Where music, culture and worship meet.

This blog examines, reviews and discusses how worship is being lived out in culture and in the church. We tackle everything from songwriting techniques in corporate worship, to interviewing worship leaders and pastors, to reviewing the last big rock concert.

December 11 2008

God in Our Worst Times: “I commited adultery”

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This post was written by Dave Negron. Dave and his wife Denise have been married for 9 years and they have 4 beautiful children. They are both Connection Group leaders at Life Connection Church in Phoenix AZ.

“I WOULD NEVER DO THAT TO MY FAMILY”

Those were the words I said when I was 8yrs old. All I could hear was my mom yelling and my dad yelling back. I remember running to my bedroom, jumping on my bunk bed, and praying, “God please don’t let my parents ever divorce.” Fast forward to Dec. 30 1991 my 14th birthday. I was in Arizona visiting my aunt. When I heard the phone ring I knew something was wrong. My aunt began talking loud trying to calm my mom down. She gave me the phone and my mom said your father has left and is not coming back. The next day I was on a plane back to California. I had front row seats to see what adultery does in a home, a “Christian home” that is. I told myself I would never do that to my family.

April 10,1999 I’m getting married to the most beautiful woman in the world. We were high school sweethearts and I knew this was going to be perfect. I’ve always thought I knew how to be a husband and a father; I just needed to not do what my dad did. Easy.

3 months after getting married we were pregnant. No time was there to be alone for us. After Valerie was born in 2000 we had Alexis in 2002 and Ezekiel in 2004. Everything was going great, at least that’s what I believed.

Marriage troubles begin

In July 2003 I started this cycle of running from my problems and started to disconnect myself from the family. I tried maintaining 2 jobs just to stay out of the house because all I thought was that was my role in the home, bring in the money. During multiple moves back and forth from Arizona and California it became clearer and clearer that my marriage wasn’t right. My wife Denise is not happy. All of our problems or fights were financially based. I didn’t think she should be telling me what I needed to do. I made the money so I can spend it whenever and however I wanted to.

This continued for 3 years. In July of 2006 on my way home from work I remember the Lord speaking to my spirit warning me that if I didn’t repent I was going to lose my family and everything I have. I thought about it but no action took place.

The first week in November 2006 I was stressing out about money. A debt collector just attached my wages and I wasn’t bringing home the money. The night before Denise and I got in a huge fight and she threw out the word DIVORCE. I called her bluff.

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December 03 2008

God in Our Worst Times: “When suicide hits home”

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This post was written by Jason Whitehorn. Jason is a worship leader at FBC Smyrna in Tennessee and tells the story below of getting through the tragic death of his grandfather.

“My grandfather is dead”

Who would have ever thought that the month of February in 2004 would be as cold as it was? The physical temperature was fine with highs between the 50’s and 60’s…but the chill I felt that February was numbing. I had come home from work and was doing some relaxing on the couch when my phone rang. To this day, I can’t remember if it was my mother or father who called…and I don’t remember the exact words said to me…but I remember being told a simple sentence that translated to “my grandfather is dead.” I vaguely remember not being able to speak and tossing the phone aside at the couch. My wife picked up the phone while I cried my heart into the couch cushions.

The details were chilling. My grandfather had spent the morning cleaning up after himself so my grandmother would not have to do any cleaning when she got home. She had gone to see a family member in the hospital. He changed clothes into an old t-shirt and an old pair of pants and went out into his garage. He had placed a note on the kitchen refrigerator – a note that we would later discover he had written well before the fateful day. He sat down on his favorite glider in the garage – and performed the unthinkable act.

After the initial shock wore off, my mind went where I am sure everyone’s mind goes: Why? Could I have prevented it? What happens to my grandfather now? Signs! There were no signs! How could we have missed this?!? I spent my next few months struggling with these thoughts and emotions.

Dealing with the guilt

Perhaps you have deal with or are currently dealing with the same issue. Perhaps you know someone who is dealing with the same issue. The quiet truth that I can provide to you is that God can heal your heart – and he provides us with many words in the Scriptures that answer many of our questions. It is easy to wonder “Why didn’t I see this coming?” or “could I have prevented this?” when dealing with the suicide of a loved one or friend. The truth is – it is rarely ever made known. I never knew that my grandfather was that upset with life. It turned out that he was going to have surgery on his hips and be confined to wheelchair for a short period of time. My grandfather simply did not want to subject his wife to his pain nor subject her to having to push him around and care for him. There were no signs…there was no idle talk…nor talk at all about suicide.

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December 01 2008

God in Our Worst Times: “Our baby is Faith”

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This post was written by Mark and Kendra Rohl. Mark is an elder and worship leader at Life Connection Church in Phoenix AZ and Kendra sings on the Our Rising Sound band. They tell the story below of their struggles to start their own family by having children of their own.

Beginning a family

It was the best of times it was the worst of times.  Those words ring true for us as we have headed down the path towards parenthood.  The last three and a half years have been filled with anticipation, hope, heartbreak, loss, joy and redemption and the story is still being written. The decision to start a family is a scary and exciting decision for any young couple and we were no exception. After 4 years of marriage we felt God was leading us to be fruitful and multiply and we wanted to be obedient to the Lord of course so try we did! The first few months were exciting and with every twinge of nausea we thought we were pregnant. Then a few more months went by but without much concern, everyone told us to just be patient, try eating peanut butter or oysters or any number of strange magic fertility enhancing foods (it’s really quite fascinating how all of a sudden everyone becomes an expert on the subject and has lots of advice to give on how to make a baby).  But we were not worried and continued the old fashioned way with full confidence that at any moment we would be peeing on sticks and seeing pink plus signs.

Approaching the 1 yr mark our hope was turning into frustration so we thought maybe we just weren’t timing things right or taking the right vitamins so we got the gadgets and gizmos that help you to know your cycles and so forth. I won’t go into all the gory details but for anyone who has tried to make a baby you know the crazy lengths you will go to and try every bizarre thing anyone recommends when you get to the point of desperation. After a few more months of that we decided it was time to head to the docs for a check up and see if anything was causing this seemingly epic delay in procreation.

Doctors start testing

Mark was the first to get tested (wow, the process of that was another interesting moment in our marriage we never thought we would experience) and much to our surprise his tests came back as infertile, what, infertile? How can that be we thought. The doctors said there was no explanation for how this could have happened, no hope for any sort of cure and we spent a while reeling from that blow. We went through the cycle of sadness, then anger, then bitterness and finally landed in fight mode. We weren’t going to give up this easy and we knew God could do a miracle so that is what we prayed for. We had prophetic words about God restoring the seed of life in Mark and we clung to that and had our amazing friends and family praying and interceding for that to take place.

In the meantime, the doctors wanted to test me just to make sure we didn’t have the double whammy of infertility happening, and low and behold we did. After a painful procedure and testing that was more like torture than anything else we discovered that a ruptured appendix when I was in high school caused massive scar tissue to form around my fallopian tubes causing them to be completely blocked. Awesome, we now were faced with both of us being diagnosed as infertile in our 20’s with no hope (according to the docs) of ever conceiving naturally. It’s a strange feeling to have someone tell you that you can’t have children, it feels like some right has been taken from you and it all seems so unjust. There was a period of time when we could barely go out in public because of the seemingly innumerable amounts of pregnant teens walking around looking pissed and disgusted at the gift of life inside of them.

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