Welcome to the Jesus Calling Podcast. Today's guests both have a legacy of

inspiring and moving people through entertainment, one through music and both

through film, musician Bart Millard and actor Jim Kavizel.

First up, we have Bart Millard, who is a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter and the lead vocalist for the band Mercy Me.

His mega hit, I can only imagine, has inspired millions of listeners with its joyful

anticipation of heaven. Bart has now written a book about his life which has also

become a major motion picture that released this month in theaters.

I'm Bart Miller, I'm a lead singer of the band Mercy Me for the last 24 years.

Married my wife Shannon for 20 years and have five amazing kids and somehow I've worked

my way into having a movie come out about my life and a book and all kinds of stuff.

So here I am.

The song I can only imagine I wrote back in 1999

and it was written a few years after my father passed away with cancer. I grew up in an abusive home. My parents

divorced and I was three. I grew up with my dad. It was an abusive man. And up until about my

freshman year at high school when he was diagnosed with cancer and I kind of got

this front row seat to see the gospel transform him from this monster to this, you know, one of my favorite

people I've ever known and you know and my best friend and the guy want to be like when I grow up and

and just to be able to see that transformation firsthand

I always see it kind of set me on a war path for the gospel and like kind of change

a trajectory of my life to where I'm still doing ministry because of I've always said if the gospel

would change him it could change anybody.

If someone had asked me, you know, who's the one person that God cannot reach, I would have said it was my dad, a hundred times out of a hundred, and just never, you know, had no idea of the transformation that was literally taking place right in front of me over the

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