Life Audio Everybody talks about the mountain, the mountain, the mountain, the mountain you're climbing, the mountain that God's presence is resting upon.

But we don't talk enough about the valley and the fruit and the character and the wisdom that's found in that place.

That is what we're talking about today.

Hello, hello, hello, ladies and gents and welcome to this week's episode of the

Vaugh and Beloved podcast. As always, it's a girl, Kirby Kelly, back at it again with another

incredible guest. And I'm so excited to have gospel singer and songwriter Jonathan McReynolds here on the

podcast. Oh my goodness. This is such a big deal. I'm so excited to have him on today. And we're actually

talking about a book that he recently came out with. Like literally today is launch day. So you

have to get it once the episode

is done, right? But it's called Before You Climb Any Higher. And I specifically love the tagline.

So Jonathan, you and your team did a really good job with that. But the tagline is Valley Wisdom for

Mountain Dreams. I love it. But before we even dive into any of that today,

Jonathan, thank you for being here. Can you just tell everybody a little bit about who you are,

what you're passionate about, and what makes you you? Sure. And thank you so much. I am a

Chicagoan, Chicago-born. I don't live there anymore, but I hold on to it. I am a church

kid, musician turned nerd, turned gospel artist. I don't know how it all happened. I suddenly

expected to be a computer engineer or something else, but it turns out God had

artistic plans for me.

And so for the past, now, 10, maybe almost 15 years, I've been traveling around the world,

singing gospel music, you know, trying to lead people to Christ, point people to Christ. I've been in a lot

of different places. I haven't just done kind of the church world, but I've taken Jesus into

the, the weirder places as well. And so it's been really fun for me as this, you know, nerd to try to figure out this whole life in the music world.

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