Tony Cummings reports on NATE SALLIE, who's moved from wanting to be a rock star to thirsting after the things of God

Nate Sallie

When in 2003 Curb Records released the album debut 'Inside Out' by singer, songwriter and pianist Nate Sallie things started with a sizeable bang. Nate was part of the summer Radio Disney tour of the States and the Seventeen Magazine/JC Penney Back To School shopping mall tour. He opened for the Newsboys and even performed in Florida at the Elite Model Look Of The Year contest. He was also a spokesperson for both the Partnership For Drug Free America and the Support Music campaign. Yet behind all the media profile Nate wasn't in a good place spiritually. As he later told Christian Retailing magazine with refreshing candour, "I was trying to be a rock star. I wanted to play in front of 10,000 people. It was all about me. I was self-seeking. I hadn't surrendered my heart and life to God. That wasn't anybody's fault. It was me at the time."

As it turned out, 'Inside Out' with its crisp pop rock sound and occasional clever turn of lyrics wasn't without merit. One song in particular, "It's About Time", with its memorable couplet "You watch your exercise videos/While you down a bag of Oreos," got a lot of play on Cross Rhythms radio. Nate ruefully told CCM magazine, "We can go through an entire 45-minute show and the one thing a lot of people say when they come up afterward is 'I love that Oreo line.'"

Nate Sallie was born and raised in Washington, DC. He explained, "I grew up listening to Michael W Smith, Andrae Crouch, Harry Connick Jr - anyone who played the keys, I loved. When I was a kid, my parents bought a piano. They weren't musically inclined but there was no way I was going to be able to get out of playing. They made me stick with it and I appreciate the fact that they did." Nate played with gospel choirs and the school jazz band before majoring in classical piano in college.

Signed to Curb Records in 2003, Nate plugged 'Inside Out' with constant touring. But by 2006, after tours with artists like NewSong and Todd Agnew, Nate experienced a spiritual renewal in his life. In his own words, he didn't want to settle for "an average, ordinary, run of the mill existence." He told journalist/broadcaster Mike Rimmer, "I would look at people and see them on stage and think, why are they up there? And God would say 'Because they are available. It's not down to your ability, it's down to your availability. I don't care how much talent you have, I don't care if your good looking or not, I don't care if you can dance, I don't care if you can sing. I'm looking for people that have surrendered and that are open and are available for me to use.'"

He told Christian Retailing, "We can't settle for 'good' once we experience the best [God] has to offer. Over the last three years, God has done amazing things in my life - restored my marriage, my relationships and my relationship with him." Nate began writing songs which expressed a new intimacy with the Lord. One of these songs, "Holy Spirit", was to become a popular song in all his on-stage performances and was subsequently the first single from his second album. Commented Nate, "I prayed, 'God, I don't want to sing just another song. I don't want to echo somebody else's songs.' God wants to sing through us and teach through us."

For his second album, 'Ruined For Ordinary', Sallie teamed up with his producer friend Bernie Herms (Natalie Grant, Steve Green). Herms was a "crucial integral part of it." 'Ruined For Ordinary' is indeed an exceptional album. The singer/songwriter spoke about a couple of the songs on the project. "My wife walked in one morning as I was getting ready to write this project and nothing had been written yet. It was during the process of God just unveiling the mind and the heart. I remember she just walked in and I looked at her and I said, 'Hey I'm back.' She knew exactly what I was talking about because, again, God had just broken through in ways that I never thought possible or imaginable. And I'm not talking about in my bank account, I'm not talking about in my career. I'm talking about how he broke through in my mind. Romans 12:2 says, 'Don't conform any longer to this world, be transformed by the renewing of your mind.' That's what he did. I would read the Scriptures but there was no life in it. But when the breakthrough happened the words began popping off the pages. That's what breakthrough is all about. I love one of the Psalms that says, 'My heart like God's word pumps blood through my veins,' and that's what I could see. That's what the song 'Breakthrough' is all about, God's word, literally just pumping through my body and producing fruit. Before I was like that fig tree that Luke talks about where it was not producing any fruit at all and he says, 'Don't chop it down, give it another year, let me fertilise, let me water.' This is what the tenant said. Thank goodness there were people in my life that gave me that extra year and began to fertilise and pour into me and let God do the work."

Another powerful composition on the album is "Ruined". Explained Nate, "I've just been ruined for an ordinary life. I love the first line where it says why would I walk away from a life where I had it all. Well, that's what seemingly the world says, How could you live? and How could you walk away from all these great things that we think we have? But they're all a mirage because when you get behind these million dollar homes and the facade of what's been put up you see things for what they really are. Inside it is crumbling. It's dark. And it's looking for the next thing. They say you never have quite enough. You could be the richest guy in the world and never be satisfied. And that's supposedly the 'good life'. I'm ruined for all of these things, my joy is complete. It's not based on circumstances, it is complete in the Lord because he is faithful. Peace that passes all understanding. He hasn't given us the spirit of fear but of love, power and a sound mind. And that's what people are looking for. Nothing we can do can improve on what God has already done. From the beginning of time we have tried to improve on what God has already done. He's already given us the best, his blessings are already richer than anything we could ever produce. Yet we're trying to produce something that's a counterfeit. We've just got to get back to the roots, the foundation, be established in his Word and let his truth set us free and we'll be ruined for an ordinary life."