Lainey Wilson stood at the podium at the GMA Dove Awards and told the room exactly what she had said the day the song was born.
“I said, ‘I feel like the Jesus I know now is not the one that I grew up knowing,'” she recalled.
That honest sentence, said out loud in a Nashville writing room, turned into “The Jesus I Know Now,” her duet with Brandon Lake, and on October 6 it won Country/Roots Recorded Song of the Year at the 57th GMA Dove Awards at Bridgestone Arena. The two sang it together that night in a quiet, stripped-down performance, and when it was over Lake turned to the crowd.
“Give it up for my sister, Lainey Wilson,” he said.
Lainey Wilson’s Faith Story Became the Song
The song came out of a run of writing sessions Lake held with country artists and songwriters early in 2026, and Wilson walked in ready to talk about more than music. She told the Dove crowd that the two of them started talking about their relationship with Jesus the minute she sat down, and that she has learned so much from the people she gets to write with.
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Luke Laird and Emily Weisband wrote it with them.
The verses walk back through the fear-based picture of God a lot of church kids grow up with, and the chorus lands on a Jesus who forgives and stays. One verse even admits that success did not fill the hole she expected it to. Lake sings the first verse and Wilson takes the second. They released it on Good Friday, April 3.
For You
For Wilson, this is not a side trip. The Louisiana native has been singing about faith for years in songs like “Me, You and Jesus” and “Sunday Best,” and church was the foundation of the family that raised her.
Lake also let it slip that the two have written another song together, called “Lost Sheep,” and promised to buy her a sheep named Brandon.
Dolly Parton Was All Over the Dove Awards
The night belonged to Dolly Parton too, six weeks after she died. Near the end of the show, Amy Grant and Natalie Grant paid tribute to her with a performance that included “How Great Thou Art,” and Dolly won a Dove of her own, Bluegrass Recorded Song of the Year, for “Broken Angels” with The Grascals.
Wilson brought her into the acceptance speech.
“We are connectors, and that’s what we’re supposed to be doing. Just like Dolly Parton did, we are supposed to be loving on people and lifting them up,” she said.
Lake had a big night of his own, winning Songwriter of the Year for the fourth year running and Pop/Contemporary Album for King of Hearts. Wilson summed it up afterward in one line on social media, calling it an honor to celebrate with her brother.
A girl raised in a Louisiana church said out loud that the Jesus she knows now is not the one she was taught to fear, and gospel music handed her one of its biggest awards for saying it.
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