When the Bible talks about hope, it's, you know, it's after, you know, it's through perseverance, you know, that hope comes.

It's often through just the everyday things of pushing through, even sometimes the hardest

of circumstances, like it's, you know, just when you think the door's not going to open, you know you press through and it opens and it opens and it opens up something you never

thought was imaginable and so I think it really is that what we experience and what we're going through

is for the sharing. Welcome to the Experience Jesus Calling podcast. Today we speak with Dove Award winning singer-songwriter

Christy Nockels.

Christie shares how God led her through different seasons of her life as a musician and

how she also spent a year walking through the Advent season to create

her brand new Christmas record, The Thrill of Hope.

My name is Christy Nockels and I'm a wife of Nathan Nockles.

I'm a mother of three amazing children, singer, songwriter, storyteller.

I was raised in Oklahoma and so we always joke that there wasn't much to do. I was the youngest of three children so you either get in trouble which a lot of my friends did or you become a musician and that was me I spent many

hours out in our garage actually I remember that was the place that had great acoustics

to me and we always had cats and dogs and

cats and dogs that were having kittens and puppies and so I was usually found outside

you know singing playing you you know, an accompaniment track on, you know, some

big boom box kind of thing.

While I'm out there playing with kittens, I'm practicing a song that I'm going to sing at church.

My dad was a pastor my whole life and still is, I bet I sang at church maybe once every couple of months.

And starting from the age of seven and he would you know kind

of employ me to go find a song that speaks to your heart first and he's like I want you to find a song that speaks to you

and something that you love and then I want you to practice it and then I want you to

...