Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus

“…keeping our eyes on Jesus, the source and perfecter of our faith.”  Hebrews 12:2

I tend to be a perfectionist.  I think most musicians are; however, I believe my fellow worship team members and I are starting to realize that our attempts at perfection sometimes hinder us from the things that really matter.  I’m not sure why we are all coming to this realization about the same time, but for me this mindset started a few years ago, around this time of year.

I love nativity sets and enjoy placing them throughout the house during the Christmas season.  Although I have a nativity that belonged to my grandma and others from around the globe, my favorite is one that I purchased for myself when I was a child.  Each Christmas, I pull it out of storage, carefully unwrap and set each piece out until it looks perfect.  One evening, my nieces were at the house enjoying a fun night with Auntie.  We had a picnic on the living room floor and were busy making crafts when one of the girls got up and started playing with my nativity set.  She eventually lost interest and joined me and her sisters back on the floor.  When they left later that night, I immediately went to “fix” my nativity so it would look perfect again.  Instead, I kneeled down in front of it and realized a profound lesson that had just been taught to me by a six year old child.  Because in my attempt to make things perfect, I forgot what was really important.  Here is a picture I took of my nativity that evening.

I believe it was in this moment that I stopped trying to be a perfectionist.  I realized that no matter how well we play or sing (or do anything else, for that matter), if our eyes are not on Jesus, it is meaningless.  That night, when C. turned my nativity around so that everyone (including the donkey, camel and a little lamb) was looking at Jesus, I couldn’t help but think of the words to an old hymn:

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,

Look full in His wonderful face,

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,

In the light of His glory and grace.

I hope that through our worship, we always remember to play and sing our best.  He deserves our best.  But more than that, I hope that through our worship, we always keep our eyes on Him, the source and perfecter of our faith.

 

Celebrating the Perfect One given for imperfect me,

Shelley

When It Comes to Music

When it comes to music, it’s always been my thing. I was the artsy one, terrible at most other activities. Music was naturally something I wanted to do. It still is.

I had gone to MPBC all my life and had experienced the change in music styles for years. I guess it’s safe to say that I didn’t really appreciate what we have here. When I got married, moved away and expected to find a church “just like mine”, I didn’t. Nowhere was just like MPBC. That is when I began to miss what I soon realized was the desire to pursue “excellence.” Running over a song once and saying “Eh, that’s good enough” just wasn’t enough. It wasn’t our best. So, when I moved back this past July, I reveled in the joy of lots of practice and harmonies and perfectly kept tempos. I was amazed at the changes that had occurred in two and a half years, but I liked it. It just felt good to play and sing and do it with people who really want to do their best for God. Not for show, but for glorious beauty, lifted to the Father.

God deserves our best. We know that deep down, but do we act on it? The music we play for Him should be as perfect as we can make it. The way we serve Him in any area of our life should be striving for excellence. Often times, we give Him our leftovers. I do too. He deserves more than that.

We are imperfect people and it’s okay to mess up. It’s okay to get off beat and miss a note or totally lose your place in the song, but because we take a breath and keep going, that’s the excellence. That’s what pleases God. He doesn’t need perfect people. He wants people striving for perfection so that His name is lifted higher and higher. Make His music beautiful, because it’s the best music of all.

Katy

Count Your Blessings...

I want you to ask yourself this question....Am I blessed?  In comparison to most of the world, we are, but not in the way you might think.  Yes, we are blessed in material things, but more so in a richness of spirit.  Because we have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, we are able to serve Him whether it be in leading a congregation in a worship song, or simply sharing the light of Christ with others. In serving Him, we are provided with perpetual blessings. We may not always be able to see them, but great or small those blessings are always constant.  Blessings from God are one reason we praise Him and thank Him for His provisions. 

However, it gets a whole lot harder to be thankful in difficult situations, or even in those small, every day issues. It is so easy to be caught up in what’s going wrong rather than acknowledging and thanking God for all the good in our lives. The Bible says in 1 Thessalonians 5:18, “give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” Let’s go back and look at the “ALL” part. All includes every circumstance that we will face in our lives. I wanted to pause here to say I thought this would be fitting since we are coming out of the Thanksgiving season but the more I thought about it, we shouldn’t be “coming out of the Thanksgiving season”…..we should always be thankful!  There is no beginning or end to being thankful towards God.  “Thanksgiving” is merely a time to gather with family to give thanks together, not to say a prayer of gratitude over a meal then carry on with life.  As Christians, if we are truly serving Him, it shouldn't be difficult to find something to be grateful for all the time!  Even the little things that we so often take for granted.  

One thing I know I will always have to be thankful for is music!  Music is one of the greatest blessings in my life.  There are countless other things that I probably take for granted that I should be  praise God for.  God is constantly faithful and always good!  This truth is one thing we can always, and I mean ALWAYS, be thankful for.  He never leaves us, never forsakes us, and always loves us. He is our strength when we are weak and He is our everything.  Every Christian has at least one thing to give praise to God for…..that He is simply there.  Just the fact that He exists!  Since God is always there, we can give thanks in all circumstances, not just on Thanksgiving.

  

God graciously pours His blessings down upon us, so please remember to count your blessings!:)

Maddie Dowell

Be Hungry

Man I love Thanksgiving!  I love to eat, so one of the best holidays for eating is Thanksgiving.  I am kind of like Jerry Clower who said "I don't know what cholesterol is, but if you can deep fry it or put gravy on it then it will probably be pretty good".  I love dressing and gravy for starters but there are so many good things that go with the traditional Thanksgiving meal that I can't just stop with those two.  Just writing these couple of sentences has made me hungry so I think I will stop now and go eat some lunch!

45 min later:  Okay I'm back now and I feel much better.  I know that many of you are looking forward to the special meals that will take place over the coming weeks and you are thinking about your favorite dishes that you can't wait to dive into.  Do we ever "hunger" for the things of God in that same way?  We should!   I'm afraid that most of us would have to answer in the negative that we don't hunger that much for the things of God.  Lord I pray that you give us a hunger for Godly things.

In September of 1620, 102 Pilgrims boarded the Mayflower to head to the New World that would later become America.  They headed to this New World so that they could have freedom to worship God.  Five of those on board died during the journey and never saw the New World when land was spotted in November, and before the first winter was over 45 colonist had lost their lives.  These people were hungry to worship God, they were so hungry that they headed out to the unknown and almost half died in their pursuit.  During this Thanksgiving we should be thankful that almost 400 years ago people saw a need to leave everything behind in pursuit of religious freedom.  I could go off now on another topic of how America has become a nation striving for "Freedom from Religion" rather than "Freedom of Religion" but I will save that for another day.

Here at MPBC we recently went through a sermon series on the Beatitudes and were challenged to hunger and thirst for righteousness.  My hope is that we will be hungry and that this hunger will lead us to worship Jesus through our singing, praying, reading the word or hearing a good sermon.   Psalm 63:4-5 says "I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands.  I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you."   Just as a rich meal of dressing and gravy satisfies us so should we be satisfied as we praise God for all of his wonderful blessings.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Geoff

The Beauty of Progression

    I'm not sure about you, but I'm a person who likes the idea of pushing forward, learning new things and progressing in my skill, even if I don't always feel like doing it.  Notice I said that I like the idea of it. Sometimes that idea is easier thought of than carried out. I think that this is something that anyone with any skill set will experience.  

    I've witnessed that first hand already with our new album project that will release next year.  Our last project, "Greater Still", was released about a year ago and as far as recording goes, I've had some down time since then.  That down time was nice, but it didn't come without it's disadvantages.  For the new album, I began scratch tracks (a dry run through of the song to give the drummer something to record to) about a month ago and started to get back in the mindset of producing a record.  However, before getting too far into it, I had the idea that I would listen to the previous album to see if there's anything that I'd like to do differently, or if there's anything that I would change for the new album.  At this point, I hadn't listened to a single song on it since we received all the copies in, because from listening to them over and over while mixing them, I was just about sick of it. Within the first minute of the first track I was a bit taken back, to say the least.  Let me tell you that I am not ashamed to say that  I want to do everything differently! I'm talking about everything from scratch tracks to final mixdown...I want to do it all completely and totally different!  Just as much as this fact scared the living day lights out of me, it also excited me.  When I began thinking about it, I would have been really worried had I not found anything I would change.  For me, that was a sign of progression.  

       I think that listening to the previous record was a great wake up call for me.  Had I not heard it, I would have probably subconsciously followed some old habits.  It reminded me of the importance of learning and honing a skill-set.  After all, whatever we do for the Lord, we should attempt to do it with the utmost skill and give it our best.  I know that can sound a bit elementary at times, but it is so true.  No matter what you do, this will apply.  Just like everyone who has a skill and especially one they use for the Kindgom of God, I always want to keep getting better.  I'm a person who loves to learn, so I pray that as long as I have breath, I'm learning.  Not just in this area, but in everything concerning Jesus.  In a year and a half, I hope to begin yet another album project with pages worth of things that I want to change and do differently!  To me, that is where the beauty of progression lies; knowing you are always giving it everything you have for the magnification of Jesus.

Peace,

Justin

Here I Am To Worship

    This is the title to a fairly popular and well known praise and worship song.  It was written by Tim Hughes.  He penned the words on many other worship songs including Beautiful One and Name Above All Names.  It took him nine months to finalize the lyrics and complete Here I Am To Worship.   I have sung the song many times before as I am sure many of you have as well.  It is powerful and leads me to a place of humbleness and nearness to God each time I sing it.  Although the whole song is beautifully written and each line equally strong, I would like to focus on the phrase "here I am to worship".

    Over the past few weeks and months, God has been revealing to me glimpses of how people worship.   I am blessed to have a different perspective than most of the congregation.  As a member of the worship team, I have the privilege of standing on stage for our worship sets and even leading worship most Sundays.  From this view I can see hundreds of other people worship.  Over the years, I have watched people grow in their ability to "freely" worship our Savior.  Some that used to be afraid to stand or afraid to raise their hand, now do so eagerly.  I have seen them grow spiritually.  I see the look in their eyes coming from their heart silently shouting, "here I am to worship".  Philippians 2:5 states that we should "have this mind among ourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus."  This is the scripture reference that inspired Hughes to write these lyrics.  Worship is an attitude that we must allow to develop and grow as our relationship grows.  That's what I 've seen happen at our church.  People from all walks of life and various ages silently saying, "here I am to worship".

    As of late, God has led to me to two experiences that have not occurred while I have been leading music.  The first happened a few weeks ago.  It was a Wednesday evening and we were singing praise songs.  My daughter, 15, standing beside me nudged me to look to the right.  I glanced and saw what you now see in the picture.  It is one of our members holding his infant son.  I was moved by the look in the baby's eyes.  His dad was worshiping with hands raised while the baby watched so intently.  The picture is a bit grainy, but you get the gist.  Psalm 143:6 says "I stretch out my hand to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land."  This is exactly what the father is doing; stretching out his hand.  This baby is being led by his earthly father to develop an attitude of worship to his heavenly father.  How cool is that?  Dad's face shouts, "here I am to worship".  He hasn't a clue the impact he is having on his son.  Our church doesn't have a nursery.  We want our families to worship together and this is why.  What a loss for this baby to be in a room separated from this experience!  Consequently, my own daughter, having also been raised "in the sanctuary" noticed what was happening.  She was growing in her own attitude of worship.  My heart shouted this is a win, win!

    The second experience happened on a Wednesday night.  Some of our younger females were leading in worship.  One of them, who is now maybe 14 years old was leading a song and playing guitar.  I could stop there and be amazed.  Leading and playing simultaneously is NOT an easy task, not even for an adult.  What happened next brought me to tears.  I saw her lift her sweet little hand to our Savior.  I stared in awe.  I have watched this young lady grow her skills and talents, but this was a deeper, more important step.  She was freely and openly unhindered in her worship.  She had reached a whole new level.  What a wonderful way to say to her Savior, "here I am to worship".  This pleases the heart of God.  

    All of this may sound unimportant to some readers and that's okay.  But as of late, God has laid this on my heart.  He has been intentional in showing me the significance of these acts of worship and reminded me that we are all there to worship.  We have to put aside ourselves and say to Him, "I am here Lord, to worship."  That is the goal of our worship team EVERY Sunday morning.  We believe that God has called us not only to worship in ourselves, but to take part in leading other believers to His presence.  My hope is that through this post, you will take the time to think about your worship experience.  When is the last time or has there ever been a time when you just simply said to your heart, "here I am to worship"?  Don't worry about what others think or what they might say.  Just submit to Him and I pray that you can have an experience like no other.  John 4:23 says, "But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship Him."  He is seeking you to worship Him and He is worthy of our praise!

Kim

I Feel Like the One Losing

As I look at facebook, read emails, and hear of those around me hurting so badly, I am burdened for them all. It seems like in some way we are all “losing”. Whether it be our health, finances, or relationships, someone is struggling. I can clearly stand and say that my Father God has saved me from so much, but I still struggle and am no different from all the others.

Yes, my survival is nothing but a miracle. One that I will share until the day I die. But it's a daily struggle. I think about what it’s going to be like when I'm older with this now broken body. I cry often in the arms of my husband with pain that can't be described. This body is a daily reminder of my accident, my struggles and what is to come. But one thing God places ever present in my mind is a peace knowing that this body will pass away and a new one will be given ( NOT BROKEN).

Often when my pain reminds me of why I was hurt so badly (Satan tries to remind me of the past), I am faced with the question of why?  The song below says it all so easily…"Lord give me grace to forgive them, because I feel like the one losing”. 

https://player.vimeo.com/video/144385841

It’s become a prayer for me. Yes, I have forgiven this man who struck me..but I can't forget the pain, loss, and suffering. At those moments, my Father God whispers so clearly (When “he” reminds you of your past…you just remind him of his future”). You see we can be hurt, broken hearted, and just plain damaged by others. And as humans we want to “get them back” for some reason. We feel that this will make it all better. This is not the case. Anger, hatred, and revenge will eat you alive and bring you to depths you never thought possible.

When we choose to face our struggles head on, knowing that they are already in the hands of Father God, we can make it through anything. I can say that I am happier now (broken, pain filled, and damaged), more than ever before, because I have experienced the clarity of God. He's here now and forever more. Just let him handle things.

Let's promise to let Him shine thru our brokenness so that others can see Him thru us.

Jessica

*to read more from Jessica, check out her blog at: www.tragicallytransformed.wordpress.com