This Sunday we introduced the newest member of Our Rising Sound, Caleb Dailey. Caleb will be doing guitar work and hopefully become a utility guy. It was nice to have a second guitar player to take some of the responsibility off me. I’m very accustom to playing in 3 piece bands as the only guitarist and it’s shaped my playing style to a great extent. But I’m excited to have Caleb playing with us.

We also introduced a new song by Jesus Culture called “Burning Ones.” You may be asking yourself, didn’t Kyle write a post about how theologically unsound some of the lyrics from this song are? The answer is, why yes I did write a post about that, I also wrote a post about how much I dug the song as a whole and in order to fix the lyric problem I changed them. Simple yet effective solution.

Your love is our reward, that’s why we ask for more of You

became

You set our hearts desires, that all our lives bring glory to You

I thought we played it better in practice than we did live, I certainly sang it better in practice. We might do this 1 more week but then Christmas will be upon us so it probably won’t be heard again until next year. I’m late as usual on Christmas planning. Time to cram.

1. We Cry Out – Kim Walker (loop available)
2. Dress Us Up – John Mark McMillan
3. Come Thou Fount – Robert Robinson
4. Gloria 34 – Taylor Sorensen (loop available)
5. Burning Ones – Jesus Culture (loop available)

This post is part of Fred McKinnon’s Set List Sundays.

My band has been enjoying a few months of really problem free playing. We’ve been playing well which is great, but we’ve also had no major and very few minor mishaps. The streak was broken 2 weeks ago when I showed up to find my in ear monitors were gone. Then this last Sunday my drummer’s snare broke a few moments before the set started. The string that holds the snare strainer to the bottom of the snare snapped. Unfortunately with no spare snare in the house it was a mad dash to jimmy rig something up.

I stalled as long as I could, then we prayed and just agreed as a congregation that we’d worship God with everything we had with no instruments if that’s what it took. So I was prepared, at least mentally, at the end of that prayer to just go acoustic and scrap the set. In fact I was almost looking forward to it, but my man Jon Utter has some crazy McGyver skills and got it together just in time.

It really inspired me though to get an all acoustic set thrown in the rotation here soon. I think it would really be beneficial from multiple angles. First it would be refreshing from a creativity stand point, make sure our ears aren’t tired of the same stuff. Second it would be a great demonstration of something we preach that we believe and that’s it doesn’t matter what style of music we play, God get’s glory and worship through it all. Third, it’s a great challenge to the body having them coming to expect one thing and get another, great opportunity for us to grow. So stay tuned…it will happen.

1. Jesus’ Name – Ryan Delmore
2. How I Live – Kyle Campos (loop available)
3. Come Thou Fount – Robert Robinson
   
4. Death In His Grave – John Mark McMillan (loop available)
5. True Love – Phil Wickham (loop available)

This post is part of Fred McKinnon’s Set List Sundays.

 “Teach me some melodious sonnets, sung by flaming tongues above.

Praise His name I’m fixed upon it, name of God’s redeeming love” 

I’m amazed how this song mixes a psalmist sense of poetry with a strong declaration of doctrinal truth. The author, Robert Robinson, comes from a place I think we can all relate. Daily indebted to God’s grace and stirring up within ourselves our desire to remain fixed upon Christ. I was telling my pastor as we sang this last Sunday as each line passes I feel regret for not meditating on it at that moment. Each line so rich of truth.

There is a story I read online about the author who, as he says later in the song was prone to wander away from God. It was some years after his writing of the song and he was on a stagecoach as a female passenger sat next to him and began to converse. She was telling him of her faith and he spoke as though he didn’t know of Christ and had fallen away. The woman began quoting the hymn Come Thou Fount to him and told him, “These words might help you as they have helped me”. Robert began to weep and replied, “Madam, I am the poor, unhappy man who composed that hymn many years ago. I would give a thousand worlds if I had them, to enjoy the feelings I had then”.

What power is in the Holy Spirit as we profess the goodness of God and what he’s done in our lives. My heart broke for Robert as I read that story, that he was unable to remain fixed upon Christ, but that again through God’s unending mercy and grace He sent this woman. God sent this woman to recite the very things God had done in him years ago as a reminder of his goodness and love. In God’s persevering grace he hunts us down, Ezekiel 34:11 says “I myself will search for my sheep and look after them.”. God was searching for Robert. One of my favorite examples of Christ’s love for the lost is Matthew 18, verse 12-14 reads

“…If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he is happier about the one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way the Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should be lost”

The Father in heaven is not willing that Robert should be lost. I love that even as we are unfaithful to what we’ve prayed and sung to heaven, that God is always faithful. That He does not cast aside our prayers as we often do. God uses our own words to remind us of our own heart, He sends people to remind us of what He’s been trying to get through to us as he sent Samuel to Eli.

It’s fitting that this story comes with this verse, cause God literally was teaching Robert to sing as he sings and showing him what being fixed upon really looks like. Those melodious sonnets came back full circle as the words Robert wrote to God, now being sung back to himself by a good and loving God, through a servant of Christ, to remind him of who he should be fixed upon.