Artist of the Week

Artist – House of Heroes
Album – The End is Not the End
Song – In the Valley of the Dying Sun

House of Heroes has been around for about a decade, but they haven’t had the exposure as they do now. They signed with Gotee Records this year and Toby Mac has helped them get out there. These guys have talent, in fact their recording is them playing, no digital processing, no mess with this or raise this level a bit, it is their sound.

Another thing about House of Heroes is that their sound is good. They have a message in their lyrics, but they also have a sound that attracts people who may not enjoy their message.

I give House of Heroes 5 out of 5 dundies for Musical Talent. I also give them 4 out of 5 dundies for Lyrical Content.

If you will click on Artist of the Week you will find the video of this song. It is a very interesting song that has a great message of maturing in our walk with God.

Enjoy!

In the valley of the dying sun
I walk a crooked path alone
I came across the shadow of a man
With an angel's breath
'O boy' he said to me
'I see your future'
'Though you long for peace
The sword is your father

I'm thinking of you
I'm thinking of you when I kill a good man
To keep myself from being killed by him
I'm thinking of you
I'm thinking of you when I hold my girl
And wonder if she'll ever love again
I'm thinking of you
Wash the blood off my hands

Bathed in the powder of a thousand guns
I am the king of sorrows
Watered by the tears of the innocent ones
The river grows
It moves
It swells

'Son' It calls to me
'Your days are numbered
Sow the seeds you will
But I am the reaper'

'I'm thinking of you
I'm thinking of you when you kill a good man
To keep yourself from being killed by him
I'm thinking of you
I'm thinking of you when you hold your girl
And wonder if she'll ever love again
I'm thinking of you
Wash the blood off your hands'

I howled at the moon like a wolf in the night
You want to finish it
We're gonna finish it right

And then I felt it with a chill up my spine
There are no words to use that truly describe
The glory of the angel or the terror in me
Tonight will be my ending or tonight my new beginning

All through the night
I wrestled the angel
To undo the curse
That's burdened me all of my life

And for the first time I could see
That God was not my enemy

"I'm thinking of you"

Like pieces of the sun
Our light burns on and on and on
Like stars in the night sky we shine
I'm living to shine on

The Flag Pole

Flag poles basically have one primary purpose, to fly a flag. Tomorrow thousands of students and adults in Kansas will be meeting around flag poles at 7:00 AM at their schools. This isn’t to show reverence to those who have fallen for our country. It isn’t to say the Pledge of Allegiance. It is to come together under the flag and pray for our schools, towns, cities, and nation. Every year, See You At The Pole happens on a Wednesday in September. This all began in 1990 with 10 students who came together to pray for their friends, families, school, and country. It has since spread to millions of students across the globe.
Some kids show up to pray silently, others pray in groups, and others read Scriptures or sing worship songs. But they are united in one purpose, to lift up their friends, families, schools, and nations to God. This year the theme for See You At The Pole is Engage: Engage your school, Engage your community, Engage your world – for His glory! The theme verse is found in 2 Kings 22:13a. Go and pray to God for me and for the people. This verse is about King Josiah and one of the greatest revivals in the Old Testament, all begun by a teenager. Tomorrow students are going to stand together and pray. The question I have for you is, will you join them wherever you may be? Lift up their schools, lift up the faculty and the students, and pray for the leaders in government in local, state, and national levels. Do you know what could happen if we all banded together to pray?

Solitude

This weekend I went down to my home town to see some family and to take my wife to the annual Hillsboro Arts & Crafts Fair. I wasn’t planning on going down, but some last minute plans got changed and I went. My idea of fun isn’t really walking around and looking at crafts with another 60,000 people. I happen to like Hillsboro when the normal 2500 residents are the only ones there. So I decided to capitalize on an opportunity I had. I went out with somebody to shoot a little bit. I needed to fire some rounds through my 500 Smith and Wesson to make sure everything was working properly. I was also given a chance to fire 14 rounds through a Barrett M82A1 .50 caliber semi-automatic rifle. So I decided to decline the offer. Just kidding, do you think I am that stupid? I accepted the offer and shot the 14 rounds through and was fairly impressed with my 4” group of 8 shots at 100 yards. Another fun thing to do with that gun is to shoot two rounds as fast as you can, that gets the adrenaline going as the shock wave comes back and blows through your nostrils and almost blows your ear plugs out. I must admit that I enjoyed spending time away from the crowds and being outside and enjoying nature, shooting the Barrett, and blowing up mud clods with my 500.

In the Bible, one thing we see over and over is Jesus getting up early in the morning to get away from the crowds and spending time in prayer. If Jesus, being God, needed to spend time with God, then we know that we should strive to do the same. You and I need to make it a habit to get away from the “crowds” and spend time with the Lord in prayer and reading His Word. Now getting away from the crowds may mean closing the door to your office or going down the street to get a coffee. It doesn’t matter what method you use, the important part is that you are spending time with God. I try to spend a 15-30 minute window each morning in my office reading my Bible and praying. It doesn’t always happen due to certain things going on. But I try to make that my morning routine, and if I can’t, I will try it some other time in the day. Hunting season is coming up, so I can spend my early mornings out in the field with my Bible on my phone and read as I listen for the turkey clucks.

If you are ever faced with a tough decision as I was this weekend, either to walk and look at crafts or shoot a Barrett, I hope that you make the right decision.

Love, Compassion, and Discipline

I may give away everything I have, and I may even give my body as an offering to be burned. But I gain nothing if I do not have love. 1 Corinthians 13:3.

My wife and I have been having really deep discussions late at night these past few weeks. Last night, we were discussing our children and the things we pray for and want most for them. One of the major themes of our discussion was the character we want to see develop in them. My desire as I watch my 13-month-old son grow up is that he becomes a person that his friends will trust. Someone that they can count on to be there for them. If one of Asher’s friends has a problem at school or at home or anywhere else, they would know that Asher is trustworthy and compassionate. So many kids grow up without someone they can trust. It is sad to see kids who go through life not being able to talk to their parents about things or able to talk to a teacher about issues they may be facing. My wife and I pray that Asher would be the kind of person that other kids will come to when they are having those issues. We also pray that he will be able to come to us when he has issues arise in his life. Being in youth ministry, I have seen kids who are having problems and struggling with issues, but they are afraid to go to their parents because they think they may be yelled at. We are fully aware that this journey of parenting is not easy and we are just past the starting line, but we do hope and pray that Asher will feel free to come to us because we love him. We can work out the problems through looking at the Scriptures and do it together. It pains me to see kids who hide things from their parents because they are afraid of getting the tenth degree. Love and compassion are two vital parts of discipline. Without them, you drive a wedge between the disciplinarian and the one who needs the discipline. Every mistake we make and every struggle we face is an opportunity for us to come closer to God through His love and forgiveness. We should strive to do the same for our kids, and let’s pray that our kids will be able to do the same as they have their families.

Artist of the Week

Artist: Leeland
Album: Love Is On The Move
Song: Follow You

What about love and justice? What do we do about the social justice issue? It seems as though this issue has become a liberal/conservative issue rather than an issue of helping those who need help. A more liberal slant on the issue states that we should share with others in their suffering and treat them as Jesus would. This is great, but that slant also tends to include the fact that since we are helping them and loving them as Jesus, we don’t need to share the Gospel with them. A more conservative slant says that the Gospel is all we need to tell them. Words speak louder than actions, so we don’t do much for their physical needs. Well, I don’t go along either side. I think a middle-of-the-road approach is what we need to take. First and foremost, we need to have the attitude that these people need to be saved. They need Jesus. So don’t only use words and don’t only do things. You need a combination of both. Sometimes words are all it takes, and sometimes actions alone will show them to the Gospel. But we need to be prepared to do both. A good song filling the airwaves now is Follow You by Leeland. I want this song to be how I live and love Christ by helping those who need Him. Here are the lyrics to the song.

You lived among the least of these
The weary and the weak
And it would be a tragedy for me to turn away.

All my needs you have supplied.
When I was dead you gave me life.
How could I not give it away so freely?

And I'll follow you into the homes that are broken.
Follow you into the world.
Meet the needs for the poor and the needy God.
Follow you into the World.

Use my hands, use my feet
To make your kingdom come
Through the corners of the earth
Until your work is done
'Cause Faith without works is dead
And on the cross your blood was she'd
So how could I not give it away so freely?

Click on Artist of the Week to see a video of the song.

We should have a desire to give away what Christ did for us to those around us, for our neighbors who may have a broken home. We need to help meet the needs of the poor and the needy. We are called to do this. Let us love those around us with the love of Christ, first with the desire to see them become saved and then to help them with their physical needs. Sometimes we have to help before they will listen. As one lady said to my old youth pastor, “How is your Jesus going to feed my baby today?”

Love and Morality

I may give away everything I have, and I may even give my body as an offering to be burned. But I gain nothing if I do not have love. 1 Corinthians 13:3.

A couple days ago I wrote about loving those who may not think like us in the political arena. That is a challenge I struggle with a lot. Another area that is hard to love others is the issue of morality. We get our morals from the Bible, plain and simple. So we can say that the Bible is a list of rules, and that’s it, or we can say that the Bible tells us a story about love. When we look at the Bible as merely a list of rules, we not only make sure we follow the rules, but we tend to make sure our neighbors and others are following them as well. When we see the Bible as simply a love story, we get emotional about God’s love for us and try to sprinkle that love dust around with our little fairy wands. What would be a more God-pleasing approach to understanding the Bible? Well, as I mentioned Monday, what would God be like if He didn’t love us? It would be bad; we wouldn’t be here, because our ancestors would have been zapped into flubber in the Garden of Eden. What would God be like if He was all love and unconcerned with our actions? Definitely a long haired, smoking the reefer, tie dye shirt Jesus comes to mind. “Dude, I am love, I love you, dude. We don’t need morals, we have love, anarchy is okay, if it works for you man. Sure sleep with your neighbors wife, it is all about love.” The list could go on. Thankfully, we do exist, have no worry of being flubberized and I haven’t seen any flannel graphs with a tie dye Jesus. The God of the Universe is a God of love. God is love, but He did give us commandments. So we have to have a balance of love and morals. Which one is first? Which one is more important? Neither. When you elevate love above morals, you overlook what Christ did for us on the cross. If you elevate morals over love, you start to be judgmental towards others. But when you become a Christian, because of who we are in Christ as a new creation, our morality comes from love. We obey the commandments of God because of our love for Him. If we obey God’s commandments simply because it is a rule, we are not doing it out of love, but out of duty. Just like if I were to buy my wife some flowers on Valentine’s Day simply because of my duty as a husband. The reason to buy flowers for my wife is to express the love I have for her. When we elevate morality above love, we worry about our actions so much that we overlook God’s grace. Another negative effect of putting morality higher is that we expect others to believe and do the same thing we do and believe. If they don’t, we are quick to judge them. When we elevate love over morality, we let things in our lives slide, and we can potentially lead others into believing that the way they live doesn’t matter or that living a good life will get you to Heaven. We have to be careful to not elevate one about the other. We need to strive to live like Christ not because we ought to, but because of what He did for us.

Love Those Who . . .

I may give away everything I have, and I may even give my body as an offering to be burned. But I gain nothing if I do not have love. 1 Corinthians 13:3.

What is love? Is it a feeling, an emotion, a desire, or a commandment? Now, there are different kinds of love, and you can put a different kind of love to each of the words above. But what kind of love is the Apostle Paul writing about? I don’t think it is the romantic type of love that I have for my wife, and I don’t think it is the fatherly type of love I have for my son. I don’t think and I hope it isn’t the type of love I have for barbecue. So what kind of love is it? The Greek word Paul uses is agape. Agape love is not just unconditional love, but is primarily a love of will, not the emotions. Love with emotions can fade over time, but love out of will doesn’t fade. God’s will to love us will never fade; it is His nature to love us that way. We are called to love in the same way. I see two major areas where we as Christians fail to give agape love. The first is in the political arena. To clarify something, I said we as Christians, and we includes me. I am not excluding myself from this at all, as I am guilty of doing these things as well. How many times have you seen a Christian bad-mouth a politician about his policies? I know I have seen it quite often, and I have done a fair share myself. I have heard many liberal Christians slam Bush and McCain the last 8 years, and I have heard many conservative Christians slam Obama over the past couple years. So why do we do that? What gives us the right to slander others? Now, God definitely wants us to be involved in politics and stand up for truth and morality. We should use our voice of freedom to support legislation and policies that please God. If God’s people sit back and say nothing, then those who are using their voice will get done what they want to see happen. However, the way in which we use that voice should also reflect the love that God has for ALL people, including those who disagree with us in the political arena. That’s where the line between standing up for truth and slandering others gets crossed. What message am I sending to unbelievers through the way I talk about the politician I don’t support? Christians love everyone as long as they think like them and act like them? Here’s an example: Most of you know that I am somewhat of a gun fanatic, which may be putting it mildly. The current administration doesn’t exactly agree with me on gun legislation. One thing I have to remind myself of is that even though I don’t support much or any of the gun legislation that is supported by the administration, God loves each and every one of those politicians. How am I conveying that message by the way I speak about them? I don’t want to get all philosophical on you and say, “What Would Jesus Do?” But, what would He want us to do? Do you know that slander is the same as the ninth commandment, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor?” How often do we bear false witness against a politician? How often do we do it to our actual neighbor? I am guilty of that quite often. What would the world be like if God didn’t have agape love for us? How would it be if His love was based on his emotions? How long would have people existed? I am pretty sure that once the forbidden fruit was eaten in the garden, the earth would have opened up and swallowed Adam and Eve. So how about we think about what we are going to say about someone before the evil malicious words come out of our mouths. Let’s think using agape love, love that is not based off of our emotions, but based of off who we are as a new creation in Christ Jesus our Lord.