 We must stand firm and use our influence with the Word of God in a day when our culture is set against us. While Seth and Nerva Ready began their journeys in different musical circles, Nerva with Toby Mack and Seth with Kirk Franklin. It wasn't long before their paths began to cross. Since then, the beloved husband and wife have been on a mission with their new music, One Voice, to call us back to a unity founded in Christ. Instead of the divisions our society is experiencing, they hope to point people in the only direction where real solutions can be found, the way of Christ. This is their story. This is today's Nashville. This is faith. Seth and Nerva, I am so excited that you have joined me on today's Nashville. I've been wanting you for a long time. Welcome. Thank you, Terry. It's good to be here. Yeah, thanks so much for having us. You guys have been busy, haven't you? We've been doing life. It's been good. Yep. I'm complaining full, rich, but good times. Yeah. It's been good. Well, tell me how it all started. You have both had music careers, different music careers, and I love how God crossed your paths. Yeah. So let's talk about it. Well, we sort of met doing background vocals. We kind of made careers out of singing background vocals for professional Christian artists. And who are they? So I was with Toby Mack, and he was with Kirk Franklin, and we met backstage at a Billy Graham Crusade. So that's when we came in. Oh, that's wonderful. And his last ones. Yeah. Well, what was it like touring? You were with Toby Mack? Why, eight years? Oh, much longer time. 17 years. 17 years. And I'm not going to lie. It was a blast. It was so much fun. Something that I dreamt of, but I didn't have enough sense to pray for that specific kind of prayer. And God just blessed me with it. We traveled the country and parts of the world. Well, how did you even meet him? You're from Chicago, right? Yes, grew up in Chicago and then went to college in Nashville. Stayed there for years just in the music scene, just waiting for God to open doors. But I was traveling home from, I think, North Carolina one weekend. And before the flight took off, I got up and moved to a window seat. And it was Toby Mack's seat. And I was familiar with DC Talk at the time, but I never met Toby. His singer had just quit that very weekend and was looking for someone to fill the spot. And there I was, and I auditioned and got the gig. So you sat right next to him? No, she stole his seat. She stole his seat. Yeah. And went back to my original seat after he walked up. But later on, a manager introduced us. So how did he even know you were a singer then? You know, there was a team I was traveling with, and his manager must have had a conversation on the flight with one of our team. I was traveling with Joyce Meyer in ministry at the time. Somehow was introduced to him on the flight and that's when the manager said, we're looking for a singer, would you be interested in auditioning? I was like, sure, I'll check out this Toby Mack guy. I'm not sure, but I'll look into it. You didn't know who he was though, right? I didn't know specifically. I knew DC Talk, but I had never met him individually. So I got to know who he was a little bit after that. So blessed. She didn't grow up like huge CCM atmosphere. No, I wasn't as huge as more gospel music. Not necessarily CCM. So she said the first, actually, I'm sorry. Yeah, go ahead. The first time she jumped, like, got on stage with him, it was at lineup fast when it was huge, and she was like, who is this guy? Yeah, I was like, wow, this guy's a big deal. What has happened to him? He's a big deal. So, yeah, it's really funny that I got the gig because he was taking a chance on me. I hadn't done a ton of music. I'd done a lot of background singing in the studio, but he was just so gracious in walking me through and helping me to just learn the ropes of tour life and travel, and it was just a blast. You were here in Nashville for 18 years? Oh, let's see. Yes, 18 plus years. Traveling the world. Traveling the world. And you, at the same time, were with Kurt Franklin? Yeah, probably just a little bit after she started. It was crazy. I lived middle of nowhere, didn't know anybody. Where are you from? Central Florida, a little town called Aubrandale. Chicago, Florida. Yeah, man. Just, you know, match made in heaven. But yeah, I was in Central Florida. I was actually in college. I was a math major just, but I loved music and I recorded a demo with a guy, and it got passed to a guy who passed it to Kurt Franklin. And he needed a guy like last minute for tour. And I was a huge gospel music fan, huge Kurt Franklin fan. So when I got the call to travel, I was like, I got to do this. So I left after my junior year and just to... Junior year in college? Yeah, in college and went to Dallas. I lived with Tony Evans family for a couple months while I rehearsed for the tour. Then it was like a whole new life started. Now, how long were you with him? About three or four years. Three or four years. And from him, I met other gospel artists and started traveling with them. So it's kind of just a huge door opener for me. Okay, the big question is how did you all meet through all this? Yeah, so there's some discrepancies in the story, but I'll give you the true version. She'll give you the apocryphal version. Yeah, so basically, she said we met quickly at Billy Graham Crusade backstage. She doesn't remember meeting me there. We met again at House of Blues when Toby and Kurt did a tour together that I didn't go on. And I met her backstage. She doesn't remember meeting me there either. I don't. But that's when it started for me. I was like, I got the googly eyes on that time meeting her. So sometimes I say love at second sight for me and love at 554th sight for her. But I wore her down. We became friends. We started getting hired to sing together background vocals and Nashville and stuff. And so we became friends. And yeah, I just, I passed through the friend zone. She stiff armed me for a while, but I made it through, made it through. And finally we started kind of dating. It was a quick dating, quick, you know, engagement seven months. Seven months we got married. You know, when we first married, we were kind of doing tour life apart. And we prayed that God would kind of allow us to work more so together. And that began to happen. I think we moved to Florida from Nashville and he had taken a position at his alma mater Southeastern University as a director of worship. We started working with the children there on some music. Children, students. They were like children. Yeah, they were like children. And so after that we moved on to do some young adult ministry. And then we were contacted by Integrity Music to do a project with them, to sign with them. And that was a blessing, a dream come true. And from there we started doing ministry together. And we had moved to Florida. We were living in Florida at that time. And yeah, they met us in Florida, talked with us a little bit. And we did a project with Integrity Music. That began to open doors for us to travel more so together. Yeah, a lot of times we were in Nashville for a while, but we didn't do music together when we were in Nashville. It was kind of after we left that God began to open those doors, which is kind of unique. But yeah, we were based out of Florida and we did young adult ministry there for like three years. And that just became part of the overall thing that we felt like God was doing was shaping us and shaping our music in a different way. And kind of giving us a specific mission with it that we probably wouldn't have had had we not gone through that whole process of working at a university in a young adult ministry. Yeah, God began to crystallize the passion behind the music or just the, we noticed that working with the college students that they had certain questions, certain fears, certain things that they were dealing with. And that became one of the focuses of our message is just helping young people and Christians at large just develop a Christian understanding of things that they were walking through, things they were facing in life, things that they might have seen in culture. And that's a passion that Seth has always had too because he's his testimony he will share. Just sometimes life hits and the enemy wants to come in and try to interpret those events and that may cause you to kind of rethink your Christian faith but we all need guides to help us, to help us point us in the right direction to find some answers. And so God was birthing some of those things in us and developing a heart for ministry and alongside the music which was kind of worship focused at the time. Before we talk about what God is doing in your life, in your ministry, Seth, I would love to hear how you met Jesus, your testimony. Yeah, for me, you know, I didn't thankfully grow up in a Christian home. I had, you know, parents, not perfect but very dedicated to their walk with the Lord and they raised me up in that way and so at the age of six, I think it wasn't a one as meeting or something, I raised my hand to get saved, you know. And I really did have, like even in the young age, I had a desire to follow the Lord. I mean, I was a normal knucklehead of kid like the rest but I had a desire to follow the Lord and he, you know, walked with him. When I got in youth group, probably about 15, I really got serious about my faith. Had a great youth pastor who became a best friend eventually but about that same time when I got serious, I began to be plagued by intellectual doubts and, you know, I think I remember just having, you know, the basic questions that you have, like how do I know Christianity is true? What if I was born in a Muslim country? Would I be Muslim? You know, those kinds of basic things. Unfortunately at the time, while my church background was great, it wasn't as equipped in that area and I think it was before, like, people really knew the effects that public school could have on you. We tended to think it was just neutral, you know, they're teaching math, science, English and that's world-viewishly neutral. But it really wasn't, you know, it was, it had secular presuppositions running through it that were forming my mind all the time, often without me even knowing it. And one example I give is, you know, the idea that the only way you can know things is through science. It's an epistemological view called scientism. And I didn't realize I was being taught that in my biology classes that, you know, they would say things like, well, religious people used to believe this about the Earth's beginnings, but now we know through science. So it put this dichotomy in my mind between, well, we have faith in Christianity but we have knowledge in science. So those kinds of things set me on a trajectory of really wrestling with the faith for like 15 years, even into our marriage where I was in ministry and I loved the Lord and I wanted to believe it but there were times I was like, man, I don't know if this is true. I don't know that I can believe it anymore. And I was reading and reading and, you know, I'd read a book and I'd be confident for a minute but then another thought would come and I had to read another book. I'd listen to another lecture. But anyways, to make a long story short, looking back on that time, that was really what God used in many dark nights of the soul and times I thought, you know, I don't think I have much faith left. I'm hanging by a thread here. But it was like He would give me the right person at the right time to come in my life, the right mentor, the right book. And as long as I kept going in that direction as hard as it was, He would meet me there. And looking back, like when we began to do Young Adult Ministry, I can see how purposeful it was that even though it was a painful process, He brought me to a place where I could confidently say, Christianity is something that can not only, it's not only that we believe it to be true, we can know it to be true, we can have our confidence in it. And actually, when it comes to reason and logic, and I've done, I mean, hours and hours and hours of studying all sorts of different worldviews and religions, and it is the one perspective that I think is the most intellectually satisfying and stands on the shoulders of giants. And at this point, I'm thankful for that process having gone through that as tough as it was. I can say, man, I really know who has called me and He's been there with me. I've experienced Him. And it's like C.S. Lewis said, I know Christianity is true not only because I see it, but like the Son, by it, I see everything. It makes sense of everything we experience in life. And so that's my little testimony. What about you, Nerva? How did that, with your testimony and your faith and how that kind of was in your marriage, and how did that affect you? I could say that, you know, Seth has challenged me over the years not to just know what I believe, but how and why I believe it. And so my testimony is a little bit more. I didn't grow up in a Christian home, but South Side of Chicago was tough. So growing up in that environment was just challenging as a young person. Going off to college, I got born again. I found a Lord, a friend walked me into a relationship with Jesus. But from there, just struggling to still find meaning and purpose. So it's the process of discipleship. And I finally landed at a church that brought that into my life to smooth out all of my rough edges. By that point, I might have developed a habit of finding meaning in the wrong places to relationships. The performing and singing, and that just was a cycle of defeat that God began to just re-transform my mind and understanding why I'm here and what's my purpose in life. Well, tell me too how your music came together and how old were you both when you started your music careers? Were you young? Oh, gosh. I was in, let's see, maybe I started singing along to the radio as a child. But in high school, I joined the choirs and through the local talent shows. And then when I went off to college in Nashville, Tennessee, a school called Fisk University, I majored in music. And so slowly but surely after that God began to open doors. So I would say that process from my teens up until now just pursuing music, wanting to make a career. Back then, I didn't know you could actually make a career out of music. You dream about being the next so-and-so, but God's been so faithful and so good. What about you, Sam? Yeah, I mean, sometimes I tell these students that we worked with, like, man, when we were young, YouTube didn't exist. Yeah. There was no take-talk. In fact, American Idol wasn't around. Yeah. So it's like, you didn't know that you could do this back then. It was like, even when I talked to my dad about doing music, he was like, well, you better do something. You can get a job then, boy. Yeah. And there's wisdom to that. So I majored in math instead of music because I didn't think there was a potential for that. You know, somehow it was one of those really supernatural movements of God where you just, you can't explain it. It was nothing I did. It was not my genius or nothing I put out there, but he just opened that door with Kurt. So I really went, literally went from zero to like a world traveling, world stage kind of thing, meeting my heroes. And so it was just that crazy. And then so when I met her, by that point, we learned a lot from these guys. We both learned a lot from the best. You know, just sitting behind them, watching them do it, watching them create in the studio, watching them come up with live shows. So when we began to do stuff together, it wasn't that much of a stretch for us. It was kind of just in us, you know? So we were like, man, I guess we did learn some of this stuff over time, whether it's... It's a lot harder on your own. A lot harder. But richer, too. Yeah, yeah. We said we went from the cruise to the canoe. Right. That's true that the difference in combination. That was it. And then you have to... You know, you want to do what is uniquely put in you, as well, like what God puts in you. So we do have our own, you know, our own journeys in what God has put in us and brought in us. Kirk has his thing. Toby has his thing. But for us, it was like, man, we feel like part of our thing is to push back the darkness and use our music as a tool and a weapon to do that and really just make some stances and kind of, you know, whether it's worship music or just like current music to do our best to take that into these kind of spaces and use it for the message. And your message is unity. And I love that. And we're going to talk about that when we get back. You were talking about how your music has come together and how God is using you and your ministry. And would you sing, you know, part of a song for me? Okay. So this song is called Armour in the verse goes, When the playground becomes a battleground Draw strength Every soldier takes up weapons in war You'll be able to stop the fiery darts that come Put on the whole armor Draw strength from your father You'll find you'll be strong Oh, it's beautiful. It's beautiful. And this is a new project you're working on. Yes, it's out. It's called On Earth. And it comes from the prayer where the scripture says, Let your kingdom come. Let it will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And it's just a collection of songs that God had kind of birthed in us during, it started during the pandemic. Some things that we were praying about that we were seeing out in culture and we were like, you know, messages we were hearing that God wanted to do in the earth and we would just kind of come up with songs from that place. What do you think about what's going on in the inner culture? Yes. Let's talk about it. Wow, that's a thing right there. That's a good question. You know, we, so coming from like the journey that I took in my own faith that really, I thank God, like, he taught me how to be a thinker. Like, it was my pursuit of the kingdom that made me learn about words and ideologies. So I feel like in a way he gave me a head start where I wasn't looking for it, but when all the craziness began to go on, it was sort of like he had already given me equipment to see through it. And so part of it is like you would see some of the stuff happening and people would respond. And I began to see, to look past that and say, man, who is concocting these narratives? Like, and what is the, what is the purpose behind it? So I think, you know, I'll try to make this really long thing really short, but we began to see this thing called woke ideology come through. Now I had studied postmodernism, but I hadn't seen how it was being utilized to pick up on past racial injustices to bring about a narrative that was actually false in the present. And so once I began to read some of the books by some of these thinkers, I was like, oh man, he's actually, he's using truth differently here. He's using knowledge. He's redefining racism. He's redefining white supremacy, all this kind of stuff. So as our eyes began to be open to these tactics, when something major would come along and the news would start interpreting it, we saw where the falsehoods were. So you had to kind of like, you had to like practice biblical discernment and say, what does the Bible have to say about these issues? And then who can I trust to tell me what's actually going on? So if you're talking about just the big picture of culture, you, like, I think the biggest thing, we've tried to do this in podcasts too. Tell me the name of your podcast. Yeah, it's called the Fremont podcast. And we hit stuff, you know, head on. So we try to ask like, man, who is telling the story and what is their motivation? What is the evidence they're presenting for that? How do we as Christians learn more clearly and carefully? And that's why we wanted to write that music in that as well, because like, Christianity isn't to be pushed to the side in this kind of like marginal place. It's Christ is king. Like, he's lord over everything. So when you're talking about whether it's the area of legality and laws, justice, what is the nature of justice, or what is education, all these things, like Christ is king over those things. He's not outside of that. And so we try to do our best to say, okay, what does he have to say about these issues and how do we respond on that basis? Anything to add to that, baby? Yeah, and to encourage those that do find the truth to be a signpost for others, you know, because the thing that's heartbreaking is to see when your fellow family members or church members or pastors fall prey to the false ideologies because it's very popular. It's prevalent. It's ubiquitous. It's everywhere, but it's not really truth or it's not biblical, but yet it's seeping into the church and then you feel like they call it virtue signaling, where you just do it because it's from culture's eyes the right thing to do but it's antithetical to the scripture. So like he said, it takes discernment. It takes a little bit of knowledge of history, a little bit of knowledge of, okay, what is popular? Why did, like he said, how did this come about? Who is facilitating and pushing these things? So we've got to be a little bit more sharper than I think. It's amazing what is going on. It's quite crazy. Can I add one thing to it? It's been a rough time. It's been painful for a lot of people and it's caused a lot of breaking up relationships within families, within churches and everything. I think part of that we have to go through because whenever, I don't know if you've ever seen a situation where you find out something that's been going on for years, it's really unhealthy and really bad. Like you can't paper over that. You have to go through it to the other side to get healing. And so I think one of the things we're seeing in culture now is not so much that it's new stuff but it's an exposing of stuff that's been going on for years. And then a bit of an acceleration on top of it. And so in a way, I'm actually encouraged by it at times because it's like, okay, well now we're at least seeing what's there and the fact that makes me think, okay, God is taking us through this painful thing so that he can wake us up because for too long many of us have been asleep to the enemy's tactics and we've been lulled like the proverbial frog in the pot. And so now it's like they turned up the heat a little bit so we're hopping out. It's painful but it's a good thing. What do you say to a Christian who has kind of stepped away and they're kind of, you know, questioning like you were or like you said, having some of those woke thoughts in their mind and you know, you guys aren't quite right. What do you say to them? You know, as an older brother to some of the younger students we talk to them like, man, I promise you I've seen it, I've been out there the Christian world view stands on the most firm foundation of any world view. Don't be so arrogant to presume that you've discovered the thing that the people over thousands of years haven't, first of all. But also like be humble enough to find people that can help you. That was what helped me out. The main thing was finding good mentors that were gifted in those areas that I could bounce stuff off of and oftentimes I'd have a 40 minute session with the guy and he'd say and now read these six books and I'll talk to you next month. And I had to do the work. Like you have to, if you're going to really pursue truth, Dallas said this, you know, the multiplication tables aren't going to knock you down when you're walking down the street. You have to sit down and you have to study them. So if you're going to be a person who cares about knowledge, cares about truth you have to pursue it, but pursue it in a safe place. Not out there doing the lone warrior on Google, you know, but get with some good people that you trust. You see the fruit in their lives because there's a difference between intelligence and wisdom. Wisdom bears good fruit for life. You can be an intelligent person and be a wreck and you can you can be an intelligent person and not know truth in a broad sense. So I say find people that are wise that bear fruit and get up under them and study them. The Bible stands up to scrutiny and when it comes to all those things, you can learn all the details but you really don't know the counterfeit outside of studying the real. So make sure you understand the real and then it'll be easier to see through the other stuff as well. That's where I'd start. Good old fashioned. And it's hard like there is a part where you have to it takes time to sit down and even understand what is this Bible I'm holding? What are these genres of literature? Like how do I even understand this stuff? But you know, we'll put a lot of time into learning something on YouTube and other areas. Exactly, it's true. Yeah, all this other stuff. We have other Bibles, but when it comes to the Bible will we be the kind of people who will pursue it and seek the Kingdom first and that is the thing like through all the struggles, all the difficulty, I've seen it true that if you seek the Kingdom first he will find you. Seth, Nerva, thank you so much. What a blessing you are to so many people. Thank you Terry, thanks so much for having us. Thank you so much, we appreciate you. Just taking the time to chat with us. My friend, do you need truth in your life? Do you need Jesus? Don't look to the right, don't look to the left, look straight ahead. He's waiting right there in front of you. This is Today's Nashville. This is faith. Cornerstone Television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.