Grooves for Thought

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there.  You all have done something I could never do, you have given birth to a child.  Thank you God for giving that duty to Eve and not Adam.  On Mother’s Day I figured it would be appropriate to tell a story about my mom, so here goes.

Music is a huge part of my life.  I own roughly around 400 CDs (bought and own legally, but I won’t go there in this blog).  I’m the person that will jam out in my car and not really care if other people see me.  When I was in high school I started to learn how to play guitar.  I went out and bought my first acoustic guitar, then a couple weeks later I went out and bought my first amp.  I can remember the look on my mom’s face when I came home with my amp.  It was one of those “what is Nick wasting his money on now” faces.  So I asked her what the look was for and her response was, “I can’t believe you are spending so much money on something you will stop doing in a few months.”  I told her that I wouldn’t spend so much money on something if I wasn’t going to keep at it, that playing guitar was something that wouldn’t be a fad for me.  To that she responded, “I’ll believe that when I see it.”  Well now, 10 years later, I still have and play that same acoustic guitar (I still have the amp as well, but it is in need of some repairs at the moment).  Playing music has become a huge part of who I am today, and just as of last week, I have officially begun teaching myself how to play the piano (I’m sure you will be updated of how that goes).

I love being part of the worship band at our church.  There is something beautiful about being able to worship God with an instrument.  Music is a great way to express yourself, and I love using it to express my love towards God.  It is very easy for me to get lost in worship and completely forget to pay attention to Sean giving the signal to switch parts of the song.  Sometimes I wonder what some people can think when they hear other people worshiping.  I can see them thinking, “How can they stand to listen to the same four chords for five minutes straight, it is so monotonous.”  Just this morning there was a point in worship where we played one chord for about five minutes.  It started off really mellow and we built it, and built it, and built it, but never changed chords.  It was amazing!!  The best part about it was that it was completely unrehearsed.  It was just the band and church moving in the presence of God.  It was one of those moments that you want to stay in forever.

One of my favorite psalms is psalm 150.  In it the psalmist says, “Let everything that breathes sing praises to the Lord!”  Worship is one of the most liberating things you can do as a Christian.  The psalmist understood this.  He says to praise God in everything and for everything.  I think the main reason is because when we worship, we take our attention from the things going on in our life, our issues, our problems, our stuff, and we put our attention on God.  2 Corinthians 3:17 says “For the Lord is the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”  There are so many times we try to take care of things on our own.  We stress and stress and think of every way to solve our problems.  But Paul tells us that we really just need to spend some time in God’s presence.  In His presence there is freedom.  We all desire to be set free.  None of us dream of days filled with stress and worry.  Yet when those times come upon us, worshiping God is something we tend to forget about.  We can spend days or weeks worrying about something that God can answer for us in minutes.  Try it out, see for yourself.  Even if you can’t play a musical instrument, throw on some worship music and worship to that.  If you need some good bands you could check out Planetshakers, Hillsong United, David Crowder Band, Worth Dying For, Aaron Gillespie, or Starfield, just to name a few.  I promise you it will be worth your time.

On a completely random note, I have spent the past couple weeks listening to a bunch of old music after being inspired by reading my old xanga.  Here are some of the albums I’ve been jamming to that are still worth listening to: Kids in the Way – Apparitions of Melody, Underoath – They’re Only Chasing Safety, and Emery – The Weak’s End.  Still to come are Dead Poetic – New Medicine, MxPx – Slowly Going the Way of the Buffalo, and Squad Five-O – Bombs Over Broadway.

until next time…