I think I was always an old soul, even as a teenager.

I know my sound, and I have to be true to who I am as an artist, even though I want be real cool, and make really cool music.

I feel like I always have to have a song on my album that people can use in their weddings.

Then Jesus introduced Himself to me. Though my birth certificate reads 1983, I reckon I was born in 1999, when I met Jesus - not in a church or on a camp or through people, but alone in my bedroom with an open Bible and a tangible revelation that the Son of God was not only real, but alive and awesome and stronger than the chains that bound me.

Obviously, it was a big life change for me and quite a shock to suddenly have these songs I'd written in my bedroom as a far-too-intense teenager all over the airwaves and see my face on buses, especially in a small country like New Zealand, but at the same time it was such a thrill and an honour knowing that my music was reaching people.

People aren't problems to be fixed. People are people, for us to walk alongside and journey with and help pick up the pieces with and, when they drop them again, to get back down and help them pick them up again. And that's real love - without condition and without expectation.

I've always recognised that I have influence, whether I like it or not, and that I can use it to do something good.