When he was an 18-year-old youth group kid, Austin French drew the short straw for his church’s youth-led Sunday service. He was prepared to play guitar and lead worship, something he was comfortable doing. Instead, he was assigned to deliver the message. Wracked with nerves, Austin searched the Bible to find something he could teach. He landed on Luke 7, the story of Jesus interrupting a funeral. The story is significant because for spiritual teachers of the day, participating in a funeral would make them ceremonially unclean. When Jesus saw a funeral procession going by, He ignored the custom, went and touched the coffin and said, “Arise.”

“It’s a parallel for our own lives,” Austin shares. “We are all dead in our sin, without a hope or a savior. Jesus says to us, get up, wake up sleeper.”

Austin’s newest project, Wake Up Sleeper, is inspired by that early sermon, a reminder that Jesus is ever-present in whatever situation we might be facing. With catchy hooks and impassioned, Spirit-fueled lyrics, Austin hopes to inspire those who may have become disillusioned with Christianity or perhaps have left the faith altogether, something he’s all too familiar with himself.