Don’t Waste Your Life

“The greatest cause in the world…

is joyfully rescuing people from hell, meeting their earthly needs, making them glad in God, and doing it with a kind, serious pleasure that makes Christ look like the Treasure he is” (John Piper, DWYL 122).

I love that.

Don’t Waste Your Life.

Song Stories

My excitement continues to grow. Mastering for the album is taking place in two weeks. Music is such a diverse art. One individual hears a sound and is disgusted with it. Another hears the same sound and is crying tears of joy. Some like country, jazz, rock, pop, metal, hardcore, the list goes on. The bottom line is that music effects people. My personal heart and vision for this music is more than simply entertainment, though I do listen to music for entertainment at times. I want it to be a journey into the Word of God and hope it stirs you to love it and do what it says. Certain music through the years has influenced the way I view God and has been a soundtrack for the ministry I do everyday. I pray this music effects you spiritually. You may not like the sound. You may love the sound. One sound of music rarely, if ever, is everyone’s preference. But I pray you feel the passion, hear the Word of God, and feel the tears through which many of these songs were written.

Over the next couple weeks I am going to post some song stories for you to know the background of why they were written. Mini Bible studies, if you will. They all have a purpose and a story.

Thanks for reading (and listening!).

Jesus Culture

I’ve been really impressed with this ministry of Bethel Church in Redding, CA. Great articles, blogs, music, conferences, and more. Check this out if you’re involved with youth/young adult ministry. These guys have a serious passion for the power and glory of God.

Faithfulness & Relevance

“By our breathless chase after relevance without a matching commitment to faithfulness, we have become not only unfaithful but irrelevant; by our determined efforts to redefine ourselves in ways that are more compelling to the modern world than are faithful to Christ, we have lost not only our identity but our authority and our relevance. Our crying need is to be faithful as well as relevant.”

- Os Guinness

Read Your Bible?

I was convicted this morning about the importance of reading the Bible. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But sometimes I don’t want to. I would rather read a powerful, relevant book by a great author. I would rather listen to music. I would rather go spend money on something. I think the more you don’t read the Bible, the more you adopt the world’s value system. I’ve noticed this in my own life. Spiritual matters don’t seem that important. Glorious truth about God doesn’t seem as powerful as it once was. Eternity seems like it may never come. Using a biblical word, one becomes worldly. Let me just say this to you:

There is nothing more relevant than the Word of God.

A.W. Tozer said, “We ought to learn to live in our Bibles”. The writer of Hebrews exhorts us to have our “powers of discernment trained by constant practice” (Hebrews 5:14). When we live outside the Word of God and simply go through our days, we are not being relevant to life. The Word of God keeps us truly relevant to reality. I don’t know about you, but I need to hear this today. I need Scripture to bear upon my heart every day or I lose focus. I think that’s why God said to meditate upon it day and night.

Do you agree?

Living Wide Awake

Today I’m reading Erwin McManus’ new book, “Wide Awake: The Future is Waiting Within You”, and wanted to share a few thoughts that I found inspiring:

• One of the most important characteristics of people who achieve the extraordinary is they live a life of expectation – they expect the good to happen; they internalize optimism (pg 92).
• It is very likely that the life God has given you as a gift today is the very thing he will ask of you as a sacrifice tomorrow (pg. 108).
• The unknown with God is always better than the known without Him (pg. 110).
• Some lives have greater impact in their failure than other lives with all the success they can muster. Are you settling for a life that essentially seeks the measure of everyone else’s value of who you are (pg 113)?
• Maybe there is something greater than happiness or prosperity, or wealth or prestige (pg 115).
• For some of us, our challenge is going to be to move from a life that simply looks for security to a life that longs for significance (pg 115)

These thoughts inspire me. I don’t want to simply live for all the world values. I would rather make sacrifices that influence eternity than to be secure and comfortable during this vapor on earth.

Thoughts?

Great weekend

I had the tremendous privilege of leading worship with the Allison Park Church Youth Fine Arts Band (Wow, what a long title) this weekend. This was a special experience for me because I’ve worked with a number of these students for the past few years and have seen them grow as musicians, worship leaders, and men/women of God. They are headed to Charlotte, NC next week to participate in National Fine Arts.

This weekend caused me to reflect on my own years as a high school student, the power of a dream, and choosing to seek God more than anything else in life. I’m proud of these kids and can’t wait to see where God takes them all.

Go and dominate Charlotte! (in a nice, humble, Christian way, of course).

Planned or Spontaneous?

I’ve recently discussed this with my worship team and have also been reading about it. When it comes to ministry, which is more spiritual and God-honoring – planning or being spontaneous? My answer to this question is ‘yes’. I believe we need a healthy tension of both in order to be effective. We need to plan because the Holy Spirit can inspire our planning, hard work, and preparation. We need to be spontaneous because the Holy Spirit may want to do something that he did not speak in advance. Total spontaneity can be a lazy cover-up for diligent study and preparation. Forsaking spontaneity may lead to dead religious activity. When you love someone, you plan special gifts and activities that will make them happy, but you also speak your heart in the moment without thinking about it.

What does this mean for our ministries?

Pray. Plan what you are going to do. Seek God with fervency in the secret place. Take what you receive and give it away. But don’t just minister off of your list of plans. Hold it loosely. Maintain your heart of submission to the Holy Spirit that says:

“The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps” (Proverbs 16:9).

and echoing the cry of Moses:

“If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here” (Exodus 33:15).

‘God, we need to hear your voice and have your anointing upon our plans, but enable us to know your voice so that when you speak and call us in a different direction we will listen and obey.’

New Brian Regan DVD

For those of you who are into humor, you should know about this. A brand new DVD. Brian Regan has a cult following around where I live and work (and probably the whole world). My friends and I can go whole days, saying nothing but Regan jokes.

You too?

Question for Worship Leaders

“Will our time together cause people’s view of, trust in, and desire for God’s glory in Christ and him crucified to increase?”

- Bob Kauflin (Worship Matters, 79)

As a leader, are you asking this?