This weekend my church recorded a live worship album.  Last week, I spent several of my nights in rehearsal in preparation for this event.  It was wonderful worshipping God nearly every night.  It was also interesting to watch myself gradually grow in my open worship to God as the rehearsals progressed.

I started with standing there with my hands in my pockets, showing almost no emotion.  It ended with me not being able to stand still.  Instead, I was dancing and raising my hands and openly worshipping God.  I just couldn’t contain my joy and gratitude for what He’s done.

It was wonderful!!!  We grow closer to God with each act of worship and service and effort to know Him.  I can truly attest to that.  It’s so fitting because this worship project is about growing deeper in intimacy with God.  And I have totally done that.  The lyrics to the songs that we’ve been singing have been living prophecy in my life.

I’m so thrilled to be a part of this project and I’m even more excited about hearing the CD and reading the companion book once they are done.

I love it how the songs resonate in my head even now.  I love music and there’s always an internal radio playing in my mind.  I’m stoked to add these songs into my mental radio rotation.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: worship, God, live, CD, recording, project, church, rehearsal, book, intimacy

I was eating at Steak ‘n Shake yesterday evening before choir.  As I tried not to make it obvious that I was watching the family in the booth next to me, I noticed young boy in the family start to read the little Steak ‘n Shake hat.

“Sin…sinc…since 1934,” he read, carefully.

His lack of ability to pronounce that word rapidly, caused me to dwell on it.

My mind rested on the word sin.  Then, a few seconds later, it rested on the word since.

And, as refreshing as shaved ice on a summer day, God dropped a wonderful thought in my head.

He reminded me of two phrases:

Since fullness and sinfulness.

I began to ponder in which perspective I was living my life.  Am I living since fullness?  Am I thriving in the complete restoration that salvation in God provides; remembering how my life has improved since beginning to live in His fullness?

Or…

Am I just struggling to make it by, living in sinfulness?  Am I caught up in how difficult life is and feeling like I’ll never get over my sin patterns?

Fortunately for me, I’m living in the mindset of since fullness.  However, unfortunately, many of my friends are living in the other perspective.  All they can see is their shortcomings and failures.  They see huge problems and deep ruts that they’ve been stuck in for days, months, even years.

I challenge you, reader, whether you know Christ or not, to consider how you live your life.  Instead of thinking of things as the glass half full or half empty.  Think of it as where your strength comes from.  Are you living in the fullness of God or are you struggling in the sin of your flesh?

Blogged with Flock

Tags: fullness, sin, redemption, salvation, God, eating, Steak ‘n Shake, children, families, thoughts, challenges

Many people idolize musicians. Be it secular fans or those who love Christian music, it still happens. I’ll go more into that concept in another blog, because this one seems to be taking a different direction.

Take a look at the show American Idol, for example. The title of the show points directly at this idol issue.

Honestly, I avoided watching that show because of its title. I thought to myself, “If they are going to publicly proclaim idolatry, then I don’t really want anything to do with it.”

Years later, we’ve got Christian artists formerly on Amerian Idol making a name for themselves. Take Mandisa, Jordin Sparks and Daughtry for example.

Upon further thought, I think it’s good those people infiltrated the show. God used them to draw people to Himself.

I flip out about trivial things such as the title of American Idol and vow to avoid those trends completely. I’m very word oriented. If someone uses the wrong form of a word to describe something, there is much potential to upset me. But, I realize later that I can’t completely avoid or boycot trivial word things.

I can’t run away from the influence of the world. Instead, I need to influence the world around me.

My perceptions of Christian music and what it is and what it should be have really changed, especially since I moved to Nashville a little over a year ago.

I’ve gone through phases that saying any artist that doesn’t fully proclaim and market themselves as a Christian artist isn’t really a true Christian.

I’ve believed that just because some artist (mostly the secular artists) thank God in their acceptance speech that they must be a Christian, too.

I was wrong in both of those perceptions. Now I’m glad when I find out there’s a Christian in a band that’s being an example to the secular world. Rather than get upset that they are in the mainstream market, I become excited that they are impacting the secular world with their Christian life.

And as far as secular artists thanking God in their acceptance speech, I’ve learned to judge that by their fruit. If they thank God for a Grammy and then go sing a song about objectifying women and abusing drugs, it’s not too hard for me to see that they don’t authentically honor God in their lives.

Although the title American Idol still makes me cringe a bit, I’m glad that God has used that show to bring glory to the only person that should be worshipped. That’s Him, by the way.

And, I can’t end this blog without bringing up the song “Lose My Soul” by tobyMac, Kirk Franklin and Mandisa. In that song, Kirk starts rapping and says, “America has no more stars/now we call them idols/you sit idle/while we teach prosperity.

A few seconds later, former American Idol contestant Mandisa starts singing.

It’s just ironic, I think. I originally got upset about that song because I was still bent up about the use of the word idol in American Idol’s title.

However, as I saw Mandisa perform and learned more about her, I realized that she’s totally in it for God. Yeah, she mentions American Idol in every interview that she’s had. (And, I must say that it used to annoy me that she did that.) But now, my opinion of that has changed as well.

Just because she was on that show, more people are going to listen to her. They give her more of a platform because of the American Idol contestant label associated with her name.

And though I’m sad about the reason why more people listen to her, I’m still glad that more people do listen.

Regardless of what I think about a particular person or their music, the most important thing to me is that the Gospel is shared.

As you can guess, I also used to become upset and say I didn’t like a band because of the way they acted or some things that they said.

And, instead of me sitting here bashing on someone because I don’t agree with their approach or labels, I need to join in unified step with them to promote the Kingdom.

I concluded, “If God’s ok with them, then I’m ok with them.”

When people are united in the glorifying of God, then God draws people to Himself.

American Idol’s new season starts tonight. I sincerely hope there’s another Christian in the ranks bringing glory to God rather than participating in the sought-after idolization of themselves.

2 Corinthians 5:17
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

As the 4th of July draws near and thousands of Americans venture out to buy fireworks to shoot into the sky, independence is on my mind.

However, it’s not the kind of independence that the July holiday celebrates.  Instead, I’ve been meditating on our days of dependence in Christ.

In recent days, I’ve come to notice that many Christians are ashamed to be totally dependent on Christ.   It’s interesting how ridiculously hard it is for people to come to the end of themselves.  To get to that point of the utter famine of self-reliant resources.  When they can no longer pretend they are ok in their own strength.

Why is it so hard for Christians to get to rock bottom?  Why are so many ashamed to bow their heads in personal defeat?

I think it’s because people are born independent of God.  Until the point of conversion to Christianity, a person has spent their entire life learning how to live for themselves.

When Jesus comes along He offers salvation through Himself, counsel through the Holy Spirit and a dependable, capable, loving Father.

Unfortunately, many Christians don’t make it past the point of belief.  They stumble at even really trusting God.  And if they don’t trust God, then can’t don’t depend on Him for everything.

I was just reading in 2 Kings today about the Israelites.  They knew God and at times worshiped God.  However, they also worshiped idols and served other gods at the same time.  They were the poster children (of God) for a lack of dependence.  Instead of proceeding swiftly to their Promised Land, they paused and tarried for 40 years in the wilderness in defiant independence.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to spend 40 years of my life wandering.  Nah, I’d rather get this dependence in Christ thing down now and be productive and fruitful.

In an attempt to tersify the point I’m making, too many Christians still live independent of God even though they are in a relationship with Him.  It’s kind of like they turn to God and say, “I love You, kinda.”

Let me assure that it’s not a shame to be dependent on Christ.  In truth, it is totally ok and biblical to rest in Christ.  I challenge you to the title of this blog: be dependent in Christ every day.

If Christians get to the point of depending on God, many do not make it past a few moments of dependence.  And maybe minutes, hours or a few days of dependence.  Sadly, however,  after they make it through their current struggle/trouble/problem, they stop totally depending on God and go back to a life of self-dependence.  Then, after the next problem causes their life to go into a downward spiral, they return back to God for more moments of dependence.  It’s a cycle.

Here I sit in my skeleton-staffed office a few days before 2008 graces the calendar.  I’ve received very few emails this week because most everyone that would email me is out on their personal between-the-holidays holiday.   However, to save vacation time and to meet my month-end/month-beginning deadlines I am at work right now.

I must admit that I’m a little bored.  I’ve been overly productive in the last three days after Christmas because there is no one here to bother me with extra activities.  Every few hours I check my junk mail folder just to see what insane stuff the spammers are trying to sell me.

And, to my surprise, even the junk mailers are on holiday.  I’ve received a minimal amount of spam this week. 

It made me shrug and smile a little.  Spam seemed less evil to me because it brought the humanality back to that junky practice since the humans are out on holiday and aren’t around to junk up my inbox.

Too bad the junkers can’t be on holiday all the time.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about suicide a lot.  Not for myself.  No.  That’s not an option for me.  Rather, I’ve been thinking about friends and people in my life who’ve been considering suicide or who have actually killed themselves.

With each passing day, it seems more and more socially ok for someone to choose killing themselves rather than living.  I’m not gonna lie, I have thought about suicide and its implications on my life.  Hasn’t everyone?  I haven’t thought about it enough to carry it out.  However, I have wondered, “If I ever did kill myself, how would I do it?”

What alarms me is that after typing what I just typed and admitting to thinking about those things is that I’m desensitized to the reality and morality of suicide.  I’m barely phased by what I just wrote.  That is very disconcerting to me.

Suicide has become so socially normal that it’s hardly impactful to anyone who doesn’t directly know the person who killed themselves.  What’s further sad, is that some people kill themselves after someone close to them killed themselves because they are in so much grief.

That’s just messed up, to put it bluntly.

The world itself (and this actually doesn’t surprise me) has an attitude of quick fixes and immediate solutions.  Rather than enduring and faithfully persevering, people choose to be faithless and impatient…to the point of personal death.

And what is the world’s answer for suicidal folks?  It puts suicide on a list of glorified and taboo subjects that aren’t to be talked about.  Did you know that most obituaries won’t cite suicide as the cause of death.  The only times when suicide is listed in an obituary is if the person is famous.  Every other time (for the most part) the family of the “lost” is too embarassed to publicly announce in writing that their loved one killed themselves.

*shakes head*

This is terrible.  Satan has got the world under a trap of silence.  He’s got people so full of shame and guilt that they won’t bring up their struggles.  Silence is darkness.  We need to shed light on Satan’s schemes instead of running away from awkward situations and problems. 

It’s too controversial to talk about too many things.  i.e. suicide, pornography, pre-marital sex, extra-marital sex, masturbation, cutting, eating disorders, drugs, alcoholism, abuse, STDs…etc.,etc. 

I don’t think people understand that we’re only feeding the fires of hell when we choose to be quiet about these things.  Satan l-o-v-e-s it when humans isolate themselves in the darkness of their problems.  When we separate ourselves from others, it’s all too easy for Satan to whisper lie after lie into our ear.  If we sit there in that darkness long enough, we become blind and then we cant see the way out.  And then, unfortunately, we become convinced that death is the only way to end the pain.

No.  *sigh* No.  That’s not the only option.  Love is the only option.  Speak love.  Speak life.  Bring the dark issues into the light.