A God That Pursues Me

Over the past few weeks I have been awed and humble by the presence of the Lord in my own life, but especially in our services at Victory Family Church. God is moving in the hearts of His people and it is such a blessing to be a part of it. Yesterday, once again, was a beautiful time in the presence of our God. Here are the songs that we selected.

• You Are Good by Israel Houghton as performed by Lincoln Brewster
  • Click here to check it out on iTunes
• Lifesong by Casting Crowns for their self-titled CD
  • Click here to check it out on iTunes
• Overcome by New Life Worship from their Counting On God CD
  • Click here to check it out on iTunes
• The Stand by Hillsong United from their United We Stand CD
  • Click here to check it out on iTunes
• Amazed by Jared Anderson and Desperation Band from their CD From the Rooftops
  • Click here to check it out on iTunes

Over the past week me and some of the staff have been listening to Jesus Culture and it has really been permeating our hearts. I know for me, I’ve had their music playing in my office, my car, on my iPod, anywhere I have the opportunity to listen and have been so drawn into the presence of God during those times. I love how God will take any moment, no matter where I am and what I’m doing, and make it a beautiful moment with Him when I seek His presence. The thing is, He’s always right there with me. His presence is always there. The question is how in tune to His presence am I? How engaged to His Spirit am I?

One of my favorite songs from Jesus Culture is You Won’t Relent from their Your Love Never Fails CD. I simply can’t get this song out of my mind, not that I want to. We were listening to the song during our prayer time before service on Sunday morning and I was so moved by the words of the song.

You won’t relent until you have it all

My heart is yours

I’ll set you as a seal, upon my heart

As a seal upon my arm

For there is a love, that is as strong as death

Jealousy demanding as the grave

And many waters, cannot quench this love

Come be the fire inside of me

Come be the flame upon my heart

Come be the fire inside of me

Until You and I are one

Such powerful words. What God revealed to me with this song Sunday morning and throughout this past week is that God is pursuing me. Me! Of all people, He wants me! And not just some of me, He want’s all of me. You know, my desire is to pursue God. To chase after Him and discover all I can about Him, and to build my love for Him. But what I’m finding is that with all my passion and desire to discover more about God, and grow closer to Him, His passion and desire for me is infinitely greater than I am even capable of.  In the words of that song, “For there is a love that is as strong as death, jealously demanding as the grave, and many waters cannot quench this love”, it gives me such a powerful revelation of His love for me. His love is strong. He is jealous for my attention and pursuit meaning that He desires all of me and all that I will give Him. He wants to be my top priority. And there is nothing that can quench His love for me. No matter what I’ve done. No matter where I’ve been in life, He loves me. He pursues me. How awesome is it that the God that created the universe cares so much about me. I am so small, minute in the vastness and power that is our God, but He wants me. He wants all of me.

The song goes on to say, “I don’t wanna talk about you like you’re not in the room. I wanna look right at you, I wanna sign right to you.” This is my heart right now for worship. I don’t want to worship God like He’s somewhere else. Whether I’m in my office, in my car, in my closet, or in the sanctuary with God’s people, I want to worship God like He’s right there in front of me. Like I’m gazing into His very eyes as I worship Him. Why? Because He is! I want to sing right to Him. Play my instrument right to Him as if I am face to face with my God. Worshiping Him for all that He is, all that He has done, and all that He will do!

This is my heart and prayer for worship right now. To worship God face to face. Knowing that He desires my love, attention, and passion so much more that I can even imagine. I pray that you would join me in this and let’s see what God does.

The Hope We Have

Well, it’s another Monday morning and as I sit here in my office I’m thinking back over our service yesterday and the message that Pastor Mark brought to us and the response of our people. I’m awed by our Lord and the hope that we have in him.

You know there are so many things that come against us in this world. So many things that the enemy would bring in to try to cause us to stumble or to be distracted from our God. A lot of times we don’t see it for what it really is and we let the enemy have his way with us. We get distracted, beaten down, burdened down, and sometimes just overwhelmed with life. But the great news is that we have God! God, the creator of universe. God, the one that loves us beyond our comprehension. God, the one that sacrificed His only son so that we could have a relationship with Him. We have hope! No matter what we come against, no matter what we go through we have the hope that God is right there with us. He never leaves us or forsakes us, and we can run to Him in our time of trouble and know that He will be there.

I’m amazed at the faithfulness of God in proving Himself an His Word to us. I know for me there are many times in my life that I can look back and see just how God showed Himself faithful to me. Even at a time when I was running from Him, He never left my side. He protected me, and kept His hand on me, and pursued me until I came to that point where I called out to Him. I called out at my lowest point and immediately I sensed His presence with me. His loving arms around me, comforting me and letting me know that everything was going to be alright. I know many of us can look back on our lives in good times and in rough times and see the work of God in our lives. This should build our faith and renew our hope! God is the same yesterday, today, and forever! He’s just as willing today to bless us, to comfort us, to guide us as He was in the past. We need to call out to Him and find refuge in our wonderful God.

Yesterday, as we sang “Came To My Rescue”, I was wonderfully reminded of the times when my God literally came to my rescue. I was filled with joy, peace, and gratefulness for a God that loves me so much. A God that gives me hope everyday. In Him, I am an overcomer, more than a conqueror. Able to endure and find victory in anything the enemy would bring against me! In God, there is no limit. In Him, we can and will overcome! He will come to your rescue!

I want to share with you our songs that we selected yesterday.

• Your Grace Is Enough by Chris Tomlin from his Arriving CD
• For Who You Are by Hillsong from their Mighty To Save CD
• Came To My Rescue by Hillsong United from their United We Stand CD
• God You Reign by Lincoln Brewster from his Today Is The Day CD

Thanks for checking in on this post and I pray that you all are blessed beyond measure!

The Presence of Our God

It’s Monday morning once again and as I sit here in my office I have been reflecting back on this past weekend I am just in awe of our God. This past weekend wrapped up our Do Something outreaches and it was so great seeing so many of our VFC family reaching out and doing something to touch the lives of others. Our worship team had the opportunity to lead worship at the Beautiful Feet Biker Rally and it was wonderful to see the Spirit of God move the way He did. It was such a wonderful experience out there in the open at the Beautiful Feet campus. The testimonies of so many, the worship, and the message that was brought touched many hearts. Two men gave their hearts to the Lord and it was beautiful to see the emotion poured out as they were just broken before the Lord.

Saturday morning we came to the church for the Splash Day and just loved seeing our church campus just buzzing with people. From those that were helping with Angelfood, providing food and prayer, to those that were helping cook hot dogs and burgers to provide to the families that came for Splash Day, it was great just seeing our people serving God and our community in such a way.

In our whole month of doing something with our outreaches I personally have had a passion for reaching out reignited in my life. In every opportunity that we had to minister, I think I was more touched and moved by what God was doing through us than those that were being ministered to. It is wonderful to see our church doing what the church should be doing and helping those that are lost, hurting, and needing help. I know future opportunities have already been birthed for our people to continue ministering outside of the walls of our church.

Then after those two days of great ministry times we all got to come together for a great day in the house of the Lord. Sunday morning I came with a great expectation of meeting with God, and as always, He was right there with us. On Saturday evening I got a phone call from my Dad to let me know that my Grandmother had passed away. About six weeks ago she was diagnosed with Lymphoma and we discovered that it had spread to her chest and liver. I had the opportunity to be with her about three weeks ago and am so glad I did. We had know idea that she would pass this quickly, but I know that she is in heaven now and we can rejoice in that. So I came Sunday morning with a heavy heart, but as always, God lifted my heart. No matter what seems to be the problem, no matter what may distract or discourage me, whenever I enter into the presence of God all those things seem to just slip away. I love the fact that my God loves me so much and desires to lift me up, put His arms around me, and just love on me when I worship Him. It’s such a beautiful thing.

Sunday night we joined together for a time of worship and prayer and the move of the Holy Spirit was great. We prepared our hearts and minds for prayer through our time of worship and our prayer time was powerful. It was awesome as we prayed all over the sanctuary and you could hear the voices of the people lifting up prayers as we were directed. It was a powerful night.

I sit here this morning thanking God for what He is doing in our church and in our community. God surely has called us to do a mighty work and as God spoke into my heart yesterday morning; we have just begun to see what God wants to do in us and through us. All we have to do is follow Him!

As always, I want to share with you the songs that we chose for our services and who recorded them so that you can find them too if you would like to. Sunday morning we chose:

• Mighty King of Love
  • by New Life Worship on their Counting On God CD
• Our God
  • by Chris Tomlin on the Passion Awakening CD
• Amazed
  • by Desperation Band on their From The Rooftops CD
• We Are Hungry
  • by Steve Fee from the Passion: Road To One Day CD

Then for Sunday night we chose:

• I Am Free
  • by Desperation Band from their From The Rooftops CD
• The Lord Reigns
  • by Gateway Worship from their Wake Up The World CD
• I Will Stand
  • by New Life Worship from their Counting On God CD
• Greater
  • by New Life Worship from their Counting On God CD
• You Are Holy
  • by CFNI from their Perfect Love CD
• Revelation Song
  • by Gateway Worship from their Living For You CD
• You Are Good
  • by Israel Houghton from his New Season CD

As I wrap this up for today I just pray that we as a congregation recognize the power in the presence of God. God does mighty things when we seek Him out and chase after Him. He desires to lead us to new places in Him, and all we have to do is keep our eyes focused on Him and keep taking one step at a time as He lays the path before us.

Pour Out Your Heart

It’s hard to believe that it’s Monday again already. Last week just flew by. Once again our services Sunday were beautiful. I can’t tell you how much I enjoy worshiping with our VFC family. They are an amazing group of people!

As always, I want to share with you the songs that we did in our service this past Sunday.

• I Give You Glory by Christ For The Nations – from the Perfect Love CD
• You, You Are God by Gateway Worship – from the Living For You CD
• Father Will You Come by Unhindered – from the Live Worship Experience CD
• Overcome by New Life Worship – from the Counting On God CD
• How Great Is Our God by Chris Tomlin – from the Arriving CD

I’m working on being able to link you to a video file or iTunes file to make it easier for you to listen to the original recording or purchase it for yourself for your own library. So bear with me as I progress in my knowledge of blogging.

I’ve had this scripture on my mind the last couple of weeks, and the Lord just keeps bringing it to me. It’s just a snippet really of a scripture, but it is powerful. It’s from Lamintations 2:19. It says, “pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord”. Pour out like water. That has had me thinking the last couple of weeks and there have been many things that have happened in those two weeks that have challenged and frustrated me. But the Lord keeps bringing this to me. To pour out my heart like water. You know, I think about why the writer of this scripture chose to use water. When you pour water out of something if you’re not careful it comes very quickly. It pours easily in other words. There is power in that water too. If you have ever tried to walk across a fast moving stream or ever used your water hose to wash the dirt off of your driveway. It’s powerful. What I get from this is when I am in the presence of the Lord, let my heart go. Let everything that is within me pour out to God. When I worship, I don’t want to hold anything back from God, because I don’t want God to hold anything back from me!

Last week my family and I went to visit my Grandmother who has been diagnosed with Lymphoma. She is 91 years old and there is nothing they can do for her. Any treatment would probably kill her, so they are just giving her hospice care. While this was an emotional trip for me, realizing that this may be the last time I get to visit her while she still knows that I’m there and recognizes me, the enemy continues to try to get me down. While we were there we had to replace a wheel bearing assembly in our car, then I had to buy a new tire for the car, and when went to get the new tire, I had to wait for 2 1/2 hours to get it down. It was so very frustrating. But on the drive home, the girls are in the back asleep and I put in a CD from Brian Johnson called Love Came Down. This CD is one of the most perfect CD’s for a quiet time that I’ve gotten in years. Anyway, we’re driving along and Deena and I are just singing and we just got into this wonderful spirit of worship as we listened and sang. The presence of God was so wonderful right there in that car as we drove home. We were moved. God reminded me again, “pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord”. In that moment, all my frustrations of the car trouble, my pain and concern over my grandmother, and the pressures of the things I needed to get done, were gone. All that remained was peace. Knowing that my God has all the things of my life in control. I can trust in Him for everything. He cares about me, He loves me, and wants to do incredible things in my life and through my life.

My encouragement to you is, whenever you have those moments in the presence of the Lord, whether it be at church on Sunday, during Bible Study, or Youth Service on Wednesday nights, or if it’s in your car or in your closet, pour out your heart like water. Hold nothing back from Him, and see that He will hold nothing back from you.

My God is Greater!

So here we are week two into my endeavor of sharing my thoughts and revelations from our worship experiences. I was once again almost overwhelmed with the presence of God in our service this weekend. So to start with, let me share with you the songs we did for our praise and worship this week.

• All Because Of Jesus by Fee from the All Because of Jesus CD
• I Am Free by Jon Egan from the From the Rooftops CD
• I Will Stand by New Life Worship from the Counting On God CD
• Greater by New Life Worship from the Counting On God CD

The song Greater was such a powerful song for me this weekend. As you know we started our outreaches for this month this past weekend, and I can tell you the enemy was throwing everything he could at me this week to distract and discourage me. It seemed like everything that could go wrong was going wrong, but as I prayed Sunday morning I kept hearing God impress the scripture, “count it all joy” refering to persecution. But for me, it was like God was saying, count it all joy that the things I had experienced this week were happening because we were doing something wonderful that would have lasting impact for the Kingdom of God. That word encouraged me so much and then as we dove into worship and began the song Greater the presence of God just overwhelmed me. As I sang those words my spirit was lifted up so much. My God is Greater than anything the enemy can bring against me, and I can trust in the Lord with everything I am and know that He is on my side!

Just know as we go through this month at VFC ‘doing something” that the enemy will fight us every step of the way. But we are overcomers! We are more than conquerors! And if we keep our focus on God, great things will happen!

Diving into blogging

Well here we are on a Monday morning and having been thinking for months about starting my own blog I’ve been inspired by our newest staff member, Jonathan Holcomb to go ahead and start one. As you probably know there are many things I’m passionate about and enjoy, but one my biggest passions is worship. As the Worship Pastor at Victory Family Church I’m so blessed to be able to lead an amazing team of musicians and vocalists as we lead our congregation into the Presence of God each and every week. My thoughts for this blog is to share at least on a weekly basis the songs that we did in our service, who the artist is that recorded the song originally, and my inspirations and revelations that I feel the Lord impress upon me from our music and service.

I hope you that actually come by here and read it will find it informational, inspiring, and encouraging.  I would love for the desire and passion for the Presence of God to be contagious!

So let’s get started! Here are the songs that we did yesterday in our service here at VFC:

• The Lord Reigns by Gateway Worship
  • This is from their CD “Wake Up The World”
• Freedom by Darrell Evans
  • This is from his CD “Freedom”
• Here In Your Presence by New Life Worship
  • This is from their “My Savior Lives” CD
• Made Me Glad by Hillsong
  • This is from the “Blessed” CD
• The Stand by Hillsong United
  • This is from their “United We Stand” CD

Every week as I look over my music, I pray and ask God to give me direction in the choice of songs for the week. We also try to select music to go along with the message for the week and it’s amazing to me how God will mesh our spirits sometimes. Just like this last week, I had picked out the songs for our service and Pastor shared with me the theme for his message and the songs I had picked went perfectly with his message. I love the little God moments like that.

I had be wanting to learn Here In Your Presence for sometime now. It’s such a powerful song. Last year I had the privilege of going to a worship conference at New Life Church in Colorado Springs and they did Here In Your Presence during one of the worship services. I remember being so caught up in the Presence of God all I could do was fall to my knees and just worship. The words of that song rang so true to me that day as I was completely undone in His presence. Nothing else in the world mattered at that moment. Nothing was as important as worshiping my wonderful God. I was so wonderfully reminded that my God is always there with me. He never leaves my side and desires for me to know and walk in His presence every minute of my day, not just on Sunday mornings. It is so wonderful to know that my God wants so desperately to have an intimate relationship with me. Where I can know in my heart that I can come to Him for all things and that He is in control and has great and wonderful things in store for me. My God loves me more than I can imagine or comprehend, and I want to know how to love Him with that same kind of passion!

I hope you too can see how much our God loves us and in His presence we can be undone and all things made new!