Music is such a gift from God, I will never take it for granted.

Been spending some times in Psalms, I have always been drawn there because after all I am a worship guy. But something hit me yesterday when I was sharing with the band at rehearsal, the writers of Psalms knew God.They REALLY knew God!

I read through that book and I hear God being praised for what he does, for what he has done, and you hear all the different names for God. I see that they call God things like ROCK, SHELTER, STRONG TOWER, FORTRESS, REFUGE, PROTECTOR, SHEPARD, DELIVERER, SHIELD, SALVATION, and the list goes on. This list came out of a living, breathing, growing, knowing relationship with the Creator, the Father, as the message so eloquently puts the God of the angel armies.

That is why they end up praising God right after saying they were near death, surrounded by enemies, life as they knew it was about to be over. Because they KNEW the God they were crying out to, they KNEW he would come through, they KNEW he was all the things listed above, they KNEW God!

Once again, another example set in the book that we should follow, let’s KNOW God!

¹¹ My sons, do not neglect your duties any longer! The Lord has chosen you to stand in his presence, to minister to him, and to lead the people in worship and present offerings to him.”

¹² Then these Levites got right to work: 2nd Chronicles 29:

Hezekiah is speaking to the Levites here, they had been neglecting their duties and the land was suffering because of it. He challenges them and reminds them what they were called to. I think this is as important to us today as a worship ministry as it was to the Levites then.

The Lord has chosen you to stand in His presence….

God picked you! To stand in His presence! Think about that.

to minister to Him……

How do you minister to God? What are God’s needs? Since we are made in His image I can imagine His needs are like mine, but I am also pretty sure he is not looking to me for food, a place to sleep and stuff like that. But I know one thing that I need and it is because God created me with this need is the need to relationship. That is how we can minister to God, He wants us to hang with Him, because we love Him, to listen to Him and to truly have a relationship with Him. God also wants our worship, and that is not just on Sunday.

and to lead the people in worship…..

Because of the fact that God has chosen you to stand in His presence, and because He has chosen you to minister to Him, you get to stand in front of people and lead them into the presence of the Father, the Creator, our God. You get to lead the people in praise and worship of the one true God. What a calling! What an honor!

So worshipers, let’s do as the levites did in verse 12, let’s get right to work! Let’s make sure that we are standing in the presence of God throughout the week, each day and let’s be sure we are ministering to the Almighty God throughout the week. As we do this let’s start looking with anticipation towards the weekend, because it is going to be like something we haven’t experienced before.

5 things we need to focus on during the week as worshipers so that we will be effective worship leaders on the weekend.

Praise- we need to focus our thoughts on God, which will lead us to praise Him which is recognizing, appreciating and expressing God’s greatness.

God’s power- God is all powerful, when we feel powerless God can help us.

Forgiveness-God forgives us when we pray to him honestly and directly, when we recieve his forgivenss this moves us from alienation to intimacy.

Thankfulness- we realize we benefit from knowing God and we express our thanks.

Trust- God is faithful and just, we know we can trust God. Knowing God intimately drives away doubt, fear, and loneliness.

Got this from the margin of my bible this morning, it is the meagthemes running through the book of Psalms and I felt we all could benefit by focusing on these things this week.

³ O LORD, what is man that you care for him,
the son of man that you think of him?

⁴ Man is like a breath;
his days are like a fleeting shadow.

⁵ Part your heavens, O LORD, and come down;
touch the mountains, so that they smoke.

⁶ Send forth lightning and scatter {the enemies};
shoot your arrows and rout them.

Read this scripture  before runthrough at Highlands this morning. This was what i was expecting this morning, God to part the heavens , to come down, to blow the place up with His presence. It was a pretty powerful morning, nothing got blown up but HE did show up……

Really excited about tomorrow at Highlands, there is an expectation in my heart and I am looking forward to God being there among us. Againg this week the songs are something that have really heightened that sesne of expectation as I have been preparing them and truthfully worshiping God through them myself this week. Here are a couple of lines:

There’s a stirring in my heart
Unexplainable
There’s a calling on my days
Undeniable, yeah
And there’s a fire in my bones
Uncontainable
And it’s causing me to burn

There’s a passion in my heart
For the world to see
Revival fires burn
A great awakening
And there’s a raging fire inside
That’s so high
And it’s causing me to burn
It’s causing me to burn

Take my life I lay it down
At the cross where I am found
All I have I give to You, oh God

Take my hands and make them clean
Keep my heart in purity
That I may walk in all You have for me

Oh, here I stand
Arms open wide
Oh, I am Yours
And You are mine
Jesus

You paint the night
You count the stars
And You call them by name
The skies proclaim
God You reign

When I think about the Lord
How He saved me
How He raised me
How He filled me
With the Holy Ghost
Healed me to the utmost

think about those lines, and come ready………

Psalm 144

A psalm of David.

¹ Praise the Lord, who is my rock.
He trains my hands for war
and gives my fingers skill for battle.
² He is my loving ally and my fortress,
my tower of safety, my rescuer.
He is my shield, and I take refuge in him.
He makes the nations^[a] submit to me.

³ O Lord, what are human beings that you should notice them,
mere mortals that you should think about them?
⁴ For they are like a breath of air;
their days are like a passing shadow.

I love this, I am thankful that my GOD notices us, thankful that HE is my ROCK, my LOVING ALLY, my FORTRESS, my RESCUER , my SHIELD and my REFUGE. I am glad that HE has trained my hands for war and made my fingers skillful in battle. I am going to give those hands and those fingers to HIM in worship this weekend, using them to Honor the KING along with my voice and guitars. I plan on bringing it to give to the KING. Get fired up and join me on Sunday………….

Think about all that God has done for you. Really think about it. Now I want you just sit on it and not do anything with it or tell anyone about it. WHAT????!!! Well that is what I am guilty of and you probably are as well. It is way to easy to take for granted that next breath you are going to take, way too easy to not reach out to someone you know needs Jesus but  you feel the time just isn’t right, way too easy to barely  sing during worship and hold back because of what someone next to you would think. Way too easy to just sit there and do nothing about it.

^27-28As Jesus left the house, he was followed by two blind men crying out, “Mercy, Son of David! Mercy on us!” When Jesus got home, the blind men went in with him. Jesus said to them, “Do you really believe I can do this?” They said, “Why, yes, Master!”

^29-31He touched their eyes and said, “Become what you believe.” It happened. They saw. Then Jesus became very stern. “Don’t let a soul know how this happened.” But they were hardly out the door before they started blabbing it to everyone they met. Matthew 9:

Now Jesus told these men to do what I just told you to do, don’t tell anyone. But there life had just been RADICALLY CHANGED and there was nothing in them that was going to be QUIET about it. Every fiber of their being cried out in joy and they had no choice but to share what had just happened.

I challenge you, and me, to once again think about all that God has done for you, but this time let that JOY that comes from being RADICALLY changed encourage you to follow the example of these two men…….

^31-39So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture:

They kill us in cold blood because they hate you.
We’re sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one.
None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us. Romans 8:

Sometimes you just got to cling to scripture like this with all you got……….. bet you can relate.

You know you come across people in life who take that “thing they do” to a level that is just, just, so amazing that when you experience it you find it hard to speak above a whisper. They truly dance extravagantly through whatever form their art takes shape in. I have been blessed to know two guys, who just happen to be guitar players, who are just these kind of people and I was blessed tonight to get to hang out with one of them.

I heard things tonight that most guitar players strive for but never reach and recognized I was sitting in the room with a true artist. I was excited, inspired, enthused, and truly enjoyed the moment. A guitar in the hands of either of these guys becomes something so much more than just a guitar. I can pick it up just a few seconds after they sit it down and the magic is gone. When these two guys play it moves people, stirs the soul, inspires Awe. Got me thinking…..

Imagine a life in the hand of GOD……..

Romans 12

^1-2 So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

Think about a life