Tag: praise

We are in a war!


It has been a long time since you have seen or heard anything from this minstrel who used to take time to share his thoughts and hopeful not just mine but thoughts that come from God’s heart and mind to you as a ministering musician.   I have felt for a week now I need to begin blogging again.   Listening to John Ramirez ex-satanist now evangelist testimony of Jesus intervention in his life this last hour, hearing a testimony today of a young woman who Satan deceived into meditation, astral projection, and subsequent demonization and Jesus rescue of her, and finally  looking at media reports following President Trumps successful order to kill a top Iranian General through a U.S. military drone has me thinking about war a lot today.

The apostle Paul says clearly in his letter to the Ephesian church starting with chapter 6:10 the Message version – “That about wraps it up.  God is strong and he wants you strong.    So take everything the Master has set out for you, well-made weapons of the best materials.  And put them to use so you will be able to stand up to everything the Devil throws your way.   This is no afternoon athletic contest that we’ll walk away from and forget about in a couple of hours.  This is for keeps, a life-or-death fight to the finish against the Devil and all his angels.  Be prepared.  You’re up against far more than you can handle on your own.  Take all the help you can get, every weapon God has  issued, so that when it’s all over but the shouting you’ll still be on your feet.  Truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation are more than words.  Learn how to apply them.  You’ll need them throughout your life.  God’s Word is an indispensable weapon.  In the same way prayer is essential in this ongoing warfare.  Pray hard and long.  Pray for your brothers and sisters.  Keep your eyes open.  Keep each other’s spirits up so that no one falls behind or drops out.  And don’t forget to pray for me.  Pray that I’ll know what to say and have the courage to say it at the right time, telling the mystery to one and all,  the Message that I, jailbird preacher that I am responsible for getting out.

This year I have felt the Lord urging me to move forward in develop the  music minstrel umbrella organization to act as a covering for a ministry that  focuses on preparing the church for God’s coming Kingdom and our coming Bridegroom King  and equally so I have felt the need to proclaim the love of Jesus Christ for all people that they would know and understand and feel the love of Jesus for them personally as they listen to the testimony of Jesus in Spirit-filled music.  Music has a way of carrying both thought and emotion that goes with it whether it be our thoughts or the Holy Spirit’s thoughts through us as God’s servants.    It is an important medium through which God the Father and the Son express themselves to us and we to the Father and the Son and to our fellow human beings through the Spirit.   I struggle to move forward knowing that moving forward means potential misunderstandings, challenges, the possibility of physical, and emotional pain, financial cost, physical energy drain, time spent investing outside of what I currently am committed to doing which is running a farm business, and being involved in local and some  ministry beyond Beechy.  However, the Lord continues to ask me and tell me that it is the time to move forward so move forward I have and move forward I will by His help.   If you are interested in praying for this ministry I will share vision for the ministry via a private facebook group, please comment and I will  connect you.    My most urgent need as Paul lists here is prayer, I ask that you would pray for grace to overcome all obstacles to get through the planning process for this ministry as well as conviction and follow through to do the ministry assignments the Lord gives me as I work on building the organization this year.   I will need a 3 member board to begin with and I am praying for 3 kinds of people one who is administrative, one who is a mature prophetic-intercessor and an accountant.    I will be setting up a private facebook group to communicate with those of you who feel called to pray for this ministry as it goes through it’s designing and building process.   This is not going to be easy but I know the one who calls me is faithful and so I will trust and obey knowing everything I need will be provided.

There have been some major things the Lord has been doing in my life these last 2 years while I’ve been away from the blog.  I have gone through a healing discipleship ministry called Freedom Sessions which the Lord has used to do a lot of healing in my heart and others in the Beechy area.   I’m going through it again and I felt the Lord wanted me to focus this time on the hurts which happened which resulted in me aborting the plan to launch this ministry in 1999-2000 when I first tried to do this.   The armour of God that is listed in Ephesians 6 is what we need to successfully fight the devil and overcome him and do the work which Christ has called us to do on earth before His coming.   We need to believe God’s word and confess it out loud after hearing it.   We need to obey God’s word taking action on it.   We need to trust in the righteousness of Christ to cover our sins and our heart from being wounded by the accuser.   We need to rest in the knowledge that we are saved, we are being saved, and we will be saved from all that the enemy will bring against us and the sins that so easily beset us, because Christ is victor and He is our Lord.   We also need to move in the Spirit’s ways of peace in our relationships with those who know Jesus and those who don’t yet.   Why, because people are not our enemy even though the enemy uses people to cause us pain and those we love.   The last thing I want to say is praise is a weapon.   Remember that brothers and sisters when you feel under attack.   Fix your thoughts on Jesus the author and perfecter of your faith by praising Him with all your soul, mind and strength.   Give Him thanks, exalt His name the name that is above every other name.   For at the name of Jesus demons flee and at the name of Jesus all heaven and earth will bow because He is King and rightful ruler of earth no matter what is going on right now.  He will work for good the painful things going on in your life because He has promised to do that for those who love Him even though now it’s painful.  Paul and Silas praised and worshipped our Lord and Saviour in jail after being beaten.   There is something powerful that happens when God hears suffering saints worship and praise Him, somehow He is moved and He does things on earth as it is in heaven when we worship and praise Him in the midst of our trials and struggles.   God is delighted to bring deliverance from our enemies because He delights in us and he actually has an entire angel army that is quite capable of getting done what needs to be done without our help.   Because that is their job to serve and minister to those who will inherit God’s salvation.  Isn’t our King Jesus amazing.   So whatever you are going through right now I pray that God will give you strength to obey and persevere and bring Jesus glory wherever you live.

Today’s song is a song I sang last Sunday when I was teaching on the resurrection of Jesus and our death and resurrection with Him that places us in a place of victory over all our enemies.   May you experience the victory of Christ over all your enemies as you follow your Father in heaven’s leadership and walk in His joy over you in 2020.

 

 

Sacrifice of Praise

Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world

Thank you for your patience in waiting for next blog posts on worship.   I have been reading in the first books of the Bible since the new year and I am in Leviticus right now which is the book about what being a priest was like and now just read of festivals etc.   As I am reading this, I am reflecting on various movements who have sought to reclaim the biblical festivals in our lives, the obedience to the laws of Moses and living out a Yeshuah focused life but endorsing obedience to everything Moses taught as well.   So my question sometimes is God, what are you requiring of me?  What does worship look like for me as a new covenant believer.   The thought that occurred to me that if the festivals are binding on me, and the law then it should still be eye for eye and tooth for tooth, and animals must be sacrificed, festivals absolutely must be celebrated, all these things must be obeyed, you can’t pick and choose parts of a covenant with God, it’s all or nothing.

 

The other thing I have been reminded of is the consequences of sin and the only way for justice and mercy to be done when we sin is either we or an animal has to die for forgiveness and right relationship with God to be restored.  I have to admit I have totally lost sight of this for the most part.  I’m way to casual about sinning against God.  So much so I have a hard time with some of God’s consequences in Old covenant before Christ.  Some sins were so bad and contagious that death of the person committing them was the way God required us to deal with sin.  Forgiveness eternally with a repentant person being put to death, but their sin required forfeiting the rest of their earthly life.   Certain sins committed were dealt with like we deal with mad cow disease, kill all those infected because there isn’t a way to separate the disease organism from the host to eradicate it.     In light of this I realized the importance of regularly celebrating the Lord’s supper or communion which is the fulfillment of the passover meal which Jesus completely fulfills as the Lamb of God who takes away of the sin of the world.  Celebrating this regularly as part of worship is importance as we need to remind ourselves of the price of sin, the price of our forgiveness with God, and to be provoked to thankfulness and praise.    It is the least sacrifice we can do to say thank you to Jesus for the high price he paid for our forgiveness, many beatings, a crown of thorns, carrying his cross, and being hung by nails on a cross, suffering shame, mockery, and identifying with us as criminals, rebels and lawbreakers, when He wasn’t one, and to top it off, separation from the Father and going to hell with us to get us out.   Wow, what a Saviour we have who is worthy to remembered and worthy to be praise forever and ever!

The new covenant we have because of Jesus death  is a new covenant based on Christ’s shed blood of himself rather than an animal for forgiveness of our sins, this is the agreement we have with God now. I am reminded of Paul and the writer of Hebrews who is particularly focused on helping understand Jesus in light of the old covenant and the priesthood and it’s duties they were so familiar with.

Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise–the fruit of lips that openly profess his name.  Hebrews 13:15

Then he goes on to say immediately, and do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.  Hebrews 13:16

Which then also reminds me of Paul in confronting the Judaizers which were saying circumcision is required and obedience to law of Moses says this.  For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor circumcision has any value.  The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.   And later in Galatians 5:13  as Paul talks about our freedom in Christ and not being bound to law he says this “But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh, rather, serve one another humbly in love”

So putting this all together as worship leaders and musicians in new covenant what is our responsibility and call from God.   We are a subcategory of the royal priesthood Jesus established in a new order of Melchizedek priesthood not the Levitical priesthood established through Aaron that sacrifices animals for sin under old covenant.  I believe our call is to serve the rest of the body by leading the body in offering the sacrifice of praise regularly.   Together with the other gifts including, pastors, teachers, evangelists, prophets and apostles we are to focus the attention of the body of Christ on giving thanks and praise to the One who gave us life for us, for the forgiveness of our sins.  We can do this through live praise and worship leading on Sunday morning and evening services.  We can do this in small groups.  We can do this through recordings both video and audio to inspire praise to rise continually is the command to us.   You have an important role so keep the praise rising and keep serving the body in this way and keep offering your gift to God and others.  He loves you, and your willingness to honour His Son in this way.

Next time I am going to talk about the Melchizedek priesthood and how I believe this relates to us as ministering musicians who often are bi-vocational and if you happen to be in full time music ministry you will have this other component to your life which sometimes is referred to the kingly domain of business.

As I promised early I am going to share with you another version of You are Mine that I did using Garage band a program I haven’t used until now to do a basic recording using an M audio preamp interface with my computer and  midi to USB input into my MacAir.   This would be an example of a songwriter taking things the next step and playing with rhythm ideas, sounds, chord structure, melody and incorporating harmony and antiphonal singing into the spontaneous song I sang into my phone as a first step of capturing inspiration when it hits.   I was amazed at how easy it was to start to learn Garage Band,  up until this point in time I have only used Protools and at that I was just a basic user not a professional engineer or producer.   So this is maybe a next step before recording a professional demo or a pre-produced version of a song with a producer.  Hope you enjoy it.

You are Mine