Christy added music to her blog. I thought about it for a while, but I’m glad I don’t. It can be annoying sometimes!

Study in Mark:

Day 16 (Mark 8:22-9:1)
Here we see Jesus as THE CHRIST, or MESSIAH. This is a passage where Peter confessess Jesus as the Christ/Messiah AND Jesus gives a talk about “whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and the gospel will save it”. Good stuff.

Day 17 (Mark 9:2-32)
In this passage we see Jesus as the POWER GIVER. Here a boy is in convulsions and the father asks Jesus to help. Jesus says “Everything is possible for him who believes”. He also says “this kind can only come out by prayer” referring to the demon posessing the boy. A good story to corroborate the belief that prayer is powerful (God is powerful, prayer is our conversation with him).

Day 18 (Mark 9:33-50)
Here I chose to describe Jesus as the ACTION TAKER. I know, pretty weird…these were getting more and more difficult (hence the last few attributes) but here’s the deal with this one–Jesus talks about the whole “if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off” thing. And I’m thinking to myself, this dude really is talking about TAKE ACTION to prevent yourself from sinning. Not necessarily cutting your hand off, but doing SOMETHING drastic to get away from sin. I’m reminded of lots of people that have this “I just can’t help myself” mentality, and I think YES YOU CAN!! And I think Jesus does too, he told us to take whatever measures we must to stop whatever it is we are doing! So he’s the ACTION TAKER here. What can I say?

Lost starts SEPT 21. I saw a trailer. Beware, TV starts soon and I may talk about it…
btw-my new DVR setup should be here Saturday. This is monumental…it’ll be like switching to high-speed internet, or shopping at The Gap–monumental.

Oh yeah-also, last night I was parusing iTunes and I see this playlist (one that they put together) called RUNNING THROUGH THE 90′S. Christy was like, HEY let’s look at that!! So we did and we ended up buying about half of the 75 songs on there…everything from KrissKross to Sir Mix-A-Lot to Hanson to Smash Mouth to Spin Doctors to C+C Music Factory. Yeah, craziness…BUT I found a few songs on there too that are some of my favs from the 90′s. It was a blast! Yay iPod!!!

Thank you, all my NERTZ fans! I guess technically I’ll have to beat Mike b4 I get “the crown”. He was not in town, but it was still nice to win! We’ll play again soon…

Praise Habit is amazing. Go Dave Crowder. And God. I have never been INTO DC’s songs or anything, but his writing in this book is definately God-inspired. A great book about living…

OK- so some pretty great things went on at church yesterday in meetings and such. I was actually a little blown away at how God worked in some situations and what the end result was. I really can’t say much, except that it is REALLY GOOD. Not good–GREAT. So please be praying. I’ll expand if I can at a later time, but for now let me just say thank you, Lord. You are so incredible, and you really do still blow my mind!

I guess I’ll continue with the study on Mark that I talked about earlier. I’ll try to make it a little bit shorter…here’s a quick recap. (I went through Mark in a month and looked for a different aspect of Jesus’ character at every reading).

Day 1 (Mark 1:1-20)-Jesus spoke with AUTHORITY.
Day 2 (Mark 1:21-45)-Jesus was filled with COMPASSION.
Day 3 (Mark 2:1-12)-Jesus FORGIVES.
Day 4 (Mark 2:13-28)-Jesus is the FRIEND OF SINNERS.
Day 5 (Mark 3:1-19)-Jesus is the HEALER.
Day 6 (Mark 3:20-35)-Here we see Jesus as a great TEACHER.
Day 7 (Mark 4:1-20)-Jesus at this time in his ministry was very POPULAR among the common people.
Day 8 (Mark 4:21-41)-Here we find that Jesus is the LORD OF ALL CREATION.
Day 9 (Mark 5:1-20)-Here we see Jesus as our DELIVERER.
Day 10 (Mark 5:21-43)-Jesus is the FREEDOM GIVER.
Day 11 (Mark 6:1-29)-Jesus is a DISCERNER, or perhaps to be grammatically correct-has discernment.
Day 12 (Mark 6:30-56)-Here we see Jesus as our PROVIDER.

Ok-now on with the new ones!

Day 13- (Mark 7:1-23)
Here we see Jesus as the LAW GIVER, or LAW MAKER. I couldn’t quite decide between the two…we see in this passage that Jesus, when questioned about the Jewish law, sternly talks to the pharisees about it, telling them “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me…” Needless to say, he re-writes the law here…

Day 14- (Mark 7:24-37)
Here we see Jesus as LORD OF HEAVEN AND EARTH. In this passage Jesus drives out a demon from a girl, and heals a deaf-mute man. He heals earthly problems, and eavenly ones.

Day 15- (Mark 8:1-21)
Here we see Jesus as a WARNING GIVER. He talks to his disciples and tells them to beware of the yeast of the pharisees and of Herod. Yeast is that stuff that it only takes a LITTLE bit of, and it works through the whole loaf of bread. In other words, it only takes a little bit of evil…

ok-more to come…

Alright, we plaeyd NERTZ last night again. It’s been a little while since we played. Unfortuntately, Mike couldn’t be there ’cause he’s training somewhere in the East, so I definately won. Karen came in 2nd, though…and we had a couple of new players that did an excellent job of learning quickly. I think a couple more times and they’ll have it down.I guess we’ll see when Mike gets back who really is the king. I guess every game is different, it all depends on the players…

Congrats to Karen and Steve, who are dating now, and are every bit as lovey-dovey as we were when we were dating.
Oh yeah, worship was good yesterday. Good job band! Thanks Lord for the blessing!

Hmmm…just finished band practice for Sunday-it was good! The team of folks I have playing on the worship team are coming along so well. They are a very talented bunch, and I think each person is growing in their skillfullness with their instrument. We are beginning to play more like a team all the time, and I feel like for now, God is really blessing it.-(not anything I’ve done, mind you). We’ll see how worship goes on Sunday!!

I just watched the trailer for Michael W. Smith’s movie coming out in February, 2006. Hmm..I don’t know how I feel about this. Smitty’s is pretty good about doing this with excellence, but the latest “Christian” movies have really sucked. It actually pains me to watch something so dreary like Left Behind, and know that it doesn’t measure up to what the newest summer blockbuster will be…if anything, movies made FOR God should honor God with how good they are, and should be 10 times as good as anything Fox or Paramount or Pixar will put out. Unfortunately, they haven’t been… “Christian” movies often just seem trite to me, and with all the bad press Christians are getting right now it just doesn’t seem like a good time to churn out some below-par entertainment. I guess we’ll see…

Tonight’s choir practice was by far the best rehearsal we’ve ever had. Even though we were a little light on 1st sopranos, it was the best ever since I’ve been here. Probably due mostly to all the incredible stuff we learned this past weekend with Al Clifft. I’ve never heard blend like I heard tonight. The only thing that we need now is some more tenors. Be praying MPC for more tenors!!
I couldn’t be happier with it–great music–the musicality of the night was superior…I can’t say anything else–I’m running out of ways to describe it. It was something that I REALLY liked.

If you haven’t read Mike’s blog, you really need to. It’s exactly right on.

I’ve been very uninspired to write on my blog lately (obviously, since I haven’t written for a week). I’m not sure why, but I just wanted to say that this weekend Al Clifft came to our church for an annual concert and choral clinic. It was one of the most incredible experiences of my life. The concert was incredible and was anionted. It really is beyond words to describe it.

Oh yeah, and God can really keep you humble (me, that is…). Today we had, like, 10 things go wrong during the worship services. It was really tough to recover from a few of them, and I tried frantically to do so-but it is interesting that God would remind me that HE is in control of everything the morning after the best concert of my life. I can’t explain it. I really can’t explain much of what God is doing in my life right now. I’m trying to figure it out. The why’s and the what’s and the where-to-go-next-in-my-ministry type of things. (I use MY ministry VERY loosely. It’s not mine at all, but the Lord’s).

Hm.

I think something I need to do more often is hear the music I’m writing performed by the people I’m writing it for. It is one of the things that most fulfills me in my existence. I have not had the opportunity to do that, of late, and would like to more. Starting this weekend…

Christy and I went to the Hollywood Bowl last night to see the Broadway show “Camelot”. Not a great show, imho, but going to the bowl is a phenomenal experience every time. That place has SO much history and importance in art and music in southern CA (and the world, really–there isn’t anything else quite like it…). I’ve read numerous articles and seen a lot of stuff about it. It really is an icon…if you’ve never been there, you really have to go!
One summer I had season tickets for a classical series the LA PHIL was doing. 10 Tuesdays in a row, it was really cool! I can’t quite explain the experience, at least not typing…I just can’t put it into words.

Just thought I’d pass it on, GO TO THE BOWL!!

(Side note: they’ve only done a broadway show at the bowl 6 times. They only do it on one night in the summer, and they started in 2000. What a ton of work for only one night!)

I think today I’ve eaten 4 million, billion, gillion, fafillion original-flavor skittles. No, I did not lose a bet. No, I did not win a bet (for those of you that know I like candy…) We had a BBQ with the members of the Midway Praise Orchestra and Worship Band. It was fun, but I have a few left over skittles…

We’re on disc 3 of the final season of Roswell. I tell ya, when we started this show, I really disliked it. The first 5 or 6 episodes were pretty boring to me. Not much going on–but then, stuff really started to pick up. It became very intriguing. We really got into it. Then season 2 happened (btw-the show ran fall 1999-spring 2002–only 3 seasons) and it was better than ever. Better plot, better acting, better twists, it was a sci-fi fan’s dream! Now the final season is here… *sob*

I gave Jorge Samaniego an iPod mini today as a thank you gift for volunteering the entire summer as my intern. I worked that boy hard! And even though we paid for his way to the Saddleback Worship Conference, I wanted to reward him publicly and suprisingly for his service to the Lord and for all his help to me and the Worship and Creative Arts ministry at Midway. The dude really deserved it…he was overjoyed when I gave it to him!

Tomorrow (Sunday) we go to the Hollywood Bowl to see Camelot. It should be fun! Our friend is helping out in the production side of it, and we wanted to go to the bowl on vacation, but it didn’t work out-so this is it!! Yipee!

Now, stop interrupting me, I’ve got to get back to Roswell, New Mexico…