Worship Fast

Fasting is important. We know this. Many Christians do not fast nearly as much as they should, myself included. We don't fast because we think that we can't handle it, we are selfish and just don't want to do it or we don't fully grasp the importance of fasting to our lives as Christians. This blog is not to discuss fasting food even though that is the standard and most effective way to fast. My topic of discussion today is fasting music.

Music is a big part of my life. I don't go more than an hour or two with out poppin my iPod in my ears. By my calculations I listen to music for a minimum of 90 minutes every day. With the average song lasting about 3 minutes that means I hear about 30 different songs throughout my day. I have the one of the most random itunes libraries I've ever seen. It is about 7,000 songs ranging from musicals to country(like 10 songs) to worship to heavy metal and everything in between... like I said... random. Many youth pastors strongly encourage students to listen to only Christian music. While I do encourage young people to steer clear of secular media, I have to admit that a large chunk of my music is not by Christians. I do avoid content that is profane, violent or sexual in nature, but if it is clean and has a good message chances are I'll give it a listen.  I wish the Christians had better music... however, that is a whole different discussion. I think what you can "handle" listening to depends on your current spiritual level & how much that music affects you.

Time to contradict myself... you cannot say that the music wont affect you. Humans are very impressionable beings and what we let in is what will come out. We can see this natural principle in the Word of God. Matthew 12: 34 tells us that "out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks." Whatever you let into your eyes and ears does make its way into your heart. I know that by listening to love songs you aren't just going to fall in love. I also know that listening to the Wicked soundtrack doesn't make you believe in witchcraft. I understand that your music does not directly change your thoughts, but it does start to play in your mind and heart. One of the greatest attributes of music is that it has the ability to make you feel things when you hear it. There are songs that can make you happy, sad enough to cry or pumped up to work out. This is where the fast comes in.

Over spring break I got to spend a few days at Southeastern University with my oldest friend, and a guy that I just met (but I am sure that I will stay friends with). During one of our many conversations throughout the weekend the guys told me about a fast that they had done. They said that they set aside a certain amount of time and listened to only worship music. I told them that it sounded like a really cool idea, but I left it at that. Throughout break and my first week back at school I just continued to listen to random music. Lots of the usual pop-punk and Christian jams (Christian doesn't necessarily mean that the music is about Christ... anyone else notice that?) I have gotten really jaded by worship music lately. Other than a few standout artists (David Crowder Band, Hillsong London, Worth Dying For just to name a few) all of our current worship music sounds the same. I realized this when my sister asked me if  a band was gospel before I put the CD in. She assumed in advance that the CD would be boring if it was Christian just because that is the lovely reputation that we have given ourselves. God has recently birthed a strong new desire in me to write worship music that kids like my sister will actually enjoy listening to. I have gotten off-topic, but all that to say that worship music is not the majority of what I've been listening to.

This weekend I started listening to worship music a lot more again. No reason really, I just came across a Planetshakers CD in my library that I haven't listened to in a while and got addicted to it again. Through the weekend I kept listening and then sunday I wrote a new worship song. I haven't written a full song in a long time. And as far as upbeat songs for worship this is the first one. That is when it hit me. What I was pouring into my ears & spirit all weekend through listening to worship had came out of me through my writing. This morning I remembered what Brandon & Justin told me of in Florida and I have now started my fast. From now until next week I won't be listening to anything but worship music as long as I can help it. I am not just doing this to improve my worship songwriting, but to renew my mind. The same renewal that we receive through reading the Word can come to us through listening to it in music. For as much as I listen to music I know that using this time to worship will put my focus on God for much of my day. I'll be blogging about this again in a week to let you know the great things that God did through this time. I encourage you to pray about it and give this fast a try for yourself. If you do it please leave me comments on my facebook or on my blog to let me know how it goes.

Be Blessed and stay electric!

Brandon

Lovequest: Intro

A little over a month ago I began something that I call my Lovequest. Early last semester God called me to take a period of time to focus on Him and give Him my heart completely. One day in the prayer room at school I felt impressed upon to start writing a book and the name Lovequest came to me and stuck. This is the opening pages of the book. I will explain more after you read the beginning pages of my Lovequest.

I now stand facing my 20^th birthday with less than a month left to call myself a teenager. I am a college student and while it feels like a great portion of my life is behind me I am aware that this first quarter of my life has been a great time of development. Many people would not consider this to be an ideal time to begin work on the daunting task of a book, but I find the timing to be perfect. This book is all about searching for God and more specifically about searching for love. What better time for me to write about this search than when I am actually in it. I have not found what love is completely, nor have I stopped searching for God even a decade into Christianity. I am fully aware that this search is one that will last my entire lifetime, so essentially this book in your hands should never have been published, but I am trusting God for a release to stop writing at some point in my search in order to help others get to that point. I cannot say when I will reach that point. It may take until my next year of school, my first year of marriage, my 10^th year of ministry or some other milestone, but I do plan on giving you a timeframe throughout this book. I want you to be able to fully experience this quest in the way that I do. If at some point in my quest I have a change of opinion I will not go back and edit out my previous thoughts. I will just add a chapter with my new ones. I understand that this is unorthodox and frankly quite confusing, but that is part of the quest. To fully learn and grow in love the way that I am going to you have to be willing to change your opinions even after you think you are fully established in your thoughts. The first group of chapters is full of my previous changes of opinion. My belief in the one true God of love has never changed, but subsequent beliefs have not always been so definite and you will discover that about me very quickly. By the time you finish reading this book I pray that you will have an idea of what my heart looks like. Through that I hope that you will be able to more greatly discover your own. I should warn you right from the start that the image you will see is not always a pretty one. The heart that you are about to study is one full of scars and broken ties, but never forget that it is covered in the blood of Christ and to see it for all that it is you have to look into Christ first. Please press on and keep reading through the tough parts. You would have a very distorted view of love if you stop reading this book halfway through one of the many stories that are about to unfold. Our quest will be one that is not always easy, sometimes scary, full of vulnerability, eye opening and one that leads straight to the cross and the epitome of love. I genuinely appreciate you for reading this far and I hope that you will join me on my quest for love…

Well that's it. That is what I will be focusing on during the rest of this year and the rest of my life for that matter. God needs to show me what love is and I cannot wait to figure that out. God is always amazing me with His love. I keep seeing how much more chill it is than I ever knew. God smiles a lot. In the month that I have been looking at the subject of love I have seen it more places than I ever have before. there is so much love out there. We just have to choose to receive it. I've been waiting all week to hear from God about some stuff and in His usual loving nature He decided to show what I needed to see in the most unlikely of places. I'm sitting in an airport thinking about the love of Christ. His love is amazing. The Lovequest will continue and I have much more to share, I just wanted to give you a basic idea of what I was doing.

God Bless You

I love you

Brandon