Excitement Downtown

So, guess what I'm doing right now? I'm sitting in my office at work looking out the window at the Extreme Home Makeover bus just down the street. That's right - they are in my city this week to make over a house and apparently right now they're doing some things downtown. In fact, I think I just saw the crew get out of the bus. I suppose they are taking some pictures or shots around town for the show. They had police escorts and everything. Oh well, excitement is over now -- I gotta get back to work!

(A couple of hours later)...I went out to my car to get my umbrella, and there was Ty Pennington and a photographer. I said hi to him and he said hi to me. Fun day!

Love

Love is patient, love is kind.

It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with truth.

It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails.

Talking Too Much

I recently learned something about myself. Or maybe I knew it all along. What I learned is that I don’t like to be around people who talk too much. I don’t mind being around people who talk a moderate amount, or even people who talk a lot, but it’s talking too much that I don’t enjoy. I realized it places a burden on me – the burden to have to listen to all that talking. I have always tried to be a good listener, and I think I’m pretty good at it, but there’s a limit to how much and how long I can sit and listen. I hope this doesn’t sound mean, but I just needed to say it.

Truth Mixed with Error

Have you heard the Christian radio program called Revive Our Hearts? Nancy Leigh DeMoss is the teacher and today’s program was so good that I would like to encourage you to please take the time to go to http://www.reviveourhearts.com/ and read the transcript or listen to the program. Please do it. But if you are like me, you probably won’t take the time to do it, so let me copy and paste a couple of things she said here. The subject was Deceiving God’s People and it is packed full of things we as Bible-believing Christians need to know about teachings today that have some truth and some error and the deception is much more subtle than say, New Age teachings. Click here for the full text. Below are excerpts from the program:

...Today I want to talk about something that’s a little more subtle, and that is we have many widely-respected, best-selling authors, pastors, and teachers in the Christian world who are deceiving God’s people. Again, I don’t know their hearts so I can’t say whether they have an intent to deceive…..Some of these teachers and teachings are very, very popular today and particularly popular with young people or with new believers. These are teachings and books that are being promoted in church youth groups, in Christian high schools, and in Christian colleges. They are rampant. They are widespread and they are not as completely erroneous as the teachings we talked about in the last session. These are more truth mixed with error. Some truth and some error, which makes it even more subtle……So I’m not picking on particular books or authors. I just want you to get the concept of how error works itself in….
…Then, ultimately, you can’t depend on me or anyone else to tell you what is truth and error, what is right and wrong. You need to develop a spiritual centeredness on the Word of God, a groundedness in God’s Word, and spiritual antennae that go up so that you know what is truth and error. You can discern yourself…
…First of all, there’s this whole area of what I call shallow, feel-good Christianity. A lot of this involves self-help or self-esteem teaching that is packaged in biblical terminology but in many cases it is really devoid of the gospel. This is a psychological message with a thin covering of theology. It starts with ourselves rather than God. God is a positive God. So you have little or no concept of His holiness, His wrath, His justice, and again virtually no mention of the cross, the blood of Christ, atonement for sin, the resurrection of Christ…..
…These don’t just define who we are, they are who we are. You take these out and you have nothing left. You have no substance. You have no life. You have no hope. But in this kind of teaching, none of that is considered really necessary. They miss the gospel entirely….
Now let me give you one more illustration. This is a book that at the time of when we’re recording right now is very, very hot in the Christian world. I walked into my local Christian bookstore the other day. It was front and center. As of today, I think it’s the number eight bestseller on Amazon.com on their ratings, which is huge, huge, huge. This is a Christian book. This is not a New Age book. This is not a book written by some New Age guru. This is a book that purports to be a Christian book….But the problem is that mixed in with a smattering of helpful insights in this book is a perspective on the nature of God, on the trinity, on salvation, and on other core doctrinal issues that is incompatible with Scripture…..The test of validity of a book or a teaching or a radio program is not: Does it work? Does it help somebody? Does it make somebody feel closer to God? The test is: Does it accord with the Scripture? That’s where I go back to the Scripture. by Nancy Leigh DeMoss - Revive Our Hearts

Conversation and Gossip

When it comes to conversation, most people’s favorite subject is themselves. Have you ever been around someone who talks only about themselves and everything about their life? Some people never give you a chance to talk about things that are going on in your life, and when you do, they somehow find a way to turn it into a conversation about their life. I guess this is a normal thing since the subject we all know the most about is ourselves. But I’ve noticed that when I am around people like that, after a while I just stop telling them anything at all about things going on in my life because I feel like they really don’t care. If they ask me something about myself or my family, I’ll answer, but I get discouraged when they only want to talk about their own life and never seem to care about things that are important to me. Because of this, I have tried to become aware of my conversations with other people by not only talking about myself, but asking them about things that are important to them. I know that I fail sometimes because I love talking about my kids. But I really want to start working harder on not monopolizing conversations with talk about me and my family, but by asking questions about others’ lives to show that I really am interested.

Another thing that really bothers me is when I’m in a situation where I can’t walk away and the other person starts telling me something about another person – like gossip. It makes me very uncomfortable and usually when this happens it is a situation where I have to be around the person and I don’t have the option of walking away. And I’m sure that I do this also. Gossip is a very hard thing to “not do”. So, that’s the other thing I need to work on with my conversations – trying not to talk about other people in a way that puts them down.

·Colossians 4:6 NIV
Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.
·Proverbs 20:19 NIV
A gossip betrays a confidence; so avoid a man who talks too much.

Bible Prophecy Will Be Fulfilled

Today, we as Americans, as well as people all over the world, were able to witness history being made. There was so much exposure, so much media coverage that you couldn't help getting involved whether this was the man you voted for or not. There was all the build up over the past few days, then the live coverage today with the invocation by Rick Warren, the song by Aretha Franklin, and most importantly the swearing in of our new president. But my favorite part of the day was something I heard on the Christian radio station. There is a five-minute program called Prophecy Today by Jimmy DeYoung, where he looks at current events in light of Biblical prophecy. I just want to mention a couple of points that he made on the program today. Jimmy DeYoung said that world leaders look forward to working with the new president as they confront the problems of today. He also reminded us that God is in control and there is no power that be except that ordained by God (Romans 13:1). He said that God instituted human government and has used it down through the centuries to set this world in place for His plan to be played out. Revelation 17:17 says that God puts it in the hearts of world leaders to accomplish His will. One other thing he said is that God will use President Obama to set the stage for Bible prophecy to be fulfilled. To hear the full program, click here. It is always interesting to hear Jimmy DeYoung's prophetic perspective on the daily news.

Beside Still Waters - the CD

I recently mailed some of you a copy of my CD. Thanks for your interest and for letting me know you received it! Now, after all that, I have found a way to put some of my music on the Web. If you would like to hear some samples from my CD, "Beside Still Waters", please visit my New Page and listen. You can click on whatever song you would like to hear. Below, I will give a little background about those six songs....

1. Reflections -- Reflections is one of my few compositions that was written with practically no effort. I was playing around with different sounds on my synthesizer and I just started playing this. I thought it sounded really pretty, so I decided to write it out. It is one of my favorites.

2. Sunset Over the Bay -- In Sunset Over the Bay, I was trying out a method of writing this style of music that I read about on the internet. At the time, a friend was planning her wedding and I had the intention of giving her this music to be played during the wedding prelude. I asked my friend to tell me where one of her favorite places was and she said she loved the pier at Fairhope, Alabama overlooking the Mobile Bay. So, I titled this, Sunset Over the Bay.

3. Twilight Winds -- I love the sound of a saxophone, so again I was playing around with the sounds on my synthesizer and came up with Twilight Winds (because the saxophone is a “wind” instrument) to use the great sax sound.

4. An Evening on the Bodensee -- An Evening on the Bodensee is a result of my trip to Germany in 2005. It represents a boat ride we took one night on this beautiful lake which is a natural border between Germany and Switzerland.

5. Dreams Come True -- Dreams Come True was the first one I wrote in 2005 when I became interested in composing music for relaxation. It actually started out as a simple piece of music to try out a computer program where I could put different instrumental sounds together. It turned out sounding really nice with the flute and violin sounds, so I named it Dreams Come True because I had a dream of creating a CD using different instrumental sounds. And the day I wrote this one just happened to be a holiday from work – the holiday was Martin Luther King’s birthday.

6. Solitude -- Solitude is another one that came to me easily as I sat down at the piano and just started playing.