new RED album Innocence & Instinct to come out 2/10/09!!!

a couple songs from it to wet your palate!

The lead single, "The Fight Inside," is already available on iTunes. their new album will focus on the fight inside between our childlike innocence and the instinctive side that makes us do things we shouldn't. The music captures the internal tug-of-war inside all of us; between good and evil, light and darkness, spirit and flesh, exploring that fragile barrier between overcoming and being overcome. awesome!!!

this second song is more of a love song... "Never Be The Same."

Can't wait!!!!!

my Rejoyce article is out... Rejoyce is the online newsletter of my wonderful church... please check it out and be blessed!

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my current favorite song:

john mark mcmillan is one of my favorite worship artists. i recommend his new album The Medicine.

what i especially love about is that its main emphasis is very similar to what i've been preaching on lately at Friday Night WIRE! yup, the main message here is that the love of God is a resurrection love, a love that's stronger than death. it's a message that's been burning in my heart the last month or so. his lyrics are so good, God is so awesome

Go to John Mark's myspace- the first song that should play is my favorite!

Dress Us Up
Dress us up in your righteousness
Bring us in with a ring and a kiss
When you walk into the room you know we can't resist
Every bottle of perfume always ends up on the floor in a mess

You make us sparkle and you make us shine
Like the stars who sing on your chorus line
Through space and time we'll harmonize
Where deep meets deep like the ocean meets the sky

The sun and the moon
They come out of their grave just for you
The dead man and the cynical too
They're coming out of their grave
And it's just for you

'Cause the love of God is stronger
The love of God is stronger
The love of God is stronger
Than the power of death

Dress us up in the blood of a son
Who opened up his veins so that we would overcome
Hell and the grave in the power of his love
After three dark days he showed us how it's done
And he still does

You make us sparkle and you make us shine
Like the stars who sing on your chorus line
Through space and time we'll harmonize
Where deep meets deep like the ocean meets the sky
Yeah

The sun and the moon
They come out of their grave just for you
The dead man and the cynical too
They're coming out of their grave
And it's just for you

'Cause the love of God is stronger
The love of God is stronger
The love of God is stronger
Than the power of death

His love is stronger... His love is stronger... His love is stronger... His love is stronger

one podcast i've really been enjoying is Pastor Mark Driscoll's series entitled The Peasant Princess. it's on sex and relationships. i've watched all three parts so far and they're all excellent. highly recommended for singles, daters, and married couples! here's a couple samples:

that's right, my boys from RED are coming to NYC (with Puddle of Mudd) on Sunday night, November 16! let's all go!!!!!

oh and i found a really cool band... check out two songs by Fireflight, "Forever" and "Unbreakable":

Sometimes I feel so cold 
Like I'm waiting around all by myself 
Loneliness gets so old 
I'm in the lost and found sitting on the shelf 
Been stuck for way too long 
But I hear Your voice 
You're who I'm counting on 

Oh, tell me You're here 
That You will watch over me forever 
Oh, take hold of my heart 
Show me You'll love me forever 

I know that You can tell 
When I start to let my hope fade away 
I need to catch myself 
Open my ears to hear You calling my name 
Been fighting way too long 
But I hear Your voice 
You had me all along 

When I'm starting to drown 
You jump in to save me 
When my world's upside down 
Your hands, they shake me and wake me 

Where are the people that accused me?
The ones who beat me down and bruised me
They hide just out of sight
Can't face me in the light
They'll return but I'll be stronger

God, I want to dream again
Take me where I've never been
I wanna go there
This time I'm not scared
Now I am unbreakable, it's unmistakable
No one can touch me
Nothing can stop me

Sometimes it's hard to just keep going
But faith is moving without knowing
Can I trust what I can't see 
To reach my destiny
I want to take control but I know better

Forget the fear it's just a crutch 
That tries to hold you back 
And turn your dreams to dust
All you need to do is just trust

...faith is not believing when it's so obvious that it's going to happen.
Faith is believing even when the outlook is bleak, when it appears that the clock will strike midnight, when memories of last September haunt us, when our team can't score a run from 3rd with nobody out in the bottom of the 9th, when our bullpen is impossibly bad, when the schedule is not in our favor, when it could rain all weekend, when a poor Pedro toes the rubber tonight against Rich Harden...

ok, i'll stop. LGM! Ya Gotta Believe!!!

this past Friday Night WIRE was awesome!
and i'm excited to post my message online for the first time!
enjoy

i will write more on the issue later, but here's what John Piper wrote back in 1995. i totally agree, of course.

(Piper also delivered a sermon last year about how abortion is racism.)

One-Issue Politics, One-Issue Marriage, and the Humane Society

Investigating
dog life in Minnesota has solidified my decision to vote against those
who endorse the right to abortion. So then what is my response to the
charge of being a one-issue voter?

No endorsement of any single
issue qualifies a person to hold public office. Being pro-life does not
make a person a good governor, mayor, or president. But there are
numerous single issues that disqualify a person from public office. For
example, any candidate who endorsed bribery as a form of government
efficiency would be disqualified, no matter what his party or platform
was. Or a person who endorsed corporate fraud (say under $50 million)
would be disqualified no matter what else he endorsed. Or a person who
said that no black people could hold office—on that single issue alone
he would be unfit for office. Or a person who said that rape is only a
misdemeanor—that single issue would end his political career. These
examples could go on and on. Everybody knows a single issue that for
them would disqualify a candidate for office.

It's the same with
marriage. No one quality makes a good wife or husband, but some
qualities would make a person unacceptable. For example, back when I
was thinking about getting married, not liking cats would not have
disqualified a woman as my wife, but not liking people would. Drinking
coffee would not, but drinking whiskey would. Kissing dogs wouldn't,
but kissing the mailman would. And so on. Being a single-issue fiancé
does not mean that only one issue matters. It means that some issues
may matter enough to break off the relationship.

So it is with
politics. You have to decide what those issues are for you. What do you
think disqualifies a person from holding public office? I believe that
the endorsement of the right to kill unborn children disqualifies a
person from any position of public office. It's simply the same as
saying that the endorsement of racism, fraud, or bribery would
disqualify him—except that child-killing is more serious than those.

When
we bought our dog at the Humane Society, I picked up a brochure on the
laws of Minnesota concerning animals. Statute 343.2, subdivision 1
says, "No person shall . . . unjustifiably injure, maim, mutilate or
kill any animal." Subdivision 7 says, "No person shall willfully
instigate or in any way further any act of cruelty to any animal." The
penalty: "A person who fails to comply with any provision of this
section is guilty of a misdemeanor."

Now this set me to
pondering the rights of the unborn. An eight-week-old human fetus has a
beating heart, an EKG, brain waves, thumb-sucking, pain sensitivity,
finger-grasping, and genetic humanity, but under our present laws is
not a human person with rights under the 14th Amendment, which says
that "no state shall deprive any person of life . . . without due
process of law." Well, I wondered, if the unborn do not qualify as
persons, it seems that they could at least qualify as animals, say a
dog, or at least a cat. Could we not at least charge abortion clinics
with cruelty to animals under Statute 343.2, subdivision 7? Why is it
legal to "maim, mutilate and kill" a pain-sensitive unborn human being
but not an animal?

These reflections have confirmed my
conviction never to vote for a person who endorses such an evil—even if
he could balance the budget tomorrow and end all taxation.

regardless of what you think about Barack Obama, there is no denying
this: despite his constant equivocations about abortion, he is the most extreme pro-abortion mainstream presidential
candidate in American history. his radical stances on this issue comprise the main reason for why I am praying that he will not be our next president.

obama's speech before Planned Parenthood in July 2007:

the Freedom of Choice act, to which he refers to, would overturn all 300+ local, state, and federal abortion restriction laws, including the ban on partial birth abortion (yes, this is the heinous procedure in which a baby is halfway-delivered, pierced in the skull, and then has his brains sucked out).

another telling video:

While he was an Illinois state senator, Obama voted against the
Born-Alive Protection Act, which mandates medical care for babies who
survive attempted abortions. Jill Stanek, a nurse who testified
concerning this bill, told of how she would hold these babies
in her arms for hours, basically waiting for them to die. Obama
actually chastised this woman for her testimony, and voted against the
state bill, while a similar federal bill passed 98-0 in the U.S.
Senate (yup that includes major pro-abortion senators such as Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein); also NARAL, the nation's top pro-abortion political organizaton, stated a position of neutrality). The plain truth is that Obama voted that it was acceptable to
leave these babies born out of their mother's wombs to die.

i've already detailed Obama's lies and double-speak regarding abortion.

more info can be found here and here.

this whole article is worth reading, but this excerpt in particular caught my eye:

Mr. McCain will lower taxes. Mr. Obama will raise
them, especially on small businesses. To understand why, you need to
know something about the "infamous" top 1% of income tax filers: In
order to avoid high corporate tax rates and the double taxation of
dividends, small business owners have increasingly filed as individuals
rather than corporations. When Democrats talk about soaking the rich,
it isn't the Rockefellers they're talking about; it's the companies
where most Americans work. Three out of four individual income tax
filers in the top 1% are, in fact, small businesses.

In the name of taxing the rich, Mr. Obama would raise
the marginal tax rates to over 50% on millions of small businesses that
provide 75% of all new jobs in America. Investors and corporations will
also pay higher taxes under the Obama program, but, as the
Michigan-Ohio-Illinois experience painfully demonstrates, workers
ultimately pay for higher taxes in lower wages and fewer jobs