 No matter what you've done, nothing can separate you from the love of God. Ryan Stevenson's double award-winning breakout hit, The Eye of the Storm, was an overnight success, but his path to success was decades in the making. Ryan always knew he was called to be a musician, but career changes, failed label contracts, insecurities, and his high stress days working as a paramedic challenged his dream. Ryan describes the many ways his faith was tested and how each trial helped him to become more reliant on Christ. This is his story. This is today's Nashville. This is faith. Ryan, I absolutely love all of your songs. Thank you for inviting me into your home here in Nashville. You're welcome. Honored to have you. You know, you have some mega hits out there. Eye of the Storm, No Matter What. You know, God has taken you on an amazing journey. Let's start from the very beginning. Oh my goodness. Well, thank you for saying that. My journey has been unbelievable and unconventional. I'm from South Central Oregon, born and raised in a small little farming community of about 250 people. It's called Bonanza, Oregon. I grew up with farmers, grew up in a little small country church, grew up in a great home, and when I was probably seven or eight years old, my mother put me in a kid's choir at our church. And I didn't want to sing and I was so mad at her for making me do that. But I feel like that just her doing that kind of instilled this love and this small birth of passion to sing and developing this love for music. There was always music going on in our house. My mother was always singing. She wasn't a very good piano player, but she tried. When I got into high school, my youth pastor gave me for a high school graduation present, gave me an acoustic guitar. And it didn't make any sense to me because I'm a drummer. Like, I started playing drums in the third grade and so I just, I always wanted to just be a drummer. And so when my youth pastor bought me an acoustic guitar and he showed up at my house. It's like, I felt like the Lord was just telling me to give this to you and I want to be obedient to that. So here you go. Did you even know how to play? I didn't. I didn't. And I didn't sing. I didn't write songs. I didn't play guitar. I was just playing. And if one person in the world knew that I had dreams to be a drummer in a rock band, it would have been my youth leader. But he buys me an acoustic guitar and goes on his way. Now did you want to be a rock? Yeah. Oh, that's all I ever wanted to do is I just wanted to be a drummer in like a Christian Christian band. And so that was my true pursuit was just really getting good at the drums. And so when he dumps this guitar in my lap, it just, it didn't make any sense at all. But when I went to college, so after I graduated, I go to college, my freshman term, all the guys who lived in my hallway in our dorm, they all playing guitar. And my next door neighbor was walking down the hallway one day and he peeks in my room and he sees my guitar sitting there. He's like, Hey, is that your guitar? I was like, Yeah, he's like, you play? I said, No, I don't. He's like, Oh, cool. And he leaves. And then he comes right back with his guitar. He just started showing me where to put my fingers and how to play chords. And it just clicked like it just made sense. And I could just do it. And that right there was really, I think the starting point of just this where I've been for the last 20 some odd years. It was really that youth pastor giving me that guitar. My neighbor teaching me to play. And that opened up just such an amazing, unforeseen chapter for me. What were you going to school for? I originally went to school for pre-med. I wanted to be an emergency room physician. And I straight off course got put on academic probation right when I got to school, almost got kicked out. But when I got my act together, I was so far behind in my credits and in my grades that I ended up getting my bachelor's degree in education. And I actually taught school for two years right out of college. Eventually went back to school, became a paramedic and really pursued a lot of the medical world after that. Now from Oregon, how did you get to Nashville? We moved from Oregon to Boise, Idaho. My wife and I met in college. She's from Boise. We were living in Oregon on the day before our one year anniversary. We moved over to Idaho to be a little closer to her family. I went back to school, got my paramedic license in the state of Idaho and I worked as a paramedic for eight years. And all the while I was working as a paramedic, I was playing acoustic open mic nights in coffee shops around town just as a hobby. And that just kind of, I just kept growing and getting better and working on writing songs. And I feel like those years of having a job that allowed me the time to pursue my love for music and still work a full time job, it was like this perfect scenario, an amazing fit. And so I ended up getting signed to a record deal through a crazy series of events which ultimately years later led us out here to Tennessee. So as you're working on your music, and where was your faith at this time? I mean, my faith, I've always just had a deep rooted sense that God is always ever present with me. I gave my heart to Jesus when I was seven. I never doubted that. I knew the love of Jesus. I felt like I just had this sensitive spot spiritually for God and the things of the Lord and just this desire to walk with him. So taking music and stories and testimonies and the Bible or my journals, my prayers, everything that you would use to create it. I just created in a way that my faith and my love for God and my perspective on life and the way I grew up, the things I'd seen as a paramedic being with people in their loss and suffering and tragedy. I just found a way because of I feel like my sensitive spirit and my tender heart, I think. I'm a lot like my mom that way. It was easy to write songs about the human condition and talk about our faith in music. It just seemed natural. You know, we have a lot in common. Because I used to be an ER nurse. Right. And I've seen a lot of tragedy. And I'm sure as an EMT paramedic, you have seen a lot too. Yes, ma'am. How have you dealt with that? I mean, you know, painfully and incrementally, I guess, if I could just sum it up. I think there's just things that you see. Like that job woke me up so fast. Immediately. It was such a life-changing chapter for me. I got to see firsthand just how precious life is, how fragile we are. There are no guarantees. And truly how I got to see so many people in the process of their suffering still have peace in God. And there's so many things that I could say about my time there. I feel like after all these years since I haven't been on the ambulance. You know, that season for me changed my life so drastically that still all these years later, I feel like it's such a huge part of who I am. And it's easy for me to see people in their current situation. It taught me not to judge people in a real big way. Well, you know, there was a storm at one point as you were working as a paramedic. Lightning struck and it changed your life. And we're going to talk about it when we come back. Ryan, a bolt of lightning changed your life. Yes, ma'am. Literally. What happened? Like I said, I was working as a paramedic. I was on shift. For 24 hours, we worked 24-hour shifts. We get a call at early in the afternoon. I remember we were driving this. It was a beautiful, beautiful fall day. It was an October gorgeous day. But all of a sudden this crazy storm, like the skies just went black. These thunder clouds just come in and all this lightning was going on. Big storm, torrential downpour. And it only lasted for a couple minutes. And then it was just clear, super clear again. And right about then, I don't know, a couple minutes later, our tones went out and we got dispatched to a 39-year-old female who was code blue, not breathing, not responsive, no pulse, no heartbeat from a lightning strike. Cardiac arrest, lightning strike. I mean, when we heard it come over the radio, I was like, Hannah, did I hear that right? I asked my partner, I was like, have you ever seen a lightning strike? He's like, no. This is the first. So we go buzzing up in there and it was way up in the foothills, a couple miles outside of town. So it was kind of a trek to get up there. This is Idaho, right? In Idaho, yeah, in Boise. And so we arrive on scene. Sure enough, here's a 39-year-old female laying on the side of a hill in the rain, you know. She was out hiking with her mom and her two little boys. They were looking at some property to potentially maybe build a house on. Storm comes out of nowhere. They tried to make it back to the car just to get out of the rain and bolt of lightning just gets her right in the top of the head. And she goes down. I mean, they were all like knocked off of their feet. And I was the paramedic that responded to that call. We get there. Crazy scene. I remember seeing her boys. Everybody's really shaken up. We move her to the back of our ambulance. And I pretty much knew she wasn't going to make it. And we were 10 minutes away. And that's a long time to be away and not have cardiopulmonary resuscitation, breathing, airway, all that stuff, which we get her in the back of the ambulance. I put IVs in her. I intubate her. I put a tube into her lungs. Start breathing for her. We start doing really good CPR, just driving to the hospital. Honestly, my thought was, well, we can't just leave her here on the side of the hill in front of her kids. Let's just transport her. Long story short, I ended up reviving her in the back of the ambulance on the way to the hospital. She makes a full recovery that she recovers. She's in rehab. She's on a ventilator for a while. She's in a rehab center for a while. She eventually comes out with some neurologic deficits. It's hard for her to walk now. But mentally, she's right there. She's fine. And so we actually met. Her and I met up at a banquet that the county, our ambulance service, put on about the most noteworthy calls and local heroes that intervened in crazy situations. Well, we were one of those. And I met her. She finds out that I'm a local... Like what I do on the side, I'm just this local musician guy who's playing coffee shops around town. The profound thing here that I love talking about is she and I are opposite in so many ways. And we don't share the same faith. Politically, we're probably on opposite sides of the planet. But here's this lady that just sees me for who I am. And she says, I want to help you. Like, what's your dream? I told her it was playing music. I'd love to help people with my music some day somehow. I don't know what that looks like. She's like, well, how do you do that? I said, well, I'd love to start by going into a recording studio. I've been writing songs for 12 years. And I have a big batch of songs. And I think I have maybe five that I think are worth recording. She sends me off. She has some money sitting around. She's like, if you ever need me, I want to be there for you. She gives me a check. This check arrives at her house. It was a retroactive disability check. She'd never gotten anything like that in her life. But the insurance kicked out this check to her one day. She didn't have any clue why. But she just knew. She's like, oh, this is for Ryan. So she gave me that money. And I went into a recording studio and recorded a few songs, which ultimately like that got, I sent that to a record company and got signed to a record deal. And it was just this crazy whirlwind of such a transformation and a shift for not only my paramedic career, but like just our lives as a whole. My wife and I at that moment, we had just had our first child. I was just getting signed to a record deal. And we were, it was this, this crazy whirlwind of events. That's really was the jumping off point. Yeah. From a strike of lightning. Yep. Your career has taken off. She really, she really intervened. Now from Idaho to Nashville. You've written and recorded some amazing songs. I have the storm. Can you play a little bit? Sure. Absolutely. This song seems so fitting because I remember I wrote this one just to, I wanted to talk about the storms of life and things that people were actually going through. And I think my time as a paramedic really helped shape a lot of this. In the eye of the storm you remain in control You've got my soul You're a long storm You're a long storm It's beautiful. Thank you, ma'am. Isn't the Lord just wonderful? He's brilliant. So do you ever stay in contact with her now? I do. Regularly. She's my biggest fan still. It's just top, she has taught me so much about how we don't have to always agree to love each other to be there for one another. Here's a lady, a person who intervenes so profoundly in my life and yet we're so opposite in so many ways and it's just such a testimony to me how God doesn't care about that stuff. He doesn't care about all the labels and restrictions we put on each other but God uses anybody and everything to accomplish His purposes and I'm just so grateful. She every year, she texts me on the anniversary of that lightning strike and just says thank you, love you. She comes to my concerts when we're out there in the Pacific Northwest and yeah, she's always watching from a distance and just always been such a huge support even after all these years. You know, God had you healing the hearts of others physically but now He has you healing the spiritual hearts through your music and we're going to talk about it when we get down. Ryan, let's talk about from Idaho to Nashville. What's your life like? Crazy. My wife and I, we've been married 20 years. We have three kids. We have three kids now. I should say we didn't. We have our little two-and-a-half-year, two-and-a-half-year-old corona season surprise. So we have three kids now moving to Nashville from, both of us are from the Pacific Northwest and we were born and raised out there so coming to the South, coming out to Tennessee, no family, not really knowing anybody was a big adjustment. You know, and we did it, we lived in Idaho for years. All the while my music stuff was kind of taking off and getting a lot busier and it was easier to do it when our kids were younger. As they started getting older, my boys, I knew they were just becoming way more aware that I was gone a lot and I was gone a lot and just constantly on the road touring opportunities and I felt like all we did was, all I did was commute from Boise to Nashville every week and I was just never home and it got to a point where we knew we had to make a change. So we found this house and moved lock, stock and barrel to Franklin, Tennessee and we've been here for a few years now. What do you think about us? Yeah, I love it out here. I really do. It's great. It's great. We love it so much, yeah. Tell me about No Matter What. I think this song in particular is one of my favorites, one of my favorite songs I've ever written. For me, it's... I thought I was writing it for other people and I really ended up being for me and I feel like probably six years ago Holy Spirit just stopped me in my tracks from the performance-based hamster wheel of approval approach to God and I grew up in kind of a religious environment where I only felt as good to God as my last ability to perform really well and I was always just stuck there, never knowing where I stood with God. Always feeling like, man, it was kind of explained to me that Father God is disappointed at humanity but he sent Jesus to clean up your mess and drag you back across this big chasm of separation and back into God's good graces and you'll always still be a piece of garbage but at least you have Jesus you know, repeat this prayer and hopefully you'll go to heaven when you die and I just didn't know how to reconcile that and I lived in that dysfunction of performance for years even into my adulthood even into being a dad and a husband and several years ago I felt like the Holy Spirit just in his kindness came to me and said, stop like just stop you can stop all of that striving like it is finished it was finished I need your heart to be pierced with the revelation that the finished work of Jesus is paramount you need to settle that right now and I was reading Romans 8 at the time and there was a it's my favorite book of the Bible my favorite passage is Romans chapter 8 but in one of my favorite pieces is where I'm convinced that there's nothing that can separate us from the love of God and then he just starts to go on to list all of the things you know, height or depth angels our future or past nothing in all creation some translations say will ever be able to separate us from God's love revealed in Christ Jesus and I just had this this thought like, man is it as simple, is the gospel as simple as 2nd Corinthians 5 says you are the righteousness of God in Christ and that's not up to you it's what Jesus did no matter what you've done you can't erase his love nothing can change it and you're not separated like these truths just settled on me in a way that just melted my heart and began to reveal truly Abba's heart like a dad's heart for his son, for his kids that it wasn't my striving or my working or my performance or my perfect behavior that changes anything it's what he did and who he is and who I am in him and it was just this revelation that I can't go back to the way it was before and so songs like No Matter What really came out of that Can you just play a little bit? Absolutely because like this No matter what you've done you can't erase him and nothing can change it you're not separated and no matter holding on you're still a daughter you're still a son and no matter you're still a... Thank you ma'am Where is God lady do you now you have some new music coming out tell me about it yeah wow I feel like I'm just laser focused on helping people realize what has been birthed in me and the fire that's just brewing in my belly these days it's just the message of the finished work of Jesus and I feel like so many of us especially a lot of people who grew up in my generation who grew up around a religious environment or a legalistic slant where we all just kind of got sent into our adult lives with that performance based approach to God my heart is just burning now with a passion to help people not deconstruct and not come out of that but just to really maybe unlearn some things that have been unhealthy and dysfunctional about the character and nature of God and truly just using my music using these songs praying through all this and releasing these songs that just talk about that very thing about the heart of a dad and our place and our status of who we are in Christ and that's his beloved ones first thing Paul says in Galatians 5 beloved ones and I just I love that and that's just kind of all I want to do from here on out is help people have that personal revival and awakening and that revelation that they are they are Abba's child and awakening says God loves you as you are not as you think you should be we are Abba's children and I didn't understand this for the longest time people always said Ryan you just wait till you have kids then you'll begin to understand the heart of a dad you'll begin to understand Abba's heart for you and I didn't get it I didn't understand it for a long time and then when I had kids and I see my babies now I just realized man even on a human level my kids this much my fascination with my kids has nothing to do with their behavior they're just my kids whether they think they are or not right now no matter what they're doing and I just I believe that that's exactly the same way Holy Spirit relates to us you're my daughter you're my son I love you with the same love that the father has for the son and that's where I'm headed Ryan thank you so much you're such a blessing I know God's going to use you in a mighty mighty way thank you my friend are you in the eye of the storm no matter what Jesus loves you this is today's Nashville this is faith