When singer Taya Gaukrodger—known simply as TAYA—comes on stage, the intent of her heart is crystal clear—to get out of the way and point to the glory and majesty of Jesus.
The Australian-born singer, who has performed before millions in at least a dozen countries and whose music, including Oceans (Where Feet May Fail), has been streamed more than a billion times, longs for Jesus Christ to be magnified in everything she does.
“Every single time, before we get to step on any platform, regardless of how many people are in the room, we always gather and pray,” she says. “We align ourselves again with Him. And when I say align, I mean just recognizing our deep need for Jesus.”
The same Jesus she gave her heart to at age 5 when her mom led her in the sinner’s prayer in her bedroom in the small town of Lismore on Australia’s east coast.
The same Jesus who saw her through the tragic deaths of four friends during her final year of high school, nudged her back to Him when she started to drift at age 16, and has always put her in the right place at the right time to accomplish His purposes for her.
Music has been a part of TAYA’s life from the time she was a little girl listening to Fleetwood Mac and the Beatles on her dad’s turntable and classical music on the radio. Her dad was an elder and worship leader at the small church they attended, and her mom loved to play the guitar and sing at home.
“She had an old hymn book that she would spread out on the ottoman, and she would pluck the guitar and sing out hymns to Jesus. She loved singing to Jesus; she loved His presence.”
TAYA also felt God’s presence when she sang.
Which taught her that she doesn’t have to be on stage or in front of an audience to worship.
“Romans 12:1 says that we are to live our lives ‘in view of God’s mercy,’” she says. “Forget everything else. Simply in view of God’s mercy, place your everyday life before Him—your eating, your sleeping, your walking around … place your life before God as a sacrifice, holy and pleasing to Him.”
It was in view of God’s mercy that TAYA cried out for Him to use her when she was at a youth conference in high school when she was about 17. God had just rescued her from a brief period of wandering.
“My parents had stopped going to church, so there was no one making us go,” she says. “I went to a party, I got tipsy, somebody kissed me, and I thought, I am not enjoying where this is going. I know that I need a church community. I went to my older sister and said, ‘We need to go to church.’
“So we went to this church I had visited before and really loved the music. Suddenly we had a youth pastor, who preached messages we could understand, and I was introduced to the Message Bible and started to learn how to have devotional time and to journal.”
It was in that setting that the accident took her friends. “I just sensed God’s kindness in the timing because had it been during those couple of months I was away from church, I don’t know where I would’ve been. I will forever be grateful for that church community, and I think as well to have my own genuine personal relationship with Jesus, not based on my parent’s faith, but knowing that even if I drift, He is the anchor of my soul.”
TAYA had always planned to go to university and study medicine, like her parents wanted, but after the accident, that no longer seamed appealing.
“I started thinking, If life is short and nothing is promised, I want to be doing something that matters. Music is the thing that makes my heart come alive, so why go to university?”
She continued her retail job and going to church, where she worked in the youth ministry and sang on the worship team. At age 21 she told her parents she was moving to Sydney to become a signed recording artist, hoping that would sound better to them than simply “I want to be a singer.” She had only $200 in her bank account from her retail work, and no job or place to live; but from the beginning, she knew God was with her. She arrived on a Thursday, had a place to rent by Monday, and immediately started attending church at a Hillsong campus.
Due to her work schedule, she couldn’t serve in the music ministry, so she served with the youth, sometimes only getting to the meetings in time to help clean up afterward.
Meanwhile, she decided to audition for Australia’s version of The Voice. She had traveled for a year after high school doing backup for an R&B artist who had won, so she thought maybe that was a way to launch her career. But while waiting to hear back from the show, she got a text inviting her to sing backup on a Hillsong United album.
“They asked me to just sing along,” she says. “I think they were just trying to hear my voice. Then they said: ‘Can you come back tomorrow? I think we have a song that we’d like you to try.’”
The song was Oceans, which became a No. 1 radio single on the Billboard Top Christian Songs chart and remained there for a record-setting 61 weeks. And the lyrics mirrored what God was about to do in her life. You call me out upon the waters / the great unknown where feet may fail.
She was immediately thrust into the national and international spotlight, traveling the world with Hillsong. “God took me to places where I had nothing else to lean on,” she says. “Places where it was only by His Spirit that I could go.”
And God brought along Ben, who had also been a youth director, and who pursued TAYA until she said yes. They married in 2018. She released her first solo album in 2022 and the couple now live in California. In 2023, after 10 years with Hillsong, TAYA felt God calling her into a solo ministry, which now includes Ben and their 1-year-old son, Bo.
“I feel like I’m in a season where I’m having to trust God more than ever. Learning how to do this as a wife and as a mother. We are trying to carry all of this stuff, and all of a sudden we have this little guy who is dictating what we do.”
She takes the posture of Moses before going on any stage: “God, if You don’t go with us, we don’t want to go.
“I love how the Scripture talks about if what we do is void of the presence of God, it is like the sound of a clanging gong, which holds no meaning and holds no power. It might be a nice sounding voice, but unless the power of God is moving through it, it’s empty.”
In view of not only God’s mercy, but His provision and His faithfulness, TAYA more than ever directs her audiences to cast their eyes on Him, even interrupting their applause as she did earlier this year at a Franklin Graham Tour Event in El Paso, Texas.
“This is not praise for us up here, but this is for the Lord Jesus Christ! So from the beginning, would you lift your voice? Would you lift your hands? Give praise to the King of kings, the Lord of lords.” ©2024 BGEA
Photo: Logan Ryan / ©2024 BGEA