I'm too tired right now to say much, except it was another awesome Ichthus, and God was truly glorified. I will blog about it tomorrow.

G'night.

 

No posts until Sunday

I may get a quick post up tomorrow, but I'm leaving straight from work tomorrow to go up to Twinsburg and get my gear with the set-up crew and then staying at a friend's house for the night. Then, on Thursday I'm BOUND FOR ICHTHUS!!! YAY!!

Needless to say I won't be posting until Sunday since I'll be camping in a tent out in the middle of a field in Kentucky. Though I shoulda asked Dave about whether he has enough electricity for a laptop! LOL You scoff, but we have fluorescent lights and an oven (yes, a REAL oven for baking cookies and heating garlic bread) in our campsite. Oh, the wonders of car batteries and an electrical engineer for a youth group leader. He is truly the man.

Anyways, I will post about my weekend once I get back and I'm quite sure it will be entertaining and inciteful. I'm taking my el-cheapo digital camera, too, so I may have pics, too!! Pray for our travels, and that the weather report I saw yesterday holds (80 degrees and sunny the whole weekend).

Oh, by the way, thanks for the prayers about Alive. I got a call today that they do need me to sell tickets, so I get to go! YAY! I really must be nuts - not only do I want to camp in a tent an additional 5 nights after the 4 day extravaganza I'm going to this weekend, along with the potential mudfest that Alive often becomes, but I'm actually willing to WORK in order to go! What we musicians suffer through just to catch our heroes in action.

Blessings!

formatting in Internet Explorer

Okay, I did try to fix the problems I created when I put in my own header into the template, and it looks fantastic in Netscape, but still terrible in IE. For some silly reason that is beyond my understanding, it has the border on the right side too far over and makes it look like the middle posting section is off-centered.

Microsoft - what else do I need to say? If anyone wants a better browser, go get for FREE Netscape or Mozilla. I recently downloaded Mozilla, but I haven't really tried it out - it looks like it is basically the same as Netscape so I may not switch over to it.

Anyways, if it looks funny on your browser, I'm sorry. I can't fix it.

:-)

Vacation

Here is where I'll be next weekend!!



and here is where I'll be the week after - I must be crazy!!! Actually, I hope I'll be at this. I can't afford the ticket along with silly things like food, so I signed up to volunteer to sell tickets or whatever so that I get a free ticket. I haven't heard back from them yet, so pray that I get to go!!



Great music, great speakers, and even better fellowship! I can't wait!!!

Changes to blog

I don't think anybody is reading this yet, but just as a point of note for the future - major changes today to the look of the blog!! I had so much fun making the header (and there will be other different ones as the mood strikes me) and I've learned so much about Paint Shop Pro and how to do some of this stuff.

Now, I must confess that I did not take the photograph that I used for the header(s). I'm not quite that good a photographer - one can only have so many hobbies! The bummer is that I would give credit to whoever did take it, except that I don't know. I had a bunch of pictures that I downloaded a LONG time ago to be desktop backgrounds, and I don't remember where I got them from. I do remember that it was from a free website - so please don't think that I failed to pay for them, they were offered for free. I'm very careful about that, because I understand the need to pay when it is requested - after all, I'm a musician and I do expect to get paid when I play for a wedding or some other concert/occasion unless it is a friend and I offer to do it for free. I'm offering some music I arranged and recorded for free, so I know how that goes.

Anyways, I'm way excited about how it is looking. Except somehow I screwed up the side bar and it's margins. Hmmmm....I'll have to figure out what I did wrong and fix it. Html, XML, and CSS is really confusing!!! This is especially for someone who only knows basic HTML - just enough to be dangerous, but not enough to know how to do it totally correctly!! Oh well, I'll get better as I do more, and as I create my full website. ;-) Yes, in case you didn't catch that, I will have a full website, eventually, but I'm not going to put it out in cyberspace until I have a good deal of it done. I hate going to places and click on stuff expecting to see/get whatever the label says, and then it opens a page that says "coming soon". AAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!! It is a major tease!

Well, toodles all. 3 posts in 3 days...woh, someone might actually start thinking that I like writing, which I actually do not! LOL

Beauty

Today I had my bible study with other singles at The Chapel here in Akron, and we are studying Captivating by John and Staci Eldredge. We're on Chapter 2, "What Eve alone can tell" and man, did it ever speak to me. One of the main things is the realization that I AM BEAUTIFUL!! I know that probably sounds silly to a lot of people, but I've just never even thought that about myself. I'm still having a hard time believing it 100%, but God is working on it! :-)

The other thing I realized is that my love for creating music that is beautiful comes from the desire to share in God's beauty. He made this Earth so amazingly beautiful, with birds that sing His praises and waters that rush with the sound of His thunder. I like all kinds of music, but I have always been especially good at playing on the piano the slow, pretty pieces of music. I like the fast, peppy ones, too, but I feel like I can really be expressive with the ones that have beautiful melodies and phrases. Same with singing, and I think I sing the slow ones better, too.

Well, I'd like to talk about beauty more, but I need to get my (ahem) beauty sleep! LOL

Worship

St. Francis of Assisi is often quoted to have said, "Preach the Gospel, if necessary use words." I'd like to expand that to a different level - Worship God, if necessary use words.

There is a lot of criticism I've read on other blogs about "contemplative spirituality" and the Emerging movement. One thing we all have to realize is that each of us is different, and therefore we experience God differently. For some people they feel that they can pray best with quiet solitude or quiet music, others feel that they need to be in a church or outside in nature, and still others feel closest to God when they are exuberantly praising God with loud noise or music. I do not think that God gave us free will so that when we become Christians that we all then suddenly become robots and all have to approach him in the same way. We all need to stop criticizing other believers just because they don't "do church" the same way we prefer to.

BUT - don't jump to conclusions here! The "way to God" is truly limited to one way - through Christ Jesus and receiving him into our hearts. I may be a little "postmodern" in my belief that there is no one "correct" denomination or worship style - they are all equal in God's eyes, all valued and cherished when His children are honestly lifting their worship up to Him. I get so tired of the "worship wars" and the back-biting we do to each other, to our own brothers and sisters in Christ! However, I am not so "postmodern" as to believe that any religion is a way to get to God - that is just plain and simply wrong according to the Bible. Jesus said "I am the way, the truth, and the life." The basics of Christian belief are consistent and plain, and they are the most important thing we need to use as a filter when we fellowship and worship with other Believers.

I have played the piano since I five years old, and I love to sing. I love to listen to music that has a vocalist singing words, and instrumental music with no words. Both have a time and place in my personal worship time. Both feed my soul. God is The Creator gave us creativity, and for me that means that I create through the music that I play or sing. A friend recently said that I pray through my piano playing. I had never thought about it that way before, but I realized that she is right.

So, when you pray, be willing to open your mind and heart to a new way of connecting with God.

Graced again quote

I got this today in a weekly e-mail devo I get called Graced Again. Powerful.

“We delight to walk with our Lord down the path of life because through our repentance we have understood how altogether lovely He is. Our obedience is not the foundation or condition of God’s receiving our repentance; it is the natural outflow of a heart that has experienced His grace. Our new willingness to follow Christ helps reassure us that we have experienced the transforming power of grace. Our delight in walking with Him validates love for Him in our hearts even amid remorse for sin against Him. Thus, though there may be many stumbles and setbacks along the path, true repentance leads naturally to new obedience.” Bryan Chapell, Holiness by Grace

This is a picture of me, so I can put it on my profile!