Scripture says...

To obey is better than sacrifice. — 1 Samuel 15:22

Sometimes God will tell you to do something that just doesn't make sense. Not because you didn't hear Him clearly. Not because you missed something. It just doesn't make sense yet. And that's really where this conversation with Josh Boyd begins.

Yeah, we talked about drums. We talked about growing up in church, grinding for gigs, playing outside in downtown Greensboro, working regular jobs and eventually finding his way onto major tours.

But somewhere in the middle of all of that, I realized we weren't really talking about music anymore, we were talking about obedience. The kind of obedience that requires you to move when you don't know what's next.

The kind that makes you question whether you really heard God correctly when everything starts going wrong. The kind where God gives you a direction without giving you all the details.

Because before Maxwell.

Before Masego.

Before touring.

Before Josh knew any of those things were coming, he believed God told him to do something that didn't make much sense at the time.

Leave his job.

Not at the end of the year like Josh planned.

March.

That's what makes everything that happened afterward important. Not because obedience guarantees that everybody who steps out on faith ends up touring with major artists. That's not the lesson — the lesson is much simpler, and honestly, much harder.

What do you do when you believe God has spoken, but you can't see where obedience is taking you?

For Josh, answering that question meant going back to where all of this started.

It Started in Church

Josh has been around drums for as long as he can remember.

"I was born in church," he told me.

As a kid, he would sit on the first pew watching the drummer. The drums were probably five feet away from him, and instead of just listening to what was happening during service, Josh was studying.

Then he would go home.

"I would go home and mimic everything that I could remember from service."

I understood that immediately because I started out playing drums too. I remember watching my older brother and one of our childhood friends switch Sundays playing at church. Before we were old enough, or probably good enough, to get behind the actual kit, the church put bongos out for us.

So while Josh was telling me his story, I could see it — a kid sitting in church watching somebody play, not realizing that years later those drums were going to become part of his own story.

By the time Josh was finishing high school, he knew music had to be somewhere in his future, he just didn't know where. And honestly, knowing what you're gifted to do and knowing where that gift is supposed to take you are two completely different things.

Josh had the first part. The second part would take years, and before God would ask him to make one of the biggest moves of his life, there would be a long stretch of learning how to keep moving even when nothing seemed to be happening.

When Nobody Was Calling

After high school, Josh went to Guilford Technical Community College and took general studies courses for a couple of semesters, but school wasn't really pulling him — music was. While attending school, he was also teaching drum lessons. Eventually, the opportunity to teach became part of what brought him back to Greensboro, where he continued playing in church and trying to build something around music.

That's when the grind really started.

He was teaching.

Playing.

Networking.

Showing up where musicians were.

Trying to get his name out there.

And still…

Nothing.

"I would not get any calls," Josh told me.

That became frustrating because he could look around and see other musicians his age working. Everybody seemed to be getting opportunities except him.

I know that feeling — that feeling where you know what you can do, you know what you believe God put inside of you, you're working, you're showing up, but nothing seems to be moving.

Eventually, Josh reached a point where waiting for somebody else to give him an opportunity wasn't enough. If nobody was going to call him to play, he was still going to play. So he took the drums outside, literally. Around 2014, Josh started setting up his drums at Center City Park in downtown Greensboro.

He would bring his kit.

Bring a big speaker.

Plug his iPhone in.

And play.

"I just wanted to play drums and no one was really calling me," he said. "So I was just like, well, let me just do my own thing."

That became Josh On the Block, now his Instagram handle.

And looking back at it now, I think there's an early lesson about obedience sitting right there. Sometimes we think obedience only happens during these huge, life-changing moments when God tells us to quit something, start something, or completely change direction. But sometimes obedience looks like continuing to use what God gave you when nobody is paying attention.

Nobody was calling Josh.

He played anyway.

Nobody was offering him the opportunities he wanted.

He kept developing his gift anyway.

By then, Josh already knew something about moving without immediate results. It took time — years, actually. Eventually, people started calling. Even some of the same people who had joked about him playing outside at Center City Park eventually called him for work. Little by little, the thing Josh had been trying to break into started opening.

The gigs came.

The work increased.

Music became part of how he made his living.

And eventually, Josh built a life where he wasn't waiting for work anymore. He had plenty of it, and maybe too much.

I Love the Hustle, but God I'm Tired.

By 2022, Josh was working full-time in landscaping, teaching drum lessons, playing gigs almost every weekend, and playing at two churches. And when COVID slowed down the gigs, he started his own lawn care business on the side.

Josh laughed when I called him a hustler, but that's exactly what he was. For years he had been trying to get opportunities. Now he had built a life where he was constantly moving from one thing to the next, but there comes a point when constantly grinding starts taking something out of you.

"The money is great," Josh said, "but I am tired and drained."

That's when the conversation between Josh and God changed.

"God, I'm tired."

He asked God for a way to take the 40 hours every week that he was giving his daily grind and put that time into himself. More than anything, he wanted that time back for his craft — his gift, his purpose. This didn't mean he'd be giving up everything, it meant one simple thing!

One day as he was sitting outside his studio, God spoke!

"I've already given you everything you need."

That'll preach by itself, because sometimes we keep asking God for something new while overlooking what He already put in our hands.

Josh could play drums.

He could teach.

He had his lawn care business.

He had relationships.

He had years of experience.

He spent years developing what God gave him — the pieces were already there. Josh just wanted to make sure those pieces were secure before he stepped away from his job, so he came up with a plan.

"Alright, I'm gonna work the rest of the year, stack my bread…"

I get it, honestly. It sounds responsible — save the money, build the cushion, get everything lined up, then move. Except that's not what God was telling him to do.

"You putting yourself before Me," Josh remembers hearing. "You're not trusting Me."

And then came the instruction.

It was January and Josh's timeline stretched to December, but God said March.

Now we get to the real heart of this story.

Because obedience wasn't going to be measured by what Josh said he believed. It was going to be measured by what he did next.

Bro, You Mean I Can't Save My Bread?

I laughed when Josh told me this part, because his reaction sounded like an actual conversation with God, not some deep, overly spiritual moment — just a man trying to understand what God was asking him to do.

"What you mean?" Josh remembered thinking. "I can't save my bread? I gotta save my money."

Because let's be serious, faith sounds beautiful until faith starts messing with your money. It's easy to say, God, I trust You. It's completely different when trusting Him means walking away from your paycheck without knowing where the replacement is coming from.

Josh had already spoken with his boss about eventually leaving — they had a good relationship, and his boss was also a believer. Remember, Josh wanted to leave in December and having already given the details to his boss, he had to go back.

"Look, I don't want to have this conversation," he remembered telling him, "but I prayed and God is telling me to do it in March."

No job lined up.

No tour.

No big opportunity waiting.

Nothing Josh could point to and say, "See, this is why God told me to leave."

His boss told him if God was telling Josh to go, he wasn't going to stand in the way, and if everything went left, he could come back.

Let's not skip over that part.

God told Josh he needed to leave his job. Josh did what responsible people do — he gave his boss notice, well in advance, on his own timeline.

Then God said no.

Not your timeline. Mine.

So Josh had to go back. Same boss he'd already given a plan to. Now he's got to walk in and say, actually, it's sooner than I said.

And the boss didn't get frustrated. Didn't push back. He told Josh, you're welcome back if it doesn't work out.

That's not just a good boss.

That's God moving in a room Josh wasn't even in.

That was the obedience, because if you're expecting obedience to immediately make Josh's life easier, that's not what happened.

Obedience Didn't Make Everything Easier

March came.

Josh left!

Things got shaky. The lawn care business Josh thought would help carry him wasn't moving the way it had before. Then his truck went down and now he couldn't even pull the trailer he needed for the business. The safety net Josh thought he had was disappearing.

"Bro, this doesn't make sense."

I felt that, because this is the part of obedience we don't talk about enough. What happens when you do what God told you to do… and things get worse? What happens when you did everything you knew how to do, and it still doesn't add up?

You moved.

You obeyed.

And now you're standing there looking at God like: Alright. I did what You told me to do. Now what?

That's where obedience turns into trust, because Josh could no longer obey based on knowing how everything was going to work out. He didn't know. He just knew what he believed God had told him, and sometimes that's all you get.

There have been moments in my own life where I've tried to make things happen. Looking for another door. Another job. Another answer. Something I could control. And God kept bringing me back to the same place:

Trust Me.

That's why Josh's story hit me differently. The job was gone, landscaping was slowing down, the truck broke, and money was getting tight. But the gift God gave him was still sitting there.

The drums.

And there was another side of that gift Josh had been interested in for years — he just hadn't fully stepped into it yet.

One Hundred Dollars

Josh didn't only love playing drums, he loved understanding them. Working on them. Setting them up. Tuning them. Cleaning them. He figured out how everything worked. He had already started posting content online showing some of that process. He wasn't posting because he knew it would lead somewhere — he was simply putting his work out there. Then things got really tight.

"I had one hundred dollars to my name," Josh said.

One hundred.

That's it.

And with that $100, Josh went to Home Depot and bought a tool set.

"In faith," he said, "I was just like, look, I'm gonna just get this tool set and whatever happens, happens."

There it is again. Obedience. Not because God necessarily told Josh, go to Home Depot and buy this exact tool set, but because Josh was continuing to move toward what had already been placed in his hands instead of retreating back to what felt safe.

Again, he didn't have the tour yet.

He didn't have the position.

He didn't completely know how things were going to break.

He just kept taking the next step.

Then the next one.

And eventually one of those steps was a phone call.

The Phone Call That Changed Something

Paul owned a backline company in Charlotte. He and Josh had been Facebook friends for a while, but they weren't close. Somehow Josh found his number, called, and left him a voicemail.

Basically:

My name is Josh Boyd. I'm trying to learn how to become a backline tech. I'd love to shadow you. If I can come down to the shop and learn, let me know.

Josh hung up thinking the man probably wasn't calling him back. But Paul did. He didn't just invite Josh down to watch — he also needed help with a show.

A show?

Josh, asked which show?

Maxwell.

This is where some of those steps that didn't make sense start connecting. A few months earlier, one of Josh's friends had given him and his wife tickets to see that same show. Josh had been sitting in the audience watching it. Now the phone was ringing with an opportunity to work it. Think about that. He obeyed in March without knowing where March was leading. Then the business slowed down. The truck broke. He got down to $100. He bought the tools. And he made a phone call. Now he was walking into an opportunity he couldn't have planned for himself.

One minute you're sitting in the audience watching.

A few months later you're behind the scenes working it.

About six months, to be exact.

But even here, I don't want the lesson to become, obey God and six months later you'll get everything you want. That's not Josh's story. Because the six months only make sense when you remember the years before them. Don't forget about the kid watching drums from the first pew, or the young musician nobody was calling. Remember, he was playing outside in Greensboro.

He was teaching lessons.

Networking.

Gigging.

Learning.

Posting content.

Buying the tools.

Making the call.

There were years of preparation before there were months of acceleration.

Josh didn't know where all of those pieces were going, but they were starting to meet each other.

And another opportunity was coming.

Then Came Masego

Another connection eventually reached out to Josh through Instagram. Again, another person who he didn't talk to everyday. In fact, they had met years earlier at a drummer shed — a space where drummers get together, play, work out, and learn from each other. They stayed loosely connected through social media, and years later, that relationship resurfaced into a potential opportunity.

An opportunity with Masego.

This time, there was a production company involved, and they didn't really know Josh.

They didn't know his whole story.

What they could see was his work. Remember that content Josh had been posting when nothing seemed to be happening — now it mattered. Production was considering Josh against other people, including someone already in Los Angeles where rehearsals were happening.

In Josh's words, the person in L.A. would have been a sure to get the job.

"In this business, it's easier to pay someone who lives in the same area as the job. It's just cheaper to pay!"

Eventually, they flew him out, and he was nervous.

"Imagine going from high school basketball to the league," he told me.

In this industry, going from playing drums in two churches, gigs here and there, and tuning drums to now having worked with Maxwell and a potential opportunity to work with Masego.

It was a bit scary.

But he went. And that's another piece of obedience we sometimes miss — God can open the door, but you still have to walk through it. Josh got on the plane and he did what he knew how to do.

After the interview, the worries and anxiety somewhat kicked in. Did I get it?

Then he came home. A few days later, he reached out to his friend from social media, asking what everybody thought of him.

"Did they hire somebody else?"

In fact, the other guy hadn't even been called in.

Josh got the gig.

And sitting there listening to him tell me all of this, my mind went right back to one thing.

March.

What If He Had Waited Until December?

That's the question that stayed with me. Josh wanted December, but God said March. What if Josh had waited? We don't know, and that's the point. Obedience doesn't give you the privilege of seeing both endings and choosing the better one. You have to make the decision before you know.

Josh moved in March.

Then the truck broke.

Money got tight.

The business slowed down.

Then came the tools.

The phone call.

Maxwell.

And then Masego.

Looking backward, the dots seem connected, he lived through them, and they probably looked scattered all over the place.

That's faith.

We want God to show us December while we're standing in March, when sometimes He's just requiring us to take the next step.

Being Good Is Just the Price of Admission

After listening to Josh explain how he went from playing drums in church to working behind the scenes with Maxwell and eventually getting the opportunity with Masego, I kept thinking about the way he described it.

Going from high school basketball to the league.

At first, I thought he was simply describing how big the moment felt. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized something else.

Once you get to a certain level, everybody can probably play.

So what makes somebody choose you?

I started digging into that question and found research on professional freelance musicians that made me look at Josh's journey differently. At the higher levels, technical skill is almost the price of admission. What can separate one person from another is how they think, adapt, prepare, and what they individually bring to the work.

And immediately, I thought about all those years Josh spent playing in church, teaching lessons, taking gigs, networking, tuning drums, learning equipment, posting videos, and even setting up outside in downtown Greensboro when nobody was calling.

None of it looked like a straight road to touring.

He was simply working.

Learning.

Building.

And somewhere along the way, he was building something else.

Trust.

Because when somebody brings you into a production at that level, they're trusting you with something that has somebody else's name attached to it.

The artist's name is on the ticket.

Their face is on the flyer.

Most people in the audience may never know the names of the people working behind the scenes, but inside the industry, those names and relationships can matter. Research has found that working alongside high-profile artists can build credibility and visibility among other musicians and professionals, even when the general public doesn't know who you are.

That's what made Josh's basketball comparison hit differently for me.

Maxwell wasn't just another name for his résumé.

Masego wasn't simply another gig.

Somebody at that level looked at what Josh had spent years building and decided:

We can trust him in the room.

Making it to the league doesn't mean the work is over.

It means somebody finally trusted you enough to put you in the game.

Obedience Is Better Than Sacrifice

Toward the end of our conversation, I told Josh that the biggest thing I kept seeing in his story was obedience. There's a biblical truth I've heard throughout my life:

"Obedience is better than sacrifice."

I'm understanding that differently these days, because sometimes we're willing to sacrifice a whole lot just to avoid doing the one thing God actually told us to do.

We'll work harder.

We'll stay up later.

We'll hustle more.

We'll create another plan.

We'll find another connection.

We'll try another door.

Meanwhile, God is saying:

I already told you what to do.

Josh's journey reminded me that obedience isn't passive, and it isn't about having the whole plan either.

When nobody called, he played outside.

When he wanted to learn, he studied.

When he had $100, he bought tools.

When he needed help, he made the call.

When the opportunity came, he got on the plane.

There were years of work, years of preparation, and years when nothing looked like touring. He didn't know March would connect to Maxwell. He didn't know the $100 tool set would lead anywhere. He didn't know a voicemail, an old social media connection, or the content he'd been posting for nobody would end up mattering. He couldn't see any of that when he made the decision.

He only knew what he believed God had told him.

March.

That's why Josh's story isn't really about touring.

It's not about Maxwell.

It's not about Masego.

Those are incredible parts of Josh's story, but they're not the lesson.

Obedience is.

Because before any of those names entered the picture, Josh had to make a decision when there was nothing in front of him guaranteeing that everything would work out. He still had to move before he saw where it was going. That's what this whole story comes back to.

Josh chose to obey.

Not what happened after he moved, but the fact that he moved before he knew what would happen.

Because that's where obedience gets real.

It's easy to call something God when you're standing on the other side of it, when the opportunity came through, when the money showed up, when the door opened, and when you can finally look backward and connect everything.

But what about when you're standing at the...

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