Welcome Back!

If this is your first time joining me, welcome! I am currently on a journey of listening to only Christian music for the next 30 days in order to see what kind of effects that it might have on my life. If you are curious to learn more about what (or more accurately, who) got me into this, then I suggest you go back to my very first blog. And if you are wondering if I am starting to see any changes in my life yet, then I suggest you read my blog from yesterday, because I have already felt convicted to give up something that I have been valuing too much in my life. Anyways, let’s get into today’s topic.

For today’s post, I want to talk about a song that I just heard on the radio while I was driving home from watching the students’ conference tournament basketball game, and this song is called “Resurrecting” by Elevation Worship. Now, this is not a particularly new song, but it is one that has had so much impact on my life, that when I decided that I was going to be documenting my journey through listening to only Christian music for a whole month, I knew I was going to be writing about it at some point. That is just how impactful this song has been for me, and I am sure that if you were to give it a listen as well, it will be just as impactful for you. Before we really dive into the lyrics of this song, and the meaning that it has though, I think it would be a wise idea to talk about the band who made the song, and how I discovered it.

I first discovered this song last May when I was attending a random church that was near the hotel that my family was staying at. My sister was going to be graduating college that day, and so my whole family gathered together to celebrate her and her big day. With the graduation not happening until 5 that evening however, we all had sometime to kill. Well my grandparents are like me, and they always go to church on Sunday morning, so I thought it would be a cool idea if we all went to a service together, which is how we ended up at this church. Now, I’ll be honest with you, I can’t tell you the name of this church, because I don’t remember it! I can’t tell you the sermon that was preached, because I can’t recall it! But what I can tell you is that I heard a song that day that struck me so deeply, that I spent the next 3 weeks listening to it on repeat.. and that song of course was “Resurrecting” by Elevation Worship.

Finding this song was a huge door opening for me, because I had actually never heard of Elevation Worship before this. So in my obsession with the song, I naturally wanted to learn more about the group that created the song. The band, Elevation Worship, is a actually the worship band for a megachurch in Charlotte, North Carolina called Elevation Church (Makes sense right?) Well when I discovered that, I thought that it was just the coolest thing, because I didn’t know that church worship teams could create and produce original music like that! (Yes, I realize how naïve I was. You can make fun if you want, I can take it!) Of course, after discovering that this was worship team for a church, my next instinct was to learn more about the church. In my research, I discovered that Elevation Church has a YouTube channel that they use to post some of their messages, and I loved that! Now, over time I have become less fond of their messages as when I first discovered them, but I don’t want to say anything negative because I think that you should hear it for yourself. Anyways, the reason that I feel it is important to know who made this song is because I think that can help you see the heart behind the song. With this song, I truly think that God has his hand in the making of it, and the hearts of the people who made the song were pure, which makes it even better when you listen to it.

Getting to the song finally, I want to discuss 2 things; and those 2 things are the music behind the song, and the words used in the bridge. Starting with the music, I do not believe that there is any more pure of a piano opening in any song that I have heard than the one that opens this song. The very first sounds that you hear in this song are the 2 simple keys from a piano, but those 2 keys set the song of on an amazing foot, that is carried throughout the rest of the song. Now, I’m not trying to claim to be any musical genius though, so I suggest that you listen for yourself, and judge based off of that. Getting the bridge though, this is where the song really shines. The bridge starts off with “By your spirit I will rise, from the ashes of defeat. The resurrected king, is resurrecting me.” It then repeats that one more time in order to amplify the effect of the words, and amplify the effect it does. These are probably the words that have stuck with me the most through all of my listenings, and yet they still stick with me each time I listen to the song. I just think that is a beautiful picture to paint in your mind, and it does an outstanding job of letting you know that even though you fall down sometimes and get defeated, Christ has defeated the grave! And because he was resurrected, he is going to be resurrecting us!

The writing continues to get better though. In the second bridge (or maybe this is just one really long bridge, like that bridge that connects the Florida Keys), the artist sings “The tomb that where soldiers watched in vain, was borrowed for three days. His body there would not remain, our God has robbed the grave. Our God has robbed the grave!” Now I don’t know about you, but I got chills just typing this! I absolutely love how they worded every part of this bridge, from how the soldiers watched in vain, to how the tomb was BORROWED for three days, to how God has robbed the grave! Every part of this just speaks to the fact that Jesus rose again, and his resurrection defeated the grave. We are no longer slaves to death, because of what Jesus did for us. I just love that visual, and that is why this song has been such an instrumental song in my life. I pray that you will give this song a listen, and that it will have the same affect on you as it has had on me. Thank you for reading all of this, and I hope you have a wonderful day!

Welcome Back! (I think this is going to be my intro from now on)

This is day 3 in my journey to listen to only Christian music for 30 days, and if you are curious about why I am doing this challenge, or what I am trying to get out of it, then I suggest you check out my first blog post. And if you are trying to figure out just how I am going to make it through an entire month of listening to just one type of music, then I suggest that you read my second blog post, because you will learn that there are LOTS of options when it comes to listening to Christian Music. Anyways, let’s get into today’s topic.

For those of you who have been keeping up with the times, you would know that today is a Sunday. So I don’t think it would surprise anyone when I tell you that I was fully expecting to go to church this morning and hear something in a song that stuck out to me. I basically already his this post planned out, all I needed was to hear the song. So I got up, got my breakfast (Casey’s breakfast, and if you know me, you know that means it’s going to be a good day), went to church, and found a seat for worship. But as worship started to go along, something funny happened to me. I didn’t feel it. I didn’t feel any of the songs stick out to me. Now don’t get me wrong, I loved all the songs we played, and they have all stuck out to me at one time or another, but nothing was sticking out to me TODAY. This continued on throughout the service until we got to the last song, and I realized that nothing hit me. So I started to worry a bit, and on my way home from church I began to scan all the Christian stations I could think of in search of a song. However, it was the same story here as it was in church. I heard a lot of great songs, but nothing that stuck out to me. The closest call I found was with More than Anything by Natalie Grant, but that was more of me trying to force the feeling than just letting it happen. Nonetheless, I told myself that would be the song I write about today, and I moved on. However, God had a different plan in mind.

It’s funny how God works like that sometimes. It happened when I was cooking dinner and cleaning my kitchen. I knew it the second that it came on as well, I had finally found the song I wanted to talk about. That’s usually how it goes to. You find God’s will when you aren’t really looking for it, and I believe that is because YOU don’t find God’s will, HE reveals it to you at just the right time. And the song that God chose to speak to me through came on just when I was least expecting it.

The song is called “Idols” by Jessa Anderson and it is one of those songs that stirs me every time I hear it. As you might guess, the song is about the idols in our lives that keep us away from God, and Jessa does a beautiful job of mixing a catchy tune with some top notch writing. The lyrics of this song convict me, while at the same time uplifting me. It’s a strange combination of emotions that I know can’t come solely from human creation. From the opening lines of the song, Jessa paints a picture of how she feels like a bird in flight that is trying to build it’s home. The bird collects anything that it think might help, but it keeps getting drawn to all the shiny things around it. Eventually, the bird’s house is beautiful, but then the winter comes, and the bird flies away, leaving all of it’s material things behind. I find this metaphor to be a beautiful illustration of how we all feel at times, but me especially. I often get caught up in trying to collect material things, (or sometimes things that aren’t even material things, i.e. video game rewards) only to either grow tired of them or abandon them entirely.

The song continues in it’s stirring writing when it gets to the main chorus, and this is where I feel the most convicted, by speaking about how sometimes it feels like “this fickle heart in my chest, sometimes it beats for everything but what is best.” When I first heard that, I was like “Dang… Ain’t that right!” But then the chorus continues by striking an uplifting tone by saying “And when I turn down this voice I hear in my head, I give you room to speak, and offer life instead.” This is something that I do not too enough, and that is turning down the voice in my head and letting go speak. I have struggled with that for a long time, and it is something that I am trying to be able to do. But then right after saying that, Jessa talks about how the idols in our lives are the things that are keeping us from getting to that place, and she says “Take all of these idols, and lay them to rest”. This is the place that I need to get to with my relationship with God. I need to give him all of my idols, so that he can lay them to rest.

But that is only a good thought without any action behind it, so I thought, I need to figure out exactly what the idols that I have in my life are first! And upon thinking that, there was one that stuck out to me most obviously, and that is my obsession with Madden. For those of you who know me, I love football. I believe that football is the greatest game ever made, and football can be a tool that not only betters people’s lives, but in some cases, saves them. I am a football coach right now because I know about the impacts that a football coach can have on a person. I am for lack of a better term, a football freak. And because of that, I love to play football video games. However, as much as a I would like it to be, Madden is not football. And it is because of this fact that I let it get me WAYYYY more upset than I should. Madden has been a big part of my life, for as long as I can remember. But this is going to be the last year that I play it, because I can see the negative affect that it has been having on me over the past few years. And to go with that, I am also going to try and stop playing this year’s madden ASAP, because I also can tell the impact that it has been having. This is a huge idol in my life, because I spend a lot of my time thinking about Madden, when I should be thinking about other things. This is the idol that I think that I need to give up to God first.

I truly hope that you go and listen to “Idols” by Jessa Anderson yourself, and see if it stirs you in the same way that it stirred me. It is amazing what God can use to show you, when you just let him. Thank you for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful day.

Welcome back!

This is my second blog post about my journey with only listening to Christian music for 30 days. If you have not read my post from yesterday, I suggest you scurry over there and read that one for an overview of why I am doing this challenge, and what I hope to see from it.

With this being just my second day into the challenge, I can’t really say if there have been any changes yet to the way that I am feeling, but I can say that it has not been very difficult to only listen to Christian music so far. Of course it helps that I have been listening to Christian music as one of my three main genres of music for a while now, with the others being country and pop, but that is not what I mean by it. The reason that it has not been hard to listen to only Christian music so far is because of just how diverse the genre can be. Now, some reading this might not quite understand what I mean. To some, when they hear the term “Christian Music” they think church hymns and Amazing Grace. And while that is part of it, and a part that I often enjoy, there is so much more to Christian Music outside of the stuff that you hear in church. There is a lot of really good music out there, from all sorts of genres, that can be considered “Christian Music”. Some of my favorite types include: Christian Hip-Hop, Contemporary Christian, Christian Country, Gospel Music, and Christian EDM. The rest of this blog post, I am actually going to leaving you with a list of my favorite artists in each of the categories, so that you have some artists to look up if you are at all curious about the depth that this genre has.

Christian Hip-Hop: KB, Lecrae, Tedashii, Andy Mineo, Social Club Misfits, Nobigdyl, NF, 116, and Trip Lee. Those are some of my favorites, and they all speak about life, as opposed to the death that you hear coming from mainstream hip-hop artists.

Contemporary Christian: Lauren Daigel, Casting Crowns, Bid Daddy Weave, Crowder, MercyMe, NEEDTOBREATHE, Sidewalk Prophets, Steven Curtis Chapman, Matthew West, TobyMac, and Unspoken. All of these artists pack God’s word into songs that can, and sometimes do, get played on mainstream radio. This would be like Christian Pop.

Christian Country: Josh Turner and Alan Jackson have both done gospel CD’s, but the genre of Country as a whole is much more open to talking about Jesus and God in their songs that get played on the radio. There are a bunch of songs I love to talk about God’s love that are made by country artists.

Gospel Music: Anything by Hillsong, Elevation Worship, Bethel Music, Chris Tomlin, Michael W. Smith, Vertical Worship, I AM THEY, North Point Insideout, and Phillips, Craig & Dean. All of these artists are featured heavily on my Ultimate Worship playlist.

Christian EDM: Gawvi, David Dunn, Family Force 5, Royal Tailor (Tauren Wells), Stars Go Dim, Matthew Parker, and We are Leo. All of these artists make great music that promotes the love of Christ, while putting it on electric dance type beats. It is quite amazing when you listen to it for the first time.

Of course there are a lot of artists that I was not able to get to, but I hope that this gives you a good start towards hopefully taking this journey with me. It is amazing then kinds of things that people can create when God is working through them! Thank you for reading today’s blog, and I hope to see you in my next one.

To whoever sees this,

Welcome to my journey through the 30 day challenge. Now you might be asking, “What is the 30 day challenge” or maybe you might have answered that question already since you found this blog post under the title of “30 Day Challenge”. Either way, I will explain it to both of you. The 30 day challenge is exactly what it sounds like. A challenge that you do for 30 days, that is supposed to help you grow in some way or another. The challenge can be anything that you can think of, and it can be serious or silly. But the only thing that is required amongst all 30 day challenges is that the challenge be completed in 30 consecutive days. There is no stopping and starting with this challenge, it must all be done in a row.

Now that we have established what the challenge is, I suppose I should tell you what my challenge is, how I came to taking it, and where I am hoping it will take me. Well the first part of that question is probably pretty obvious based off of the Blog title, but hey, this is a spoiler free blog, so don’t ruin anything for anyone! Anyways, the challenge that I chose to partake in was actually the challenge of listening to only Christian music for 30 days. Now if this sounds familiar to you, it’s because you have been listening to Klove. That is actually where I heard about this challenge first, and it is a challenge that they have been putting on for everyone in the country during the month of January for as long as I can remember. I grew up listening to Klove, which I why I was familiar with the concept before I started this blog. However, back then, Klove was the only thing that I listened to, so I didn’t quite get the idea. But boy do I now!

The second part of the question of why the challenge is actually a two part answer. The first, and funniest part, is that my girlfriend asked me to do this blog with her for 30 days because she thought that it would be a cool idea for us to do together. So naturally, my answer to her asking me to do this was.. “No of course not! Why would I want to do that??” See here is the thing, I don’t necessarily like trying new things, unless I see a reason to. My girlfriend is the exact opposite though. She will try something new just for the heck of it! We have disagreements, (which means that I explain my side and then admit I was wrong) about which style is better, but that is neither here nor there. The second reason that I am doing this challenge though is because I have not been in the place I would like to be with my faith lately, I want to try and get back to the place where I feel one with God. And the cool thing is that a week ago, before I even had an idea that I would be doing this, God actually put the thought in my mind of doing this challenge. It manifested itself in my listening through my entire “Ultimate Worship Playlist” (Which has 250+ songs in it), and I found that the more I listened to God’s word, the better I felt about myself, and my relationship with Jesus. Which is how I got to where I am now.

The last part to the question raised above is that I am hoping this challenge will help me grow in my faith walk, and help to make me into the person that God wants me to be. I know that I will not be a finished product when I come out of this, but I do hope to feel closer to my lord and savior, and I hope that I can help others get to that point as well. Throughout this blog, I will be discussing the impacts that the songs that I am hearing are having on me, as well as discussing some of the songs themselves and the meanings behind them. I am glad that you have chosen to come along this journey with me, and I pray that God will use this journey to help both you and me grow closer to him.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton