Living Water: As Bold as a Lion

Chapter Ten in our weekly bible study of Brother Yun's Living Water: Powerful Teachings from the International Bestselling Author of The Heavenly Man.

The chapter is about being bold.

As Brother Yun says: "The will of God should be the primary focus of all Christians. To glorify Him should be our greatest honor and privilege. All else is a waste of time, and this world is perishing while too many Christians live out fleshly lives full of compromise and selfishness."

This is all too true of me. But I think that Brother Yun forgets that our life is lived here on earth. And the earth is full of sin. We have to die to ourselves daily in order to live forever.

But God uses us in our imperfection to advance His purposes.

We have to die to ourselves and depend on the Lord to change us. It is not something that we can do in our own power.

But as the Lord changes us we can be bold in telling others about Christ. We must be bold and we must look for the opportunities that come our way to tell others about Jesus while we live our lives in this imperfect world.

Anything else falls short...

Community

Amidst all the busyness of day to day life, my mind keeps going north to Moorhead, Minnesota where my parents live and the flood rages.

Talking with my Mom and Dad and with my sister and reading the paper on line just drives home how important community is. Not the noun community, the verb community.

This is where life is lived with each other. This is where college and high school kids stop to help unload a stranger's pickup truck of sand bags at a stranger's house. This is where people go to church for support when their house is surrounded by flood waters and they don't know if it will still be there when they get back.

This is where a guy sits in his living room in shock at the rising waters while friends and neighbors battle on in the basement to save his home. This is where a guy works all day at this job and then goes and works half the night to help strangers defend their homes.

It's where young and old come together to do what seems to be impossible. It's where people drive four hours to help fill thirty pound sand bags in a stadium filled with sand and bags. It's where the colleges let out class and the students go to work helping the neighbors they haven't met in a city that may be their home for only a short time.

It's where the wife in a home threatened by rising water takes the time to feed the people that she doesn't know (and may never see again) that stopped to pile some more sand bags on the dike simply because the job needed doing.

Community is more than a place to live, it is a place where life is lived with each other. It is a place where when troubles come people band together and do their damnedest to solve the problem instead of sitting around and waiting for the government to do something. It's a place where leaders lead instead of wringing their hands.

Its where a sense of peace comes when all possible has been done and everything is in God's hands for good or bad.

Community is a place that I miss an awful lot at times like this...

CIA Summit First Wrap Up

Finally home. Whew!

Got home this afternoon (Sunday) from Nashville. We drove in to see Bradford pears at full bloom and a couple of neighbors have broken trees from the weight of several inches of snow. It''s good to be home.

Last night was the wrap up of the CIA Summit in Nashville. After tornado sirens and large hail (which we managed to avoid), the Momentum Awards ceremony was held followed by a concert by Margaret Becker.

Yesterday was a good day of presentations on the Future of Music, Marketing in an Internet Age and Producers and AR. Solid information presented.

At the concert we were talking with a young couple attending the Summit for the first time. They said that they got more information out of this conference than they have any other and that they had attended a lot of conferences.

Loralie and I came away with a long to do list in order to move her music ministry forward. The music industry is changing and there is a fundamental shift in how the public consumes music. The future is about engaging fans.

It is an exciting time to be involved with music.

And I am tired.

CIA Summit Day 4 - First Pass

Wow! Again.

And I am beat...

What a day! (again). This will take a while to process through.

And it is late and tomorrow we need to hit the road and head home. Heavy thunderstorms hit Nashville today while a blizzard hit home and flooding was going on in Minnesota. Will be good to get home.

We heard a ton of good stuff again today, but the highlight had to be Tom Jackson. He is a live performance producer who helps artists get their shows ready to go. We will listen to some tapes from last year on the drive home, but the thing that he said that really hit home was: "Don't let anyone tell you that you are too old to do this." It was something that I have never heard him say before.

It was also good to hear that the artist has to build a relationship with their fans. And we heard lots of good ideas on that.

So much more to process and think about and more to write but my mind is pretty much mush.

In a good way though...

CIA Summit Day 3 - part One

Wow!

My head is spinning! Started the day off with some music and then teaching by the Pastor of Provision International, Scott MacLeod. Great message on serving the poor and widows and orphans, especially in the poorest neighborhoods.

Grant Norsworthy than got up and hit us right between the eyes with a powerful message of worship not just through music but all the time. What an incredible message! Grant was the bass player for Sonic Flood and he talked a lot about the paradox of Christianity. Grant also took Dietrich Bonhoffer's quote on cheap grace and updated to today.

I love this quote:
"Cheap worship is the mortal enemy of our church. Our struggle today is for costly worship."

While I still think there is a huge battle against cheap grace, cheap worship rings so true to me.

We also have to admit that sometimes there are things wrong with us. That is a hard thing to do.

Then we had presentations on the structure of the music industry and a panel on management. Followed by an interview with a publicist and a panel on branding and a panel on merchandising. And somewhere in there was a presentation on podcasting and traps for musicians in thinking too highly of themselves and losing sight of God in it all.

The best part is the networking where we can talk with other artists and see what they are doing and what we can do to improve Loralie's ministry. Got to see the rappers from North Carolina again today as well as Change of Heart from California. They finally dropped off the charts and Loralie moved up to number 1! Pretty neat to see it finally happen especially at this conference.

Off again to a late night session of hanging out with other artists.
This is getting tiring...

CIA Summit Day 2

Today was kind of an off day.


We slept in and then went to the Summit. We listened to several singer/songwriters and heard differing levels of talent and production values.


Then we drove around downtown Nashville to see the sites. Nice to have a bit of time to do so.


Next we headed out to Radnor Lake Natural Area which is close to our hotel. Very neat place. We went hiking for a couple of miles. We saw a cardinal, a couple of Canadian geese, lots of turtles sunning themselves on logs, squirrels, a woodpecker, a duck, a chipmunk and an otter on a log eating a fish ( I think it was a crappie). It was good to get out and stretch our legs in the outdoors for a while and see the beautiful lake even if it was under gray clouds and the wildlife moving around. And it was the first time that I have seen an otter in the outdoors.

Then we headed down to the Mecca of debt free living Financial Peace University home to Dave Ramsey. We took the picture of the sign and the building and went inside to find the place under construction. Bookstore closed and the studio not open for viewing. Kind of anticlimactic.

We also heard today that one of the biggest reasons for failure in the music industry is that musicians carry too much debt.

Back to the hotel to saw some logs and then to the Foundry to just get blown away by a presentation on Business, Occupation and Ministry by Artists in Christian Testimony International. Really good presentation and there was info in there for about twenty posts. Byron Spradlin had some excellent stuff on the artist as a craftsman.

I think the big aha I got was that God may not use your occupation as your calling. It is an occupation and a way to support yourself and your family. And it is a ministry vehicle, a place to do ministry. And business is not bad in Christian circles. More later on all this.

We sat next to a couple of young Christian Rappers from Winston-Salem North Carolina. Had a great talk with them. Names are Nick and Mike. Good guys and fun to talk to. Late night and good to be done for the day. Tomorrow the real conference starts.

And my head will probably be ready to explode by the end of the day...

CIA Summit (Day One Addendum)

Getting ready for day two of Nashville.

Looking forward to it. Will be a day of singer/songwriters and bands showcasing their talents and music.

Last night, those who were at the songwriting conference had their names put in a hat and if their name was drawn they could go sing a song. We heard some good and some not quite as good. Some New Southern Gospel, Bluegrass, Praise and Worship, Contemporary Christian and even a guy who played like Jimmy Buffet. I don't quite know how to classify him.

But classification isn't important. Whether it is in the music industry or in the world. Classification only helps us develop reference points with which we can communicate with others. It hinders us in that it puts others into boxes in our minds that they probably don't belong in.

And when we do that we start to dismiss people because we confuse the boxes with the people.

And that is not good.

So today I am going to listen to music. Some I like and some I probably won't like. And regardless of the genre' (my big word for today), I will do my best not to put people into little boxes.

Could be an interesting day.