Songs from the Weekend: April 26/27, 2008

Song of Hope by Robbie Seay

My Savior Lives by New Life Church

Savior King by Hillsongs

No One Like You by David Crowder Band

God of this City

Over the past several weeks I have been searching and praying about a special song that would help us focus our attention and affections towards the 2yr anniversary of Think Big at Keystone.

I came across the song, "God of this City," on the latest passion release.  It has completely and overwhelmingly stirred my soul and re-ignited my passion for my region (Keller, Southlake, etc).

The song comes out of Belfast, Ireland from a worship team called Bluetree.  Here is the story behind the song:

Nov 2007, Bluetree are heading out to Pattaya Thailand to participate in an event arranged by Belfast missionaries living in Pattaya, Thailand called Pattaya Praise. We’ve no expectation of the event; we were just looking for an opportunity to serve somehow.

We didn’t know much about it before we left, but Pattaya is a dark place. It’s a small seaside town notorious for it’s sex trade. Throughout our time there we heard countless stories of girls who are bought from their parents for a price, sold to the sex industry at ages as young as 5 years old. Arriving in Pattaya the spiritual climate seems to change, it’s hard to define, but there is a very tangible change. On the bus journey in we’d been our usual cheery selves, but entering Pattaya at 10am and turning on to a street lined by girls ready for business, the bus became very quiet. We’re in total shock. It’s a sunny day but it’s incredible how dark it feels.

’Walking street’ we learn is the epicentre of the sex trade in Pattaya, it’s about a mile long and at night springs to life with neon signs. Thai people are generally conservative in their dress sense – it’s generally considered provocative to bare your shoulders. But on their street the girls are wearing very little, and offering anything you can imagine for a price. It’s easy to look around with human eyes, see the depravity and get angry. You see older men walking hand-in-hand with young girls – as a daddy, that’s hard to take in. It’s easy to get angry, it’s easy to judge – but that’s not our job, so we grit our teeth.

We were in Pattaya to be part of a praise event not far from this street, the soul purpose of which was to worship and show God’s light in a dark place. We wanted to play more than the scheduled slots while we were there, so we found out that one of the bar owners would let us play a worship set in her bar on the proviso that we brought as many from the missions team who would buy coke-a-cola all night. We walk in to the bar which is about the middle of walking street, girls are lined up on the stairs waiting for business. We get set up, we’re really nervous and quite uncomfortable but we kick in to a familiar beat of worship and soon it’s ok. God starts to speak and we started to move in to this spontaneous song. The truth is when you worship in a place, you start to see God’s heart for that place. What would God say to a place like this?

Amidst the depravity God say’s, I’m the God of this City, I’m the King of these people and Greater Thing are Yet to Come, Greater Things are Still to be Done HERE. The song wasn’t written before that night, but we came out of the bar having worshipped with the song that is now the title track of our album – God of this City (Greater things). The song isn’t just for Pattaya – it’s for your city, and it’s true. By faith we must expect that greater things are still to be done.

You can download the song at iTunes here.

Here are the chords too.

Shine Your Light on Us

This past weekend we made a last minute change to the music. I have had overwhelming response to this song.

On Thursday, Brandon and I were discussing the message for the weekend. It was on storms. Lets face it...we all experience storms. It seems like we are either in one, just out of one or we can see the clouds forming for an upcoming storm. I have recently made my way through a storm. In fact, in my rear-view mirror I can see the clouds disappearing and a nice little rainbow of God promising me that it will all work out. While I was in that storm, there was a song that ministered to me.

So back to Brandon and me discussing the message. While we were talking, God began to stir my spirit to sing that song. The song is "Shine Your Light On Us" by Robbie Seay. You gotta check this song out. In fact, you gotta check out the whole CD. Very honest and powerful. So here is a link to Shine Your Light On Us in iTunes and here is a link to the chords for all you worship leaders out there. ENJOY and BE ENCOURAGED!