Guglie..whattie!

I have been pondering this situation for the past week or so and was really thinking about it today. I had a long drive and was listening to some praise songs..The song "Healer" came on... I started singing along as I usually do. It made me start thinking.
Worship songs are amazing sometimes. God has blessed people with gifts and talents to write amazing songs, with great melodies. Musicians that can just make music come alive with their creativity and self expression. I know that I am guilty at times of just liking a song. Yea it talks about God and I think that makes it even better, because you are talking about How great God is and having fun doing it. Some songs make you want to dance and others make you want to ponder who he is. The fact is at the end of the song.. God is still there, We may not know it, but he is. Sometimes us christian people think that when a song starts God is there. When in fact he is with us always. Just to think that he was there when I said... or I thought... or I did... We can all fill in those blanks i 'm sure. The writer of the song "Healer" decided to fake being sick and even dying! As someone who has experienced A loved struggle with disease, It is detestable to even fathom how someone could do such a thing. And go to such great lengths to do it. At first I was angry at the fact that I bought into a lie. Then I was sad for his family, Now I have to come to forgiveness. God forgave me when I was still a sinner. That doesn't mean I'm not a sinner now, It just means God is way too good to me.
No one deserves to take the place of God. Sometimes I see the writers of these amazing songs and think wow, what an incredible person to be able to do that. To do What? Use the gift God has given. We are all sinners. I don't say that as a cop out. Micheal Guglielmucci just had to step up and do something we all should have the courage to do. Confess his sin. Yes it affected many, and that is why no one should come before God. No matter who it is that we look up to, they will never live up to the standards that God does! They will always let us down, just as we will let others down. But we press on towards the goal
So does that make the song any less true to me? When he wrote the song, did he believe God is his Healer, of perhaps a different disease than we thought at first. I'll never know that. But I will know that God will never leave me and never forsake me. He is with me always even to the end of the age.
Perhaps there is something to be learned from all of this after all...Proverbs28:13
"He who conceals his sin does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them, finds mercy."
He could have gone any other way, maybe even claiming to be healed, Who wouldn't have believed that, I am sure any doctor would have agreed that there was nothing wrong! But he chose the route that led to mercy, and although he did a horrendous thing in making up the story, Maybe he did the right thing by confessing, after all who am i to judge.

Only the Lonely

I am definitely feeling the sting today of being Human, It seems every time I have a passion to serve God with all my heart, something gets in the way...Me! I am afraid to point to myself as the reason and so I begin to point to everything else in my life. This is why I am this way or that, or this circumstance is too difficult to handle, God I need Your help! He said he is always with me even to the ends of the age, Why do I feel so alone? If He is for me who can be against me, Only myself, my fears and insecurities. I can rely on him when he is my focus. But sometimes I focus on the "Giant" in my life just like the Israelites, When I should be focusing on God. He thrives on the impossible, and with him nothing is impossible, That's right nothing! I say it, I sing it, I sure better believe it!

Silence is... Shamefull

My Brother had asked me to come over on Thursday to watch Smallville, for those of you not familiar. Smallville is a TV show about how Superman came into being, well, superman. I used to watch this (and many other shows) religiously and practically arranged my life around them. I would tape the shows sometimes (By tape I mean an actual Tape not DVR) when I absolutely could not be there in time. I could see the anticipation in him as we chilled out waiting for it to come on and it reminded me how I had felt the same way at times. I am not at all saying that what he was doing was bad, Don't get me wrong. But it just made me think about my own life. When was the last time I was that excited about God? Still you can sit back and say "well TV is entertainment and God is just God" I was sitting last night at a High School football game and there was hundreds of people around me, Mostly teenagers! I began to look around and just wonder about them all and just what it is that they are all going through! I believe God is real. I know it. Do they know? Can they see the excitement on me about a God that is so amazing that he can save each of us. And do it in a personal and unique way with us all. Am I displaying the Love of God that people think I am crazy? I want to be that person. I truly do and yet at the same time. It scares the heck outta me! I have to ask myself this question. What is there to be afraid of? Here are the answers I came up with
-People will look at me like I am crazy
-People will reject me
-I might seem like an insane Jesus Freak
-I may be associated with Christians that are a bad portrayal of Christs Love for us all
When I look at each one of these I realize one thing, And that is that they all are concerned more with what People think, Than with what God thinks! I say I am a follower of Christ, I say he is with me always, But it makes me a wimp when I care what people think. I am too much of a punk to tell anyone about the Truth. His is a kingdom that can not be shaken! My prayer today is that we would all lose our lives for him. Especially me,
Now I think what might happen if I say nothing, show nothing, stay seated
-Someone might never know him
-People may go to Hell
-God will be ashamed of me, Just as I was ashamed of him
-I am NOT like Christ, He loved too much to let people continue to live destructively, I pray I can be more like him!

Romans 10:13 For whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved,
14-How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?

Greater Things

Here is the story of the song "God of this City" and how it was written by a praise and worship Band from Belfast, Northern Ireland,



God of this City

Nov 2007, Bluetree are heading out to Pattaya Thailand to participate in an event arranged by Belfast missionaries living in Pattaya, Thailand called Pattaya Praise. We’ve no expectation of the event; we were just looking for an opportunity to serve somehow.

We didn’t know much about it before we left, but Pattaya is a dark place. It’s a small seaside town notorious for it’s sex trade. Throughout our time there we heard countless stories of girls who are bought from their parents for a price, sold to the sex industry at ages as young as 5 years old. Arriving in Pattaya the spiritual climate seems to change, it’s hard to define, but there is a very tangible change. On the bus journey in we’d been our usual cheery selves, but entering Pattaya at 10am and turning on to a street lined by girls ready for business, the bus became very quiet. We’re in total shock. It’s a sunny day but it’s incredible how dark it feels.

’Walking street’ we learn is the epicentre of the sex trade in Pattaya, it’s about a mile long and at night springs to life with neon signs. Thai people are generally conservative in their dress sense – it’s generally considered provocative to bare your shoulders. But on their street the girls are wearing very little, and offering anything you can imagine for a price. It’s easy to look around with human eyes, see the depravity and get angry. You see older men walking hand-in-hand with young girls – as a daddy, that’s hard to take in. It’s easy to get angry, it’s easy to judge – but that’s not our job, so we grit our teeth.

We were in Pattaya to be part of a praise event not far from this street, the soul purpose of which was to worship and show God’s light in a dark place. We wanted to play more than the scheduled slots while we were there, so we found out that one of the bar owners would let us play a worship set in her bar on the proviso that we brought as many from the missions team who would buy coke-a-cola all night. We walk in to the bar which is about the middle of walking street, girls are lined up on the stairs waiting for business. We get set up, we’re really nervous and quite uncomfortable but we kick in to a familiar beat of worship and soon it’s ok. God starts to speak and we started to move in to this spontaneous song. The truth is when you worship in a place, you start to see God’s heart for that place. What would God say to a place like this?

Amidst the depravity God say’s, I’m the God of this City, I’m the King of these people and Greater Thing are Yet to Come, Greater Things are Still to be Done HERE. The song wasn’t written before that night, but we came out of the bar having worshipped with the song that is now the title track of our album – God of this City (Greater things). The song isn’t just for Pattaya – it’s for your city, and it’s true. By faith we must expect that greater things are still to be done.

What more can I really say!

Worship Leader?

Truly what does that mean! I want to know! I have had the opportunity to be called this for years now and I am so incredibly humbled when anyone calls me this. First off God has set everyone in their place for a specific reason and purpose. Maybe, just maybe God in his infinite wisdom, trusts me with something I would never trust myself with. I know myself too well. Yet he knows me so much more! I have to put MY trust in him every week. I know I cannot do this on my own, And truly why would I want to?
I am not here on this world to make my name known. I am here to be a reflection of who he is! So that all Nations would know him! It takes the burden off me a bit. I trust he knows what he is doing, I'll just sing for a while and tell him how great He is and possibly, He will Meet with people and reveal Himself to them.(if they want him too) I am honored to be a part of His work. It says in the bible that He chose us! That is incredible to me, I surely would have chosen someone else! But He is God after-all. What do I know compared with Him.
I was thinking recently about the fact that I want God to send people my way who are talented musicians that Love him with all of their hearts. They will most definitely be more skilled than I and have more to offer and I openly welcome that. It is my deepest desire not to see a ministry grow, but to see people in and around this church building come to know the truth and Hope that is in Jesus. We all have something more amazing than we realize to offer in service to God, We just have to trust him and he will trust us to carry his message, And he'll even give us the words to say, so that we know how Great He truly is. Lets just think of one of the greatest of the men in the Bible-Paul. He states it perfectly in 1 Corinthians 2:1-5
And I ,brethren, when I came to You, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God.
For I determined not to Know anything among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much Trembling.
And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,
That your faith should not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

I pray that all of us who are followers would have the same attitude that
Paul had and realize that our strength is in the Power of God and not our own.
With him all things are possible! It says it in the Bible, Do we truly believe it?