<p class="p1">Christian artist Kari Jobe said it was a season of loss and hardship that led to the creation of her fourth album, “The Garden.” </p><p class="p1">“There’s this ebb and flow in the project, kind of how our minds and our hearts work when we go through difficult things,” she said. “There’s hard days and there’s easier days and you can hear that in this music.”</p><p class="p1">The singer-songwriter, who began singing when she was 3 and leading worship in her church by the time she was 13, will perform in Lake Charles at 7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 24, at Glad Tidings Church, 3400 Texas St. </p><p class="p1">Jobe said it amazes her how God can change people and communities through music. </p><p class="p1">“Music became a healing thing for me as I walked through different trials growing up, different hard experiences that we had</p><p class="p1">as a family.”</p><p class="p1">She said it was in her teenage years she realized the gift she had been given.</p><p class="p1">“I just was so impacted that music could really help you say something, it helps you pray, it helps you find peace and hope. I just wanted to do something like that with my life,” she said. “I wanted to give the gift that God had put on my life to help people instead of just doing music for the sake of music.”</p><p class="p1">Jobe said “The Garden” describes just how music can help one find hope and peace in the midst of loss.</p><p class="p1">“I was pregnant with my son and my sister was pregnant as well with a little girl named James Ivy, and right toward the end of her pregnancy she had a stillborn baby. It was just, as you can imagine, extremely devastating,” she said. “I’m really close to my sister, and I wanted to help her walk through that grief. It was a season of a lot of intense emotions.”</p><p class="p1">Jobe said those emotions are what led to the 14 tracks that make up the record.</p><p class="p1">“I was in the writing process already for a new album and just began to pour all of my questions of God, all of my sorrow, all of my disappointment, I just started writing out of that place,” she said. “As I began to get a little more healing, a little more peace in the situation, you can hear that in the songs</p><p class="p1">as well.”</p><p class="p1">Jobe, whose opening act is husband Cody Carnes, said she uses her tour not to perform a concert, but to spend time in worship.</p><p class="p1">“Worship for me is always an exchange that happens because I can come in feeling one way and I leave feeling something else because my faith has been encouraged or I’ve been able to pray and really be with God during the worship,” she said. “I feel what other people are getting as a takeaway, I’m getting some of that, too. I’m encountering the presence of God, too.”</p><p class="p1">Deluxe tickets for Jobe’s show are $39.95, which includes a pre-show question-and-answer segment, or $24.95 for general admission; a family four-pack is $19.95 as is the ticket price for groups of 10 or more. </p><p>Kari Jobe said she uses her tour not to perform a concert for an audience, but to spend time in worship. (Special to the American Press)</p>