Chase the Setting Sun...

I woke up way late this morning. I either slept through my alarm or didn't set it right in the first place. I missed a youth fundraiser that I really should have been at. I immediately woke up feeling bummed out and guilty for missing the fundraiser breakfast. I had breakfast and watched some TV for a bit. The whole time I'm watching TV I, for some reason, kept talking myself into feeling worse.

I turned off the TV and decided to open up the Bible. Tonight Matt is preaching on 1 Corinthians 1:17-30 at Renovate, our contemporary worship service. I thought I'd get ahead and just read the beginning of 1 Corinthians. An hour later I had finished all 16 chapters of the book.

In Ephesians 6:17, Paul says that the sword of the Spirit is the Word of God. In those times when we're feeling attacked internally, when satan is telling us we aren't good enough, bringing on excessive guilt, making us second guess and doubt ourselves, God gives us His Word as a sword to fight back.

Earlier, I kind of just felt like staying home all day. My wife is flying back from Texas today, it's raining buckets outside, it's a great day to just stay inside. Instead, after spending some time in Scripture and prayer I actually can't wait to get to church and lead worship tonight. I am looking forward to what God plans to do through our little worship service tonight!

Scripture to me is alive, it meets each of us exactly where we are and corrects us, trains us and focusses us on what is truly important. Whether we're having the best day ever, the worst day, or something in between.

CCM tends to stick very closely to the positive side of the Christian life and who God is (love, glory, worship, power etc) and seemingly rarely focusses on the down side of life in general (sin, temptation, struggles, persecution etc.). When it does focus on these things it tends to be that Jesus overcame them. I'm not really sure why this seems to be the case. Maybe it is because most CCM is worship music so it is focussed on the God of love, glory, worship, power and so on.

I think worship music that occasionally focusses on the broken nature of humanity and the struggles we all face would be maybe even more powerful at times than constantly talking about how "my God is mighty to save". Even though He is...

Along with CCM (and lots of secular rock) I also listen to Christian rap artists like Lecrae, Tedashii, and Trip Lee among others (many of them on Reach Records). I've noticed that these rappers deal very effectively with human nature and the things that keep us from following whole heartedly after the God of love.

How could it impact our worship services if we were a little more honest, in our worship through music, about who we are and the very real reasons why we need a God that is loving, powerful, and mighty? Do you think there is merit to our worship music better contrasting the ways we constantly fall short with the ways God never does?

Am I totally missing the boat here? Maybe I'm just not well versed in Christian music and I'm missing a bunch of good stuff that fits what I'm talking about. I'll admit, I listen mostly to secular music even though I am a contemporary worship director.

What do you think?

This will be our first full spring as homeowners. I am looking forward to all of the fun that comes with owning a home in the spring time. The grass (and by grass I mostly mean weeds) is starting to turn green, trees are starting to bud, and a couple surprise flowers have popped up out back.

I am ready to get outside and do some work in the yard. I spent last weekend seeding and fertilizing the lawn in an effort to push the grass to weed ratio more toward the grass side. I'll likely have to paint our trim outside this year and potentially do some work on our chimney to help keep it from smoking in the house so much in the fall/winter months.

Hopefully there will be a deck and nice gas grill in our future, not sure when those will happen though. It is fun having new homeowner experiences as the seasons change.