Our God is a God of redirection.  The Bible says in Proverbs 16:3, “Commit your works to the Lord and your plans will be established.”  Many of us have planned out our lives, striving to be one thing, only to learn later that God wanted us somewhere else.  When we make that commitment to the Lord, we see how God redirects the paths of our lives, leading us to where He always intended for us to be.  Jonny Diaz learned this lesson from the Lord and learned that sometimes, that redirection isn’t the easiest thing to accept, but once you are in the Lord’s will for your life, everything becomes more clear and more fulfilling.

I recently caught up with Jonny and we spoke about how God had redirected his life and how God was using his music to speak to people all over the world.  His song, “More Beautiful You” shot up the charts and people began to listen to this message that the Lord was laying on his heart.

His Life

Q – Can you tell me your testimony?

“I came from a Christian family so I honestly have believed in Christ as my Savoir for as long as I can remember.  My testimony has kind of been that journey of understanding that more and knowing what that means and learning how to live because of that more and more each year and each day, really.  A big turning point for me was in college.  I went to Florida State on a baseball scholarship and really had plans to play baseball and hopefully pursue that professionally.  That’s when God called me into music and called me to lay down my desires and lay down baseball.  It was at that point in my life that I really had to decide who I was going to serve.  Was I going to go according to what I wanted or was I going to give me life to God in His service?

Q – How hard of a decision was that for you to make, laying down baseball and pursuing music?

“It was very tough.  I really wish that I could say that I obeyed God immediately when God laid that on my heart but I didn’t.  I wrestled with God for about six months and kind of hit a low point because God was telling me something I didn’t want to hear.  I was doing my best to ignore the fact that He even existed.  Ultimately, I just realized through reaching that low point that the only place where I was going to find contentment and the only place where I was really going to find the joy that I was looking for was in God’s plan for my life, instead of my own.”

Q – As you look back now, how do you see that obedience to God has changed your life?

“Right now, He’s got me playing music.  It looks like He’s really using the music I’m creating, which is awesome.  I can tell you that I don’t want to do this a day longer than I’m supposed to.  Just making that decision, just proclaiming it with my mouth and my actions that I’m going to follow in God’s footsteps is a big thing for me.  One thing I think is funny is that all my life I’ve dreamed of being a baseball player and hopefully playing on a major league field someday in a major league stadium.  Last August, right about a year ago, I was able to play after a Braves game, opening up for Steven Curtis Chapman at Turner Field.  My brother plays baseball on the team and I played music afterwards and I thought that was kind of funny, like God has a sense of humor.  It’s like, because I obeyed, I actually did get to play in a Major League stadium; it just wasn’t exactly how I thought it would be!”

His music

Jonny’s music has touched the lives of millions of people throughout the world.  One of his songs was even featured on an Atlanta Braves program and through it all, God has opened doors for Jonny to minister to people all over the world.

Q – What inspires you when you are writing music?

“Anything.  To me, writing songs is so tough that anything that comes along that inspires a song, I try and latch on to it, whether it’s something I’m going through, whether it’s my wife, or students that I spend time with.  A song can come from anywhere.”

Q – What inspired “More Beautiful You”?

“That one, I wrote after spending time with a bunch of students in Tennessee.  I got to spend a week with a bunch of high school students and we were just kind of observing them, watching these girls try so hard to fit into a mold that they were never really created to fit into.  If you watch that long enough, it’s something that will really start to break your heart.  I wrote “More Beautiful You” just really to speak to groups like that, to youth groups and to camps and to things like that.  I never really had any desire to put it on the radio so the fact that it actually became a number one song on the radio kind of blows my mind.  God had bigger plans than I did, by far.”

Q – How have you noticed changes in your life since the song became so popular?

“In the past, playing concerts has very much been an introduction of my music to the group that was there.  Even if I was the only one playing or if I was an opener, I was really introducing my music for the first time, but lately, I’ve been able to go places and its’ fun to hear them singing along and know the songs, at least “More Beautiful You”.  Hopefully, they’ll get to know more as I keep playing and keep releasing radio songs.  It’s kind of been fun.  It’s opened doors outside of the southeast.  Over the last few years, I’ve really toured a lot in the southeast but thanks to “More Beautiful You” and its’ success, I’ve been able to head out west and I’m going up to Canada.”

Q – What’s one aspect of a musician’s life that most people don’t understand?

“I think that one thing people don’t understand is that we typically do work about a forty hour week.  It’s just very different hours.  We may get to the venue between two and three o’clock and have to start setting up gear and setting up merchandise, sound-checking, then we have a break for dinner, then we play the concert, then have a meet and greet where we sign autographs and sell things afterwards, and then tear down.  By the time we tear down, its’ typically eleven o’clock before we get out of there.  So, we really put in an eight hour day.  It’s just not a typical eight-hour day at all.”

Q – Who has influenced you musically?

“I admire people who do what I’m trying to do, guitar players and singer-songwriters.  On the secular side, I really like John Mayer, Jack Johnson, and guys who are able to do some pretty cool things with a guitar.  On the Christian side, I really like Brandon Heath, Bebo Norman, Caedmon’s Call, and some of the more “storyteller” type of artists.”

Q – Can you give me an overview of the album?

“Musically, it’s acoustic led.  You can tell that I play guitar and that I wrote the songs while playing the acoustic guitar, but it’s pretty eclectic.  I tend to get bored while writing songs so there are songs that sound like acoustic rock, there are songs that sound more like pop-country, and there are songs that, believe it or not, almost have a reggae-island feel to them.  Lyrically, I realize that my audiences are people that are already in the church.  Rather than using my lyrics to introduce people to grace or introduce people to Jesus Christ, I try to use my lyrics to deal with different aspects of the Christian faith.  “More Beautiful You” deals with the aspect of self-image and how you view yourself.  “Stand For You” deals with the idea that we are going to face opposition but we need to stand up to it.  So really, it’s intended to inspire, challenge, and encourage the body of Christ.”

Q – What has God taught you in this journey as a Christian musician?

“The value of relationships has become so apparent, which is ironic because, when I go to a city and I have an hour to play on stage before I head off to the next city, I really don’t get to develop many relationships with the audience; not to a deep level at least.  I feel like God has really challenged me to hopefully encourage those relationships within the body so that maybe six months or a year later, when I come back, I can see that some amazing things have been happening through those relationships. Scriptures tell us that God is love, so simply by loving and spending time with other people, I think that’s our best way to really introduce people to Him.”

Q – What is something about this album that you want our readers to know?

“One interesting thing is that it was actually recorded as my fourth independent record.  It wasn’t until the record was completely done and mastered that it gained the attention of INO Records and they released it nationally.  I think it’s really neat that the record is actually exactly what I wanted it to be because I was completely in charge of the process, so there were no people looking over my shoulder saying that it needed to be this, that it needed to sound this way, you need to have three singles on it or anything like that.  It really was just the record that God laid on my heart to make and that’s what we made.  I’m so proud of how it came out and I hope the listeners appreciate that.”

His Advice

Though Jonny is still a young man, he has seen many things in his life.  He has witnessed God working through his music.  He has watched as God altered the plans he had made for his life.  He has ministered to numerous people and has felt the hand of God upon him as he travels for the sake of glorifying his Maker.

Q – How refreshing was it spiritually when you stepped into God’s will for your life?

“That’s just it…the beauty of surrender.  Realizing that I don’t have to be in control and I shouldn’t be in control.  It was so much of a rejuvenating thing, just being able to pass over those decisions to God because I knew He had what’s best for me in mind.”

Q – What is your advice to Christian men in how to live our lives better on a daily basis for God?

“I believe that everything we do, we should strive to be Christ-like and so, as men, we can really get to know the character of Jesus by reading Scripture and by studying Scripture.  If we take all of our pointers and allow Him to be our guru and just kind of model ourselves after Him as best as possible, we are going to see amazing things happen to our lives.”

Q – What is your favorite passage of Scripture?

“It kind of changes, but I’d probably say Micah 6:8 because it’s such a great call for us.  It just gives us such a specific challenge as believers.”

Speaking to Jonny, you caught the sense of a man who was amazed at what God has done in his life and what God is going to do in the future.  I asked him to tell me one thing that most people didn’t know about him and he asked his wife.  He said to me, “She says that I can balance the guitar on my chin.  Perhaps the most impressive thing I can do on a guitar is balance it on my chin.” We shared that laugh but just in that moment, I could see that Jonny saw everything that has happened in his career and his life being a result of what God is doing.  When we understand that it is what God can do and the plans that He has for our lives, we no longer have to resist when God tries to redirect us.  We can see that the redirection will create in us a more beautiful person, one more reflective of Jesus Christ.

*Special thanks to Stacie Vining for her help in lining up this interview with Jonny Diaz.  Without her help, this interview would not have been possible.