Jesus and Band Stuff

When i had put the title for this up it read "Band Stuff and Jesus", which is all too good an example of how messed my priorities can be. My good friend James preached out of Phillipians 3 tonight, before hand people just said, "make sure you do it justice." Yes The chapter is that big of a deal and they were right to say it, dont believe me? Go read it. In my opinion James knocked it out of the park. So much good spiritual meat to chew on.
There were 3 main things that jumped out at me, one was a John Piper quote "God is most glorified when we are most satisfied in him." Its so circular. Glorifying god should bring us joy. Our joy should be/can be glorifying god. B-E-A-Utiful. The second was also a Piper quote, which i will now horribly paraphrase: "If heaven for you, was no sickness, all your friends from your entire life, any earthly pleasure you ever tasted, any natural beauty you ever saw on earth, no war, no famine, no poverty, could you be happy with that if Christ wasn't there." I'm still digesting that and I'd heard it months before James said it tonight. Its brutal, and makes you call yourself out. Which is what every sermon or spiritual discussion should make you feel.
The last thing was not large part of the sermon, but exactly what i needed to hear. Tonight we played a song called "Run." And the lyrics to the bridge are, "Run, I want to run into your heart." And James put it quite simply, "I don't want to run into your rules that I'm supposed to follow, I don't want to run into what you've called me to do this year, I just want to run into your heart." That's such a strange thing to wrap my mind around because I've been the first two things down to the letter in the past couple months. Oh here's God's plan, lets go with that and pursue it and chase it. And then forget who's plan it is or even ask why. Let's follow all these rules as best i can to the letter because it will give me a good moral compass, and then i can just put god's name on it so it's not idol worship of the rules. This can be a very successful camouflage for idol worship to take it's place over your relationship with Jesus. It's cliche to say because its so hard to understand, that if we run to god. to his heart. if we desire and truly WANT, to love jesus and WANT the love of jesus then following the rules, following the paths he's laid for you, or even being attuned to the voice of god comes naturally. this is something huge to be grasped about a personal relationship with your savior. Its circular, that we need god. but we fall. and we need god. to need god.

Those are just some things ive been mulling over in my brain recently.

on another note, the band i am a part of Eloi Eloi was mention on indievisionmusic.com  On their "latest news" section. Which came as a surprise to all of us. Turns out our good friend Ryan made it happen. Ryan is starting up a wonderful ministry called "Prayer is Poetry" it is based on faith or spiritual based poetry, lyrics, and spoken word. Whenever (i say whenever, i mean if ever haha) we start to play shows or tour, we will be giving Ryan some of our set time to have an opportunity to preach to kids about the ministry and how the gospel is related to it. I'm sure you will continue to hear more about Ryan as his ministry grows in the Lord. Ryan also wrote the lyrics to one of our new songs "Circles" which will be recorded in our next studio trip. 
and finally, TADA! our single "Bellow" is being released on iTunes this friday Nov. the 26th, as well as on a bunch of other sites, we hope you guys enjoy! :)


god bless
-bb