Country musician Walker Hayes credits his friendship with a pastor for helping him change his life from an alcoholic atheist to a sober follower of Christ. In an interview on Fox News, Hayes shared, “I’m eight years sober this October. I woke up one day when I was working at Costco. I worked at Costco from 4 to 11, then wrote and then played shows. And man, it caught up to me. And honestly, I had been drinking since I was probably like 13.”

Hayes’ awakening came before his success. One weekend after feeling he would die, he quit cold turkey and never looked back. He said, “I woke up one Saturday, and I just felt like I was going to die. I felt like physically, if I did one more day, something was wrong. And so I stopped, and then one day turned into two, and then two turned into a week. And then a week turned into a month. And then I did the whole high on sobriety thing and got into working out and stuff. Kind of traded a bad addiction for some good ones.”

While still struggling with alcoholism, Hayes shared that he and his wife lost their seventh child, a daughter named Oakleigh Klover, who died shortly after being born. On top of the family’s challenges, Hayes lost a recording contract and repossessed the family van used to transport their children.

However, an encounter with a pastor would change his life, eventually converting him to a believer in Christ. Craig Allen Cooper, the founder of Glad You’re Here Ministries, had committed to love on the country star and his family during their lowest point. Hayes was initially skeptical but said he was shown the love of Christ by Cooper, who even gave the musician his minivan.

Hayes recalled, “I lost a kid, I have nothing going on musically, I’m an alcoholic. I’m great at pushing people away. So here comes this guy named Craig, who was drawn nearer to me. And it was quite confusing. There were a lot of times when I was like, ‘What’s this dude’s deal? Like, why does he love us so much? Like, why does he keep feeding us food? Why is he giving me a minivan? Why is he encouraging me? Why isn’t he like everybody else?’”

Hayes added, “In the long run, I honestly found out he’s just as broken as me, but he just knows Jesus. He needs Jesus. Every morning he wakes up, he needs Jesus, and Jesus is a light through him.” The awareness of Cooper’s love began to turn Hayes’ heart toward Cooper’s God. “The answer is Christ,” Hayes told Fox.

Hayes wrote a song about their friendship before he became a believer, and recently the unlikely pair wrote a book together titled, Glad You’re Here: Two Unlikely Friends Breaking Bread and Fences. In a previous interview about the book, the Grammy-winning singer opened up about how surprised he was to be writing a book about Jesus.

“Faith has taken me by surprise. But it is overwhelming. How well it just fits [with] what I do,” Hayes told 25 News Now.