Christy Nockels

I’ve actually been counting down the days until we could do this podcast because I was blessed to get to read this book early that Christy Nockels just released! I couldn’t wait because I've watched her live this. It is so compelling and such a radically different way to live. It has convicted me and constantly reminded me that I have to get back to my center. I have to get back to how God built me to relate to him. It feels like 1,000 problems get solved all at once when I do that, to borrow my favorite A.W. Tozer quote. Christy, will you just start with what led you to write this book. Everybody knows you as a musician, but this is a passion project for you. So how did you get to that point?

This book took me 15 years to write. I think it was because God wanted me to keep living it for a really long time. 15 years ago, God used motherhood, he won’t use that for all of us but it was one of the ways he used in my life, for me to hit a wall and realize I couldn’t do it all. At the time, we were touring and going a million miles an hour. I thought when I had kids I could strap them on my back and keep going. You can do that for awhile when they’re really little, but there was this moment I call my “farm table epiphany.”  Right before that, I had just cleaned a toilet in my house and literally felt the spirit of God meet me in the bathroom. I love that because it’s proof he can meet us anywhere. For me it was important that it wasn’t on the platform. It was important that it was in the secret during the most menial task ever. I did that thing where you open your Bible and let it fall open, and he brought me to Psalm 37. In the book, I talk about how that’s the scripture that’s my life passage. It’s how I was saved when I was 7. I believe he brought me back to my gospel story and asked me some hard questions as I was reading his word that morning. The biggest ask was, “do you really trust me?” Spoiler alert: rest comes from trust and surrender. That was the call that day. I call it the calling of the beloved to come home to the heart of God and remember how to truly live as his child. I was busy living for him but I had forgotten or didn’t know how to live from him. It was a call to learn how to live from him. It’s not a way around rest - we need a Sabbath - but this is a life, soul rest. It’s a propelling rest that has us contending for Kingdom things like never before. This isn’t a sit at home rest. This is working from rest and doing that from a place of surrender and trust. That’s how it all started.

I mean as one of your friends that has traveled with you and worked together and had fun together - we’ve clocked a lot of time. I can say confidently that you do this better than anyone I know. When I sat down to read it for the first time, I really felt like I wanted to sit at your feet about this. Because I see you behind the scenes and this is how you live. You tell stories about difficulty in your life with such peace and grace because there is a soul rest that you experience even in the midst of difficulty, which y’all are living in right now! Your mom was diagnosed with cancer this year, and the way you and your family has handled this - there’s a light and a hope in your eyes. I think everyone needs this right now. This book and this message of the waves bumping up against our lives and us sitting still and being okay in the midst of it is what everybody wants. However, it is not always clear. We’ll try to strong arm that peace into our lives. That’s not what you’re talking about. You’re talking about a way of living that is day in and day out. Talk about practically what that looks like in your life. What does that rest and trust look like on a daily basis?

I think pretty early on I discovered that there is a hustle that will hold us back. I realized it was holding me back from the life I was longing for. We all have this insatiable longing in us, Romans says we eagerly groan with all creation to belong. Nothing will fulfill that longing except life with God. I think early on in this journey of rest, the Lord showed me this picture of living from the bullseye. When he met me in Psalm 37 that day, he told me, “if you just hit the bullseye, I’ll take care of all the outer rings of your life. I’ll show you my glory, just come home and hit the bullseye. I’m your portion in this life.” He just showed me that I was out here running in the outer rings of my life and I was stuck. I was trying to have my life unfold the way I wanted it to, but I was a Jesus girl! I was raised in church and I was a preacher’s kid. I was living for God. It was all good things. But the Lord showed me that my hustling was actually holding me back from living from that bullseye. Through the years of me living this for 15 years, it taught me a transformational relationship with Jesus rather than a transactional relationship with Jesus. I feel like that hustling was keeping me transactional. Even my quiet time was something to check off, rather than really coming to him before my feet hit the floor in the morning. I have to get my head on straight before my feet hit the floor. I have to remember that what I do each day comes from whose I am. It comes from who God made me to be and the fact that I belong to him. Ephesians 2:10 says he’s prepared good things in advance for us to walk in. I figure the way we understand what he’s prepared for us in advance to walk in is by getting near him! We have to ask him what those things are. Even in this season, as you mentioned, with my mom up against this health challenge that we’ve never known in our family. Even a season like this can be a place where God pours in like never before. I talk about the capacity of the beloved in the book, but there’s a couple of different ways to look at capacity. We always think of it as what we can crank out, what we can supply, what we can produce. But what I really believe the capacity of the beloved is all about is what we can receive and hold and contain from his heart. That is what we pour out on others. Rather than us going from our own strength, even in a season like this where things aren’t going as planned, we can ask him what this season frees us to receive from him. What does he have for us in this season? That has been the most transformational thing. My whole life, I was raised to have that quiet time, which we do need to have. But I looked at it as a check it off the box thing. What I’ve learned is even if you just have 5 minutes in this season, use that 5 minutes to start a conversation with God. Then let that conversation, out of your mouth, while you’re in the car, doing errands, in the carpool line, in the cubicle at work, continue the conversation all day long. We become the quiet time. It’s not just a thing we do in the mornings or a duty we have to uphold. We become what we behold. We become what we encounter.

Some of the ways that this played out in your life cost you and Nathan. There were big decisions. This wasn’t just as simple as praying through the day. There were decisions you made that were probably really scary to make at the time. Talk a little bit about that.

Yeah one of the first big things was God literally asked me to lay down my career for awhile. It took me a minute to understand that that’s what he was saying. What I love is that he first led me in that by shifting my desires. Any time you feel your desires shifting, pay attention to that. I really do believe he leads us first by that desire in us. I did have that longing for normalcy in my life. I did want to come home and a sustainable pace for my family. I believe he did that in me. That feeling was foreign! I shudder to think who I would be and who my children would be had I not listened to the Lord. All those decisions through the years we’ve made, and there wasn’t just one of them, there have been many where we’ve had to fight for our family and fight for the things we believed in. I’ve lived long enough to be able to encourage people that if God is asking you to do something radical like that, to lay something down, it might not be your career, but whatever it is, I’ve watched him over and over give it back. In ways I couldn’t even imagine. Psalm 37:4 says, “delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” What I love is when he would give things back or would cause dreams to unfold, it didn’t compare to what I’d experienced with him in that season. One of the other things he spoke to me that day reading Psalm 37 was just enjoy him. I don’t think at that point in my life I understood what that would look like - to just enjoy God. He says in his presence there is fullness of joy. I believe through the years, I look back on that, and he was fighting for me in a place of my heart that I didn’t know I needed fighting for. I cherish that he fought for that place in my heart to treasure him that way. It’s been a precious process. I’m able to encourage people because i’ve been out in front of people - I don’t want to say I’m old - but I’ve lived enough life to see that he is faithful in this. When he asks you to do something hard, he’ll come through. He’ll come through for you in a way that you never even thought he would. He dreams bigger.

Back to that bullseye, that’s what I hear you saying. From that bullseye, you’ve seen those concentric circles work better. This is the way God built us to live. This is how it plays out and it actually works. It’s not that those circles are easy - you’re fighting difficulty in your family right now - but you know how to fight it. As a family, y’all are not overwhelmed by it because there is something in the middle. Specifically, looking at the time that this book is being released in the middle of the pandemic when everyone is scared and tensions are high, what would you say your hope is? This book is not releasing on accident in the middle of all this.

I think if anything the pandemic revealed, it was the pace. If we all sat down and could share, we don’t want to go back to the way it was. We’re all asking how we rebuild? As a musician, we’re asking what the future is going to look like. We’re really having to trust and surrender. Most of us are not able to meet as the Church - we’re meeting at my dad’s local church which is 5 minutes from our house. It’s about 60 of us and for a season, especially with where my mom is at, we decided we were going to be with them. I know a lot of people aren’t able to do that. But one of the chapters in the book is called The Power of Small. I think for all of us, we can all say things aren’t going how we thought they would. So we get to ask God, “okay, what do you want for us to receive in this season?” If we’re not able to do that, what am I able to do today? Even if it does look like finding that country church that’s meeting down the road. Go where you can be with people even if that’s small. We have an Americanized, gigantic sized views of what Jesus commanded us to do. I won’t go into it, but when I went to Israel, that was my biggest takeaway: how tiny it was. It was like I would read the word of God differently because of that. How things have been stripped away is gloriously familiar to him. I think that bullseye, what I talk about in the book, is that next outer ring of the bullseye isn’t our capacity - it’s the community of the beloved. God has called us to live out from him, into the community of the beloved, and then we take them into our capacity. That can look like you meeting one-on-one with someone today, encouraging people around you, inviting them into your space, and being okay that it’s different and small.

I think you’re exactly right. That’s my hope too is that there’s a different way we do life on the other side of this. I don’t think anybody wants it to go back. This is the thing that’s easy to brush aside - that deep relationship with God and letting that be what drives our lives. I want to hear what your walk with Jesus looks like. You mentioned praying all day - which I do that too! So I relate to that a lot. What does it look like to meet with Jesus?

I have just recently, only recently, taken over a little space that used to be Nathan’s. It used to be his studio! But usually I’ve just had to find a corner somewhere. But I’ve realized I need to talk out loud - that helps me process things and pray. For a long time, its just looked like my thinking chair in the corner of our bedroom. I like to think of it as getting my head on straight. I can not start the day if I don’t get my head on straight. I have to be in the word of God and literally read it and understand it. I have an ESV study Bible and I often will go down and look at the notes to figure things out. I invite the Holy Spirit in those moments to help me understand. I end up in the Psalms all the time - I think David was a 4 on the enneagram with a 5 wing like me. I just relate to David a lot as a worship leader. It’s the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. I think it’s so amazing of God that he would give us 150 songs and poems that is a way to communicate with him. I talk to my brother Eric a lot who is kind of a mentor in my life and he taught me to look at that time with God as needing to go remember - instead of a checklist. I have to remember every single day. I like to usually do something from the Old Testament, something from the New Testament, the Psalms, and just spend time believing in the supernatural power of what the words are saying and how it affects my life. You know how at kamp every summer we would rededicate your life to Christ like every summer - well that’s what I’m doing every morning! I’m rededicating my life to Christ. I love to think of that time that we reconsecrate our hearts to him everyday. I used to think that holiness was the result of doing Godly things, but holiness is an identity. He didn’t say do holy, he said be holy. I love that time reading his word because it’s a time for me to say, “God, I set myself apart for you.” Which is what holiness is. It’s a choice and it’s who we are and who he made us to be. Through this I’m reconsecrating my heart to Jesus, getting my head on straight, remembering who God made me to be, and remembering who God says he is. If I go through a day without it, it doesn’t go well.

I’ll say this: you have storehouses though friend. You’ve walked with him for a long time. I know this message for you is at its core, come back to Jesus. The Life You Long For is the name of the book, but the core is coming back to Jesus. It’s what I felt when I read it. It’s what I feel when I spend time with you. That coming back to Jesus is a good way to live, not just that we should live that way. This book’s message is why would you ever not want to live that way? It’s so sweet and such a fragrant aroma that I’m drawn to. My daughter is 18 and is really good friends with your daughter, and Ellie and she have formed this really sweet friendship. Kate is a mini-me and Ellie is a mini-you and they just click. Kate came and stayed with your family and she called me laughing and she said, “mom, this house is totally different than our house. There’s candles lit, music playing, everyone spends time alone reading.” My family is so loud and obnoxious. But she said it was a place of rest, even though she was with you all and with friends, she felt like her soul rested. That’s what you’re going to feel reading this book. It’s going to feel like coming into home and into Christy’s life. You’ll feel like there’s candles lit and music playing. That’s how it reads. I’m so grateful you did the hard work of building this. As we go, this is what I want to close with this: will you just speak to the woman that is desperate? She picks up the book and doesn’t even know what it is, but they see The Life You Long For and they know that’s for them because they’re exhausted. They’re spinning and scared and they want to put their feet down but they don’t know how. Will you just speak to them?

I love that God is a pursuer of our hearts. He is pursuing you and sometimes in ways you might not recognize. My prayer for you is that your eyes would be opened especially in this season we’re in, to all the ways he’s coming after your heart. More than anything that God is asking you to do for him or to build for him or lay down for him, the thing he is after is you and your heart. You are being invited to live in the way he provided for his beloved to live. Even in this pandemic is a global invitation to the Church for us to come home to the center of God’s heart. It’s an opportunity to trust him in a way that you never have before. In that trust and surrender, there is life and rest and the life you long for. I love that this is a propelling rest, so what you’ll find in that surrender, is he’s going to show up in places you never even imagined.