better when you’re under the presence of God.