At any rate, like I said, it was an awesome weekend. I am blessed to be a musician first of all, but more blessed to be able to use that talent to serve God. I played clubs and bars for over 20 years before giving that up completely to play for my church and I just gotta say what an amazing ride this has been. Friday I played an acoustic set with four of the most talented people I know for about 300 people. Saturday and Sunday I got to play for several thousand people, again with some insanely talented people including Patrick Contreras, who’s a well known musician in these parts.

So from Friday to Sunday I played the cajon and the drum set. I played ballads, R & B, Blues, and straight up rock. From a musician’s standpoint, it’s heaven. I’m getting opportunities I’ve never had before and I attribute it all to just deciding to give my playing to God. Pastor Steve talked a lot about that today. About giving up doing things for yourself, and finding God’s greater purpose for your life. My playing has taken on a larger purpose and I’m reaping the benefits of that. I am blessed.

But that’s not what really made this a great weekend. What made it a great weekend was watching people come to Jesus. We did something Clovis Hills has never done before, we did a public call for baptisms. Anyone who wanted to come forward and get baptized could do so. Right there in the service. Honestly, I didn’t expect many people to come forward. Our church is a church geared toward people who have never gone to church, or simply have been turned off by other churches. It’s a church for people who don’t like church. But Steve gave the call, we kicked into a song, and people came. And they kept coming. 45 people in all, being baptized in their street clothes and driving home soaking wet. It was just so moving to see people making a decision to live for a higher purpose. These are lives that are changing for the better, right before our eyes.

I got home to find a Twitter post from somebody saying “Neat magic trick Jesus. But the world is still full of ignorance and hate. Your move.”. And to that I would say that Jesus has already made his move. He made it when he died on the cross, rose from the grave and wiped away our sins 2000 years ago. So it’s not His move, it’s YOURS. What are you going to do with it?

I hope everyone has had a fantastic Easter. God bless.

And what an amazing time Christmas really is. It’s the one time in all of history when God actually steps foot on the Earth in human form and provides a way that we can be forgiven for our sins. This is so significant and I’m amazed that people don’t get it. We can be forgiven! What other world view or religion offers complete reconciliation with God? None that I know of. In most religions you just kind of have to be as good as you can and then hope when everything is tallied up you come out with enough brownie points. The bad part is you don’t know how many points you have, how many you need, or how much longer you have to earn them.

But in Jesus we have the God of the universe coming to Earth as a human, to live among us, to teach us, heal us, love us, experience life with us first hand, and ultimately to endure the horrible death of crucifixion in order to completely wipe our dirty slates clean. Give us unlimited points! Matthew 21 says “She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

And so this is an incredible time of celebration. And what’s just as important is that it’s a time for ALL of us to celebrate. Christmas is not something that belongs to an organization, or a belief system, or a cultural group. Jesus came for ALL of mankind and that is something we so often forget. We’re so wrapped up in the traditions and that slogans and we spend so much time being offended by people saying Happy Kwanzaa that we forget the fact that Jesus came for all of us. He came for the Kwanzaa celebrators, the Jews, the Muslims, the Hindus, the Sikhs, the plain old non-believer, and everyone else. Romans 3 says “Is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too”.

So I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge this fantastic event we’re celebrating and to wish every single person out there a very MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Browsing the site today I found that they have added a really cool feature and so I wanted to blog about it. They’ve added the ability to use reading plans. If you’re not familiar with reading plans, they are basically a plan for reading the bible and there are many different plans depending on how you want to approach the Bible. Some focus on the New Testament, some focus on certain timelines, some are well balanced and cover various parts of the bible every day. Some are also based on time, so if you want to read the entire bible in 6 months or a year, you can if you follow the plan.

The bad part about plans is that they were mostly tied to a certain start date. So if you wanted to read the bible in a year you started on Jan 1 and finished on Dec 31. If you missed a day or two, you had to catch up or you screw up your plan and then it’s real easy to get lost.

YouVersion fixes this by adding check-off’s for each day you read. So now, rather than having certain readings tied to certain days, you just take them in order at your own pace. I’ve been wanting this type of feature since I totally failed at my “bible in a year” reading plan last year.

You can also use the mobile version of their website on your iPhone, so there’s more opportunity to read the Bible regardless of where you’re at.

Check out http://YouVersion.com

Today we found out that she got turned down for another job. This one only a part time position making less than half of what she made at her last full time job. It’s crushing and it’s a testament to how crappy the job situation really is in this country.

So she’ll continue looking. But it’s hard. We’re fine financially. We can’t do a lot of extra things, but we can pay the bills so I’m not complaining. But the mental and emotional toll is what’s hard. This is when you start questioning yourself. You start questioning where you’re going and what you’re doing and what you’re worth. And as a husband I not only have to carry the full burden of our finances, I also have to bear the burden of the emotional well being of my family. Self-pity and self doubt are evil things and can quickly paralyze. So it’s up to me to keep things positive and everyone motivated.

What really works on my psyche though is just wondering where God is in all of this. It’s really easy to just say everything’s in God’s hands. But in real life, when you are facing something that you honestly feel is important for very valid reasons, and yet it’s just not happening for you… it really starts to work on you.

There’s a song I like, and honestly I don’t even really know or care what the song is really about, but there’s one line that says “What if God doesn’t care?”. And if there’s a chink in my armor of faith, it’s that thought. What if the things we think are important just aren’t important to God? What if they just don’t matter one way or the other?

And so this is where my faith gets confused. I always hear people say that God is leading them into one line of work or another and then they fail fantastically. And I just wonder, really? Was God really leading you to that collosal failure? Or did you just have this grand dream on your own and God really didn’t have an opinion one way or the other?

I don’t want to sound like I’m having a major failure of faith because my wife hasn’t found a job. That’s not the case. There’s two things I believe are true; that God loves us, and that God is in complete and absolute control. But my problem is learning to accept the fact that my plans aren’t always in line with God’s plans, and even though sometimes God’s plans can feel a whole lot like indifference, I need to believe that ultimately his plan will be better than anything I could have made for myself.

However, there are some things to talk about; Journey. Yep, the band from the bay that we all love, or love to hate. Personally, I love them. I think they rock. Not in the bang your skull against a brick wall kind of rock that I normally dig, but more of a feel good, get in your Pontiac Trans-Am with T-Tops and crank the cassette deck while driving real fast with your feathered hair girlfriend kind of rock.

OK, when Journey was huge I wasn’t old enough to drive a Firebird, or have a girlfriend with feathered hair. But my brother did, and he loved Journey, and I looked up to him, so that’s the image that pops into my head whenever I listen to them.

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because our band is rocking Journey songs every weekend for the month of October. And where are we rocking said songs? Church. Yes, we are rocking Journey songs at church, which honestly, I think is the coolest thing on the planet.

Let’s face it, hymns are cool. Acoustic guitar sing alongs have their place….. ok maybe not…. but anyway, to the non-christian walking into church, those things are kind of creepy. Why? Because nobody in the everyday world sings hymns or does accoustic sing alongs! We’re rocking out in the real world, man! So this gives us the opportunity to give people something familiar. Make them feel welcome. And it also helps us old rockers get our rock fix.

So I’m on the schedule this weekend. The band and I will be busting out “Anyway You Want It” and our pastor is going to continue his fantastic series of talks on navigating through tough times. It’s going to be a great weekend at Clovis Hills Church.

Enjoy.

[Click Here]

! UPDATE !

It’s all about serving today. Paul just posted an awesome video from Sunday’s service.

[Click here to check it out]

What makes this new book interesting though is that Anne Rice is now a Christian, after 38 years of atheism. This new book details her life, how she turned away from Christ, and how He brought her back to him. Her story is truly amazing and inspiring. Rather than try to poorly recap the whole story here, I’ve provided some links to an interview with Dr. Dobson on the internet as well as a link to her book on Amazon. Check it out.

Dr. Dobson / Anne Rice interview, part 1

Dr. Dobson / Anne Rice interview, part 2

Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession

So like I said, I was confused. But Paul had given it to me, and I trust his opinion, so I figured I must be missing something. So I went to Amazon’s review section and pulled up the negative reviews. When you want to know what a product is like, only look at the bad reviews. If they are all petty and nitpicky, you are probably looking at a pretty good product. Anyway, the bad reviews all said pretty much the same thing… the book was bad because Don Miller isn’t “Christian” enough. I immediately re-opened the book and plowed through the rest of it. It was probably one of the best Christian books I have ever read.

The reason this book is so good is because it’s one man’s story of his Christian journey. It reads almost like a diary, talking about different situations in his life and what he learned from them. It’s very light on direct scripture quotes (I can’t remember seeing one) and very heavy on emotion and self examination. It’s light on religious jargon and judgmental attitudes, and heavy on relationships and love. This bothers a lot of people because they think it indicates moral relativity, but Miller obviously has read and knows the Word, and I think in his reflective, moody way, he nails the essence of Christianity better than just about any author I’ve read.

So I highly recommend it to Christians and non-Christians alike. Good stuff.