Cradling her limp, 2-month-old son, Courtney Smallbone ran out the door of her house. “Call 911,” she cried to her husband, Luke, who was mowing the lawn. “Call 911!”
Only a few moments earlier, on Sept. 15, 2017, Courtney had entered the room where their son Leo was napping. She found him silent and still, with blood running from his nose. His skin was pale, and he wasn’t breathing. Courtney lifted Leo in her arms and darted from the room, desperate for help.
As soon as Luke saw the motionless Leo, he called 911 and followed his wife to their gravel driveway. Courtney held Leo in her arms and prayed. “In the name of Jesus, bring back my boy,” she said. “In the name of Jesus, put air into his lungs.”
Leo’s skin was turning blue, and he was cold to the touch. Luke wondered if they’d already lost him. But, as Courtney prayed, Leo suddenly took a deep breath. Then the ambulance arrived, rushing Courtney and Leo to the hospital.
After family members arrived to watch their other children, Luke quickly made his way to the hospital. As one half of the popular Christian-music duo For King & Country, Luke naturally processes his pain and struggles through lyrics. As he drove to the hospital, he poured out his prayer to God in an impromptu song.
In the blink of an eye, life flashed right in front of my eyes, he sang. Never knew that the fear could cripple my chest. In the blink of an eye,
the light left.
I need You more, he continued, I need You more, more than ever before. I need You more.
The gift of struggle
Thanks to prompt treatment for Leo, Luke and Courtney’s prayers were answered. The medical scare was over, but the impact of Luke’s prayer-song carried on, resonating on For King & Country’s 2018 album, Burn the Ships.
Luke says the “gift of struggle” has often inspired his songs, helping to secure For King & Country’s success as four-time Grammy Award winners. More importantly, however, Luke’s many struggles in life remind him just how deeply he needs God’s love and grace.
“As a young boy and, in some cases since I’ve been doing music, I’ve been given the gift of struggle,” Luke says. “For me, music has been about writing about those things . . . writing about the gift of life, in some cases the gift of sorrow, because it’s in the sorrow that you learn so much.”
‘We saw God show up’
Even as a child, Luke was familiar with the struggles of life. In 1991, when Luke was only 5, his concert-promoter father, David, started a new job in Nashville, Tennessee. He moved Luke, his then-pregnant wife, Helen, and their five other children away from their home in Australia. But soon after they arrived in the United States, David lost his job.
The Smallbones were stranded in Nashville with no money, no family and—so they thought—no friends. The children slept on piles of laundry and lived on ramen noodles and Taco Bell 79-cent bean burritos. Both parents and the kids took odd jobs raking leaves, mowing lawns and cleaning houses to help support the needs of their household. They often circled up as a family in a room with no furniture, where they asked God to meet each day’s needs.
Despite these struggles, Luke says he had a joyful childhood and witnessed God’s provision. He continued to have faith in Christ.
“We saw God show up in amazing ways,” he says. “We had people give us a car the very first day they met us, we had somebody pay for our little sister to be born in a hospital—to this day, we don’t know who it was. We’d have people drop bags full of groceries on our doorstep. Checks would arrive in the mail that covered our bills by just a few dollars. That was really the introduction to America for us. Americans have been so generous and kind to us.”
Success by Christ
In 1994, the Smallbone family got a big break when Luke’s teenage sister, known professionally as Rebecca St. James, released her first major Christian music album with ForeFront Records. Rebecca’s musical success paved the way for her younger brothers, Luke and Joel. The brothers sang background vocals and ran the lights for their sister’s concerts until they decided, in 2007, to begin their own musical duo, eventually named For King & Country.
By 2013, For King & Country had earned several Dove Award nominations and even appeared on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.” But later that year, Luke became seriously ill, and the brothers wondered if their dreams would survive his illness—or if Luke himself would survive.
Accepting grace
Joel Smallbone was on his honeymoon with his wife, Moriah, that July when his phone lit up with a text message—news that Luke had to stop touring.
Luke had struggled for some time with ulcerative colitis, a digestive disorder that eventually withered his 6-foot-4-inch-tall body from 185 pounds to 125 pounds.
“I looked like a concentration camp survivor,” Luke says. He was extremely weak—too weak to even hold his 6-month-old son, Jude.
As Luke fought for his life, Courtney—whom Luke had married in 2010—struggled to nurse her 26-year-old husband back to health. She kept a journal of everything he ate and held his arm whenever he attempted to get some exercise. For Luke, one lap around their cul-de-sac each day was all he could handle.
Meanwhile, as he lay in bed exhausted, Luke struggled with God. “I made a decision to follow Jesus when I was 8, and man, has that held me in good stead for life,” he says. “But there are moments in life that it becomes more real than at other times.”
One night in particular, he remembers crying out to God: “Why am I so sick? I’m doing all the things that You’ve asked me to do.”
As he prayed in desperation, Luke began to realize how God was trying to get his attention. “That struggle allowed me to accept grace, truly, for one of the first times in my life. And I’m not sure that is a lesson that we can ever get tired of learning.”
Luke struggled with the disease for the remainder of 2013 before he was healthy enough to tour with Joel once again the next year. But God wasn’t done teaching Luke amid the struggles of life—and not just his own struggles.
God showed up
In 2014, for example, Courtney was pregnant with their second son, Phoenix. Her doctor prescribed anti-nausea medicine to help her with severe morning sickness, but she became addicted to the pills. Courtney’s struggle to overcome the addiction and let go of her feelings of guilt inspired the title track of For King & Country’s third album, Burn the Ships.
“Sometimes our past haunts our futures,” Luke says, and Burn the Ships calls listeners to leave the shame and pain of the past “to plunge into a future of hope.”
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, Luke and Joel spent their time in lockdown writing some of their latest hits—including “Together” and “Relate”—encouraging their listeners to show compassion for one another and pull together amid the struggles of life. Both songs appeared on the group’s 2022 album, What Are We Waiting For?
Then, amid the pandemic, Luke faced yet another struggle. His voice began to bother him, forcing him to undergo vocal cord surgery in May of 2021.
Luke knew the risks that accompanied the surgery. But as he lay in a hospital bed, unable to speak during the week after surgery, troubling thoughts plagued him. What if I can’t talk anymore? What if I can’t sing? What if I can’t write songs? What if my vocal cords are damaged beyond repair?
Needing Him more
Once again, God showed up to ease Luke’s fears: “I felt God really clearly say to me, ‘Look, it’s never been about a voice. It’s never been about a song, it’s never been about what you could do or what you could accomplish. It’s about the very fact that I love you, that I cherish you despite those things. So, if your voice never comes back, I’m still God. I still love you.’
“Maybe,” Luke says, “I’m just one of those silly people who has to have things happen time and time again . . . but that lesson never gets old.”
Sure enough, Luke’s vocal cords began to mend, and he’s returned once again to his music. But now he knows, without a doubt, that he needs God more.
More than ever before.
