As a kid, I didn’t have an alarm clock in my bedroom, but I was usually aware of the time regardless of the hour of night.  I just picked up my guitar and began to strum, which prompted my mom to yell from downstairs, “Do you know it’s 1 a.m.?”   “No, but thanks mom?”

I learned the guitar in sixth grade. As I taught myself the chords, I enjoyed putting a melody and words to them. 

My music became my voice.  I was able to sing things I was too shy to speak.  I shared my ditties and people enjoyed them.

So, I got serious about it.  When I got my driver’s license, one of the very first places I visited was a music publisher.  I tried to sell them a song.  They didn’t want it. 

This, however, became my obsession – to publish a song, have a bigtime artist sing it, to hear it aired on the radio and to reap the royalties.

Music was my god back then.  It monopolized my time, my money, and my heart.  But the path to publishing was always blocked and it was destroying me.  

When I finally came to Jesus, music was dethroned, and Christ reigned in my life.

I wanted others to experience Jesus, so I centered my songwriting efforts on Him.  People listened.  Many came to faith and others were encouraged in their faith journey. 

However, music still competed with the Lordship of Jesus in my life.  My evolved desire was to make a name for myself in Christian music. 

I put demo tapes of my songs in the hands of several uninterested artists. A studio in Nashville reviewed and rejected my stuff and I have a ream of rejection letters from publishers.  Like the donkey that stood in the path of Balaam, the Lord seemed to stand in my way.

I believed I would be content only when I had made it in the music biz.  But God deliberately withheld that success from me, that I might learn to be content with Him. 

I took to heart his words in Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself in the Lord.”  He wanted me to find my joy and purpose and satisfaction in Him alone.

And over time, I learned. Jesus became all that mattered to me, and my music became a useful tool to serve His purposes – not mine.  I learned to be content using my songs with the youth group that I led.

But then a crazy thing happened.  One of my youth group kids went to college and became a worship leader.  He used some of the songs that I had written.  

One day a no-name Christian band came to his town and heard him sing one of my songs.  They wanted to use it.  He said, “Yes, Jim wouldn’t care.”

So, they did, they sang one of my songs for over two years to college students around the country, over 200,000 of them.

Eventually they were signed to a recording contract with the biggest outfit in Christian music   And, they wanted to include my song on their first album. 

It was recorded and released almost 30 years after my first attempt to sell a song. I remember the thrill of hearing it aired on our local radio station. 

It was then that I experienced the latter half of Psalm 37:4, The Psalmist wrote, “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.”  Once I made the Lord and His will my delight, He then graciously delivered the desire of my heart without any effort on my part.

I bet you are curious as to the title of the song.  I called it “Kumbayah!”  Not really!  The title is “Have Your Way,” which was a perfect song for God to promote for it was not until I was content with His will for me, that I enjoyed such blessing. 

A PRAYER: Having You, Lord, is so much richer than having a song on the radio.

This has been Jim Johnson and pickleheavenpress.com

May the grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.

Scripture references are from the New International Version.