Chris Estes: 0:06

Welcome to another Power Song Story. This one's going to be fun. This is from kind of the beginning of my journey in Christian music. If you listen to the introduction of this podcast, I talk a little bit more about my story. I didn't grow up in a faith family or certainly not in a church music arena. I didn't really come to know who Jesus was and have faith and love God until I was in my kind of early 20s. My first real exposure was after listening, playing in church and actually doing music with worship team and leading.

Chris Estes: 0:51

This song by Paul Balash yes, his last name is pronounced Baloche is called Open the Eyes of my Heart. This was popular back then. We played it one Sunday and I used to love playing that song. It's got a kind of cool catchy guitar riff and just love the lyrical content of it and the theme and the idea of God opening up the eyes of your heart so you can see Him better, which is actually what happened to me. It could have been the soundtrack to my salvation story, to my salvation story.

Chris Estes: 1:28

So this power song story starts with me in a local church playing the song for the first. You know, in church songs tend to stay once they get popular they stay around for a while. So we had been playing it for a minute and then I had a trip. This was pre-Christian music and as far as my career in Christian music, so I was in print technology and I was running a worldwide marketing group within that and I was doing a lot of international travel. So this particular trip was my first trip to Indonesia and sorry, malaysia in that region.

Chris Estes: 2:00

I was going to Kuala Lumpur and I really felt God had a reason and a purpose for me to be there beyond just work and was praying about that. So I was going to be there for a Sunday and Malaysia is a Muslim-run and led country so Christian faith is pretty regulated and kept under wraps so you can actually go to prison if you try to evangelize a Muslim there. So literally I had plans to go to a local church, bring some gifts, some books, some resources to them from a library, because Kuala Lumpur is a pretty affluent city, it's like a New York City-style city in Malaysia. So when I got to the bookstore, ironically it was under the same kind of guard and regulations. So the Christian book uh resource part of that store was literally uh guarded and you had to, um, go through the guard to get into it. So they were trying to prevent Muslims from just kind of rousing around that area.

Chris Estes: 3:07

So I went in, bought some books, some stuff for the kids, and then I had set out to go to this church on Sunday and, uh, took a cab and what I didn't realize was a church again being in a country that doesn't necessarily persecute but does heavily monitor and regulate what happens in the Christian church pulled up and it looked like a. It went from like a strip mall area to like almost a would look like I think here in the US we would call it low-income housing projects. It kind of had that vibe. And the guy pulled up he's like here you are. And I was like I don't think this is it. So he called them and he was trying to pronounce my name. He called to make sure he had the right address and he said I have Christus here and I was like no, it's pronounced Chris. So anyway, they welcomed me in really and found out that I was not Christ. But I came and was able to worship with these guys share the resources, and the first song they played was Open the Eyes of my Heart and that kind of really just gave me a powerful connection to the impact that a song in the local church can make in a global church and how God can use that, because I had not experienced that before and I just remember feeling really close to God in that moment and thinking, gosh, this is crazy. Like in this small itty bitty church in the country halfway around the world they're leading the same song I was doing last weekend. So the story continues. This is a really fun part of the story.

Chris Estes: 4:48

A year later I'd shifted careers and started working with Integrity Music and I was at my first GMA Doves award show week. So they used to have a week and I think they're coming back to it now. They're going to start doing more stuff during the week, but this was kind of the height of that in Nashville. They had a whole week in downtown Nashville where they had showcases and performances. The whole Christian music industry was there leading up to the Dove Awards, which is kind of like the Grammy Awards for the Christian music space. So it was my first time appearing and we, integrity Music, had a bunch of showcases and that's kind of the time when all the industry people would meet with all the partners and everything.

Chris Estes: 5:33

So I was a digital music guy. This was my first attempt of doing anything in that space, and so I'd set up meetings with artists and with some of the partners and the big partner at the time because the iPad sorry, the iPod was just a little over almost two years old and iTunes music was starting. The was kind of the more legitimate legal digital wave of music and music sales back when you used to download music onto this little silver brick called the iPod. It held a lot of music. It was kind of cool. It had a pretty neat navigation system.

Chris Estes: 6:12

So I had lined up my very first artist meeting that I was going to meet with iTunes and I was doing that at this breakfast spot in a hotel downtown Nashville. I get there, paul gets there and uh, we're chatting, you know, sharing my story about playing Open the Eyes of my Heart. He's a super kind guy. If you guys ever had a chance to meet him, um, he is. He is the real deal, uh, onstage and offstage super kind, and you'll find that out at the end of this story here.

Chris Estes: 6:45

So we're there for 15 minutes just talking, drinking coffee, waiting to order breakfast, and then I get a message from the iTunes rep that they can't make it and I was like my heart sank. I was like this is my first meeting, I can't make it. And I was like my heart sank. I was like this is my first meeting. I can't believe this. This is a major fail with our artists. And he was a big artist at Integrity.

Chris Estes: 7:09

And so he, paul, in typical Baloche fashion, just took the rest of the time and made me feel totally comfortable and not stressed about it and really just poured into me, just wanted to hear my story. We shared testimonies. He's got a crazy testimony. That was really fun. I shared my salvation story. We just talked about music, hung out and ate breakfast. I got to see that he really did reflect the character and the love of God, especially in a moment like that where me starting out in a new career a big moment could have been a huge fail, could have been a disaster on a lot of different levels turned out to be just a sweet time of hanging out and talking about music and doing breakfast together. So that is the power song story of Open the Eyes of my Heart from Paul Baloche