Church Media and New CD’s

The hardest part of writing on my blog is trying to come up with a good opening paragraph.  So I may just go random thoughts.  I bought the new Passion CD, “Everything Glorious” this morning.  I was going to get it last night, but iTunes has some issues I believe.  I bought (not yet received) the old Misty Edwards CD, “Eternity“.  None of the music services had it, nor did any of my main shops (ChristianDiscs.com and iTunes).  I’ve got one song from PureTracks.com, and must say they’re pretty good too.  They have the new Hillsong United CD for $9.99 (while iTunes has it at $19.99).  There’s a DVD with it if it’s bought in packaging though, so I may not buy it right away.

On Sunday I went searching for more free multimedia and videos for church and found two resources.  One requires that your church (or a member?) register.  I’ve not registered.  However, the other does not.  Vine Resources is the one which does not require any registration.  The other is LifeChurch.tv (interview with why they do this).  I just thought that someone could use these for their own church (without searching all over the internet for them like I did).  The second source (LifeChurch.tv), has their resources as videos (NTSC and PAL formats) and Adobe Photoshop images (not really sure about anything else, or how these are downloaded since I’ve not registered).  That’s why we started MinistryTalk.com — we believe in free resources (services in this case) for churches.  By the way, the church sermons section is reopened and we are taking new applications on first come, first serve basis.  For information, check this page.

All Around Me

Ah, pressed for time tonight (hint: short read). I wanted to post some song lyrics, which I normally do not do. I’ve recently read how lead singer of Flyleaf, Lacey Mosley, became a Christian. I’ve added a little bit of this at the bottom. It’s was in a church magazine.

My hands are searching for you…
My arms are outstretched towards you
I feel you on my fingertips…
My tongue dances behind my lips for you
This fire runs in through my being…
Burning…
I’m not used to seeing you

I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive

I can feel you all around me,
Thickening the air I’m breathing
Holding on to what I’m feeling,
Savoring this heart that’s healing

My hands float up above me….
And you whisper you love me
And I begin to fade…
Into our secret place
The music makes me sway…
The angels singing say
We are alone with you…
I am alone and they are too with you

And so I cry…
The light is white…
And I see you…

I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive

Take my hand I give it to you
Now you own me , all I am..
You said you would never leave me
I believe you, I beleive…
I can feel you all around me
Thickening the air I’m breathing
Holding on to what I’m feeling,

Savoring this heart that’s healed

Flyleaf, “All Around Me”

Check Flyleaf out on iTunes and PureVolume.

Here’s how she found her way home:

“The preacher came on and started talking about experiences he’d come across in ministering, and it kind of described my whole life,” she admits. “I was shocked, but then he started talking about how Jesus died so he could take our pain away, forgive us from our sins and set us free. He started crying at one point and said he felt a suicidal spirit in the room, I felt like he was talking to me again. It made me want to turn away, but he said ‘God wants to take your pain away.'”

Mosely’s resistance walls began to melt. When church was dismissed, a fellow prisoner pulled her aside and told Mosley that she could find comfort in her heavenly father despite her earthy father never being around.

“I never knew my dad, but this really did catch my attention because this man at the church didn’t know me!,” she says with shock. “And the more he kept saying about pain, the more my heart broke into a million pieces. Finally when I was more desperate than I’d ever been, he asked if I wanted to pray, and I said ‘yes.’ I had my head in my hands, and he prayed for God’s peace to come over me. Jesus saved me, and it was the most awesome freedom I’ve ever known.”

Read more (bottom of the page)

Currently Flyleaf is featured on Yahoo! Music, in which the band states they are Christians and that they cannot seperate their faith from their music. I’ve got great respect for this group.

Bible on Radio

When I was searching around the internet for an audio Bible spoken in the New Living Translation, I came across a great resource on iTunes Podcast’s.  The podcast is from BibleOnRadio.com with about three minute introduction commentary with about two chapters (or about two pages) from the Old Testement and then a seperate for the New Testement, Psalms, and Proverbs.  Currently I’ve only listened to the Old Testements which I like to follow along with in my Bible (the iPod’s coming in handy with that).  I can pause and read the notes in my Bible too, if I need to.  I’m a slow reader (and find that reading and listening bunched together helps me understand better).  For those wanting to add it to their iPod’s, the iTunes page is located here.  Anywho, it’s not too late to jump right into where it’s at right now.  Each one is planned to be about 20 to 30 minutes per day (Old and New Testement, along with Psalms and Proverbs).

That Doesn’t Belong!

In other posts I’ve discussed removing certain things from my life (mainly being television). Over the past weeks I’ve also got rid of other things, such as certain websites that I went to. Some of these websites were really cool and at the time I enjoyed them. Now that I’ve left them though, I’ve not missed one of them.

MySpace was one of the sites that I removed from my favorites. I also deleted my entire account there. Honestly, it was a spur of the moment thing. I was actually in the bed already and just felt like the site wasn’t really helping my walk with Christ (possibly hurting it — this doesn’t count all the filth on the site), so I got up and thought about it for maybe two minutes and then deleted it. The website asked me if I was sure probably three times, so I had three chances to back out. I deleted my account there about a month and a half ago (I believe), and honestly I’ve not thought much more about it. I had a two or three people ask me if I deleted my account, but other than that I’ve not thought nothing of it. This weekend, a family member commented on my removing my account. This person wasn’t on my list or anything, they had just been watching it (or so I guess haha). I’m happy because it confirmed that it was right to delete it. The only social site I am a member of now is Facebook — and I don’t spend near as much time on it as I did MySpace, plus it’s cleaner and a little more mature.

I’ve since cleaned out my music and got rid of anything that wasn’t Christian. Some CD’s weren’t music, but I believe I broke over 25 to 50 CD’s this year. I’ve deleted other things that I’ve kind of held on to also, such as chat logs that are years old (really, I didn’t need them either). I’ve deleted all my chat logs since about a few weeks ago (that were modified) and I got rid of all the huge logs. I’ve done a lot of house cleaning and reorganization (I like to be organized though).

Reach Out

Eventful. Different. I enjoy randomness and change. I ate my first meal today at McDonalds (Spicy Premium Chicken Sandwich) — it was okay. Two o’clock I went to the church — I helped install the projector screen and I moved the microphone to the back where the computer is (so we can record the messages to the computer). I came home and my dad fixed something up that we never had before — it was good, filled me up. They left and gave Jenna some at work (or that’s what they said they were doing). While they were gone I got a call saying someone we know, his dad committed suicide. I guess I’ve never thought I’d know anyone in this time period who’d do that. I suppose I was wrong. It’s just so sad. One shot is really two shots. You’re not just killing your body, but you’re pushing yourself into eternity in an instant. I’ve just been hoping and praying the family gets over this easily and that as much evil the enemy meant to come of this, much more good will come out of it. To say the least, today has been a very different day (on many fronts, I suppose).

My church is having a get-together tomorrow night. Play games and socialize. I guess there’s not much to say until after the event though … I do like hanging out with the church family though, great fun!

My Glorious is one of my favorite worship songs. I bought the “Our Love is Loud” Passion CD from iTunes since they were two dollars off. Overall, that has been the best Passion CD ever released, in my opinion. Speaking of Passion, Passion 07 registrations starts next week (well, they’ll sell out within a few hours, I’d guess). It says the official site will be up next week. They will probably do a few awesome videos that make me want to go even more … maybe I’ll get to go this year.

Common sense. You know it’s going “out of style” when you do a search for it and you see ads on how to get “common sense” on eBay. For those that have no clue what common sense is, read this nice definition. It’s true that I don’t have common sense on everything (no one really does). I mean, if I worked on cars since I was a kid, sure I’d have “car common sense” and be able to diagnose problems better than someone who spent four years in college learning all about how to fix it. It’s the same way with everything, though. It’s bad, really bad, when someone who has eight years of book sense think they know all about something yet don’t know anything about how to actually diagnose a problem. Sure, there is always a ten-step manual that can be followed, but honestly, it could be something not even listed and someone with common sense would pick it up first — not the one with a ten-step program on how to diagnose the problem. I guess I’m just posting this to say that, in college, try to get lots of hands on experience with what you’re learning (real world, not lab experience). It’ll help in the long run. It’ll be bad the day jobs start requiring common sense and college education is just a “want” (not required). If I ever started a business I’d like to do a common sense test … college is good and dandy, but I’d want people with sense for the job.

Respect. Youth. It bothers me deeply when I see an adult (obviously greater than 25 to 30 years) does not respect youth and younger adults. Some just think they’re better or know it all. Others just want someone to beat down, so they find someone who doesn’t matter: youth. I don’t know everything. An adult who’s 98 doesn’t know everything. Would these people ever send Timothy out today? Or would he have to go to college before he could be any help to Paul? Paul obviously thought very highly of Timothy (or else he wouldn’t be referenced so often by Paul, nor help Paul in writing and sending the letters to the church’s). 1 Corinthians 16:10 says tells the church of Corinth to “treat him [Timothy] with respect”. Now, am I against adults? Of course not. I normally get out of situations where adults think they’re better than youth. Youth are told to respect those in authority (which is good), but those in authority need to also show respect.

Men in the church. The other day when coming home from school, I was listening to the radio and they were talking about why, there aren’t as many men in the church. They made the argument that one reason is that church is seen as a feminine thing and, for the most part, only tailors to the females. They brought out and excellent example of how there was once a church with a prayer room that was decorated with ribbons and such. The church wanted to reach more guys, so they asked them to come in and completely remodel the room. What they did was remodeled the room with items such as Celtic shields and the like. When I think of the remodel, it can have a deeper meaning and actually be exactly what a prayer room should be for — spiritual warfare. Finally, after the remodel, the guys were more “at home”, but the females loved it so much they couldn’t even stay away. There were many other examples too, but this was the one I liked a lot.

Randomness

I’ve not written in my blog much this month — only two posts!  That’s not good.  I guess I can attribute it to (aka: blame it on) school and slight hole I’ve been in here lately.  I’ve had several papers due this month.  Spring Break is in two or three weeks … I’m kind of ready for a week of not worrying about school.  Over the past few days I’ve been trying to catch up on bugs and features for E-Blah, it’s gone alright.

I don’t have that long, so I don’t want to dwell too much about those things.  The Passion Worship CD’s have made it to the iTunes home page.  This is awesome news.  Currently the latest preview from Passion ’06 has made a solid #5 for total album sales.  I’ve been reading the 286 Blog, very interesting stuff.  Reading it makes me want to go to Passion ’07 (in Atlanta, GA!!).  I need some people to go with me though (hotel and all).

Jason Upton is an awesome worship leader! I’ve known of him for a while.  I’ve just never really listened to him since about a week ago.  All his CD’s are on their shoutcast radio station. I’ve been playing that (it’s added along with the other five radio stations on my playlist — ChristianRock.net, The Night Watch, One Jesus, ChristianHardRock.net, CMRadio).  While on the topic of music, I found that Family Force 5 released their CD on iTunes earlier than the main release date.  I bought it … it’s so diffrent.  Randomness is good!