Seven-time GRAMMY Award-winning artist TobyMac returns with his latest project, “Heaven on My Mind,” this month.

Still processing a season of loss, including the passing of his son Truett and friend Gabe Patillo, the artist points upward to the hope found in eternal life.

The new record features 12 songs inspired by the hope of heaven and life on Earth, and TobyMac is introducing them to sold-out crowds on his current “Hits Deep” tour.

TobyMac recently took some time between tour stops to speak with BeliefNet about the new record.

The whole theme of the album, “Heaven on My Mind,” is that everybody goes through hard times (and you’ve gone through them, too). Did you feel a responsibility to speak up about the hope that’s bringing you through it?

I don’t think I feel a responsibility. I think I just try to write songs about the things that I’m processing, the things I’m walking through. I call it “the good, the bad, the ugly of my life.” I try to write about all those things, and that’s definitely one of them.

I mean, heaven has been on my mind just a little bit more the last few years. And it’s not like I don’t enjoy my life on Earth. I mean, the song says, “Life ain’t bad down here, but I got heaven on my mind.” So, it’s kind of like putting your mind a little bit on things above. It became a decision I had to make, meaning I had to.

When I lost Truett, it forced me to look at my life a little harder, to consider where I’m putting my treasure and whether I really, really believed or not. Honestly, I had to come to either it all in or all out for me, and it became all in, thank God.

What you said in your latest concert about heaven, I feel like there are a lot of people who can identify with that. Music typically does that anyway, no matter what people are going through.

I agree.

On this record, you have a duet with Juan Winans. How do these collaborations happen? Do you just bump into somebody, or do you say, “Well, you know, we always wanted to do this. Let’s just go ahead and do it”?

All of the above. I mean, specifically with Terrian, that was natural. She’s been in Diverse City for the last eight years. Now, she’s doing her artistry. I’ve done a few songs with her along the way, but I think this one is really special and really showcases her voice. It was just a conversation with Juan.

Juan contacted me, and he said he had the beginnings of a song that he could hear me on. So he said, “Would you listen to it and write some?” So I wrote my verse and another, the bridge, and I fell in love with the song. “Rear View” came from me knowing Juan for a lot of years, and the messaging really resonated with me because regret is something that I struggle with.

Sometimes, I look back on conversations or things that have happened in my life, and sometimes, I regret those, and I think that sometimes slows me down versus just walking in my calling and looking forward to those things that are going to happen, to those things that lie ahead.

Sometimes, regret locks me up. So, I really wanted to write that verse and sing about that because I know, as I said at the show you heard, and what I really think is kind of your first question too, is I always try to write songs for my life, because I feel like none of us are that different from each other. We are struggling with things. We’re all experiencing some valleys and some hilltops.

In your concert, when you said you’re a boy from Virginia who has spent most of your life in Nashville, I wondered if you would go back and talk to that boy who was moving to Nashville. Would there be anything you’d say to him?

I would say the same thing I say to any young man: “You don’t have to kick down doors. As a believer, you ask God to light your path, and you stay on the ready for the doors that He opens. And when He opens them, step through them.”