Living He loves me, Dying he saved me
Buried he carried my sins far away.
Rising he justified,
Freely forever
One day he's coming, Oh Glorious day.
Oh glorious day....
This is the song we're singing for the Christmas program. :) I'm so excited. A little disappointed that the youth group couldn't do a drama or something. But excited to get to sing with the kids and newly founded worship team. This is going to be awesome. And I get to do it again on Christmas eve except we'll be singing worship songs for the eve service...
Just this year I've been invited to a lot more parties than ever before... sweet 16's, other birthday parties, whatever they are or what they may be for. And I've noticed that even after hanging out with good friends, I come home feeling completely worn out, but most of all I feel spiritually drained. My friend Bekah always told me that she had a conviction about secular music, and that she wouldn't dance to it or listen to it in her car or anything. Of course at the time (about 3 years ago) I'm like "What the heck?" just thinking that the idea was strange and a bit overboard to me. I was set on fire for Jesus at 13 but I still listened to (and continue to this day) some of my favorites such as Linkin Park, Owl City, Coldplay, Rascal Flatts, Christmas music, a few select oldies, and others. I noticed my fondness for secular music dying down after my desire for Jesus increased. I'm a musician. And all I wanted to do was sing about him after encountering such a love I'd never seen before.
Some of what Relient K, Skillet, The Classic Crime and Hawk Nelson sing aren't ALWAYS about Jesus, but at the same time I'm not feeding myself with the filth most popular music has to offer today when they start singing about desire for death, sex, drugs, hatred of life, pointless junk, etc.
It glorifies sin. And while I don't particularly care to get in a car or get on the school bus or go to the mall or a party and hear to it, I still feel like a stink bomb was just dropped in my heart releasing all of this grossness that contradicts the word of God or has no meaning or whatever...
Do I like the catchy sounds of popular music? Duh!
"Everyday I'm shufflin'."
That's always fun to sing and dance to.
A GIRL singing "I kissed a girl and I liked it"....
or "Lets get in the car and have sex baby"...
...I mean come on, really?
It's all about sin and idle stuff that just fades away. It's temporary. It dies. And it's pulling you down while it dies.
Does everyone need to have conviction about listening to secular music? No. I mean when it comes down to it, I don't. But at the same time I know that I can only handle the majority of it in small doses.
It like drains me rather than energizes me, you know? I don't feed that into my heart every second of the day. I get up and sing and listen to stuff that I can sing to God to, because it's how I live. Then I can go sing choir stuff. Then I'm ready to face the world...
Without that vital time of prayer behind closed doors, we're vital to what we face everyday. Whoever you are, wherever you are, I encourage you to make God the first person you talk to when you wake up and the last when you go to bed. It's life changing and it's a big help.
I turn 16 in 2 days.... :) feeling pretty awesome right about now.
Have a great day everyone.
just to note, i do dance to secular at public events (like my birthday party for instance), and Owl City is a Christian & blogs about that fact quite frequently, so i'll listen to him anytime.
ReplyDeletebut like you, i'm not going to have the worldly mess pumping thru my headphones, & if i have a day where i've had to listen to alot of it, i feel gross too.
oh and Christmas music isnt secular.
"Without that vital time of prayer behind closed doors, we're vital to what we face everyday. Whoever you are, wherever you are, I encourage you to make God the first person you talk to when you wake up and the last when you go to bed. It's life changing and it's a big help." <-- AMEN