Psalms (for the worship team)

I used to do a lot of songwriting back when Jessica and I were leading worship at the church we attended while in college, but I got away from it when I started at seminary and got into other ministry areas here at Family Church. I've always wanted to get back into it both because I enjoy writing but also because it's such a great way to stay in touch with God and what He's doing/saying.

Today I decided to do something a little different for my daily devotional. I opened my Bible up to Psalm 1, read through it, and decided to write some lyrics based on the theme of the Psalm. I put some stuff down, wrote a little melody, even worked on some of the lead and guitar lines.

Anyway, we've been talking and thinking a lot about doing a Family Church worship album and to do that, we need original songs and music! I think that we have a very, very talented group of musicians and some creative song writers. We could put together an album that would bless our congregation and potentially be a great tool for other churches in our denomination to use in their worship.

So, I would challenge all of you to join with me as I go through the Psalms, one at a time. Tomorrow I'm going to go through Psalm 2. Psalm 3 will be Thursday. I might not write songs every day, and not all (and maybe not any!) of the songs that I write will be worth recording. But, doing this will get us all in the spirit of worship. It will be contagious. It will change the attitude and atmosphere that we see on Sunday morning. I would encourage all of you to join with me as I go through the Psalms, and to start writing down your thoughts and prayers! It's out of our personal experience with God that our best worship will flow and the deeper we go with God, the deeper we'll take the congregation.

Pay Attention, the sequel

Have you read my last blog? Probably not, since I noticed that I have all of 27 views on my blogspot blog so far. (Thanks for clicking, mom!) It dealt with God speaking. I want to indulge this topic further, if that's alright with you.

Tulsa is hot. This time of year (July) the average temperature is in the high 90's. Our air conditioner runs 24/7. We had to put that expensive foil film on our west-facing living room windows just to keep half our house tolerable in the afternoon/early evening.

A couple days ago I was sitting on the couch minding my own business when a rather random and innocent thought passed through my head. "You really should change the air filter." I can't remember the last time I changed it, so it seemed like a good suggestion. I was proud of myself for thinking about it, since I don't normally do a fantastic job of thinking about things like air filters for the furnace.

Of course, I didn't actually change it. Today when I got home from church it seemed a little stuffy, especially since it was a relatively cool 88 degrees outside. I took a nap. I played with the kids. I checked my email. All the while it's getting hotter and hotter. Finally, I wise up and decide there's something wrong with the air conditioner. Apparently (according to the internet) it's possible for the air filter to get so dirty and clogged that it stops air flow within the system, somehow causing the coil to back up or something, and then freeze over. While my house was sweltering, the line from my air conditioner up to my furnace was frozen solid.

What if I had listened to that little, innocent prompting that I had a few days before? "You really should change that air filter." Obviously, my air conditioner never would have failed us. This is just one example of many, many, many others where if I had listened to the little voice inside my head (whether it's God or not) I would have saved myself a great deal of hastle and/or really blessed someone else.

As Christians, we have the Holy Spirit. Whether we chose to believe it or not, God does care about the little things in our lives. Even dirty air filters. So, I'm in process, learning to pay attention and act on those daily, innocent impulses that might just be God tapping me on the shoulder.