elman authement - SD Community

Ever been hurt?

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 07:00:00 GMT

I would imagine if we could tell our stories of the hurts and afflictions indured by Christians from other Christians, we would have enough dialog to put the TV Soap Operas out of business. OK, all joking aside, we've all been there to one degree or another. The pain, hurts and offences are many times unbearable. To be betrayed by the hands of a dear Christian is a tough thing. I know just saying, "Jesus feels your pain because He's been there," doesn't quite fix the hurt. But it doesn't take away the fact that He did bear that pain for us. He edured the greatest affliction by the hands of the people He loved.
We read in Psalms 55:12-14 David says, For it was not an enemy that reproached me; then I could have borne it: neither was it he that hated me that did mafnify himself against me; then I would have hid myself from him: But it was thou, a man mine equal, my guide and mine acquaintance. We took sweet counsel together, and walked unto the house of God in company…   Sounds familiar?
The one thing I've found among Christians is, for the most part, their hearts are to glorify God in what they do. Sure we all have our little egos to deal with. But in the end, I think it's safe to say, even when we feel we've been betrayed, misrepresented or even lied about by another Christian, the end motive that people had was still for God to exalted. Sometimes our motives may be wrong and our actions prove that, but we're all still wanting to bring God glory.
So if you feel you have been betrayed or your position in the ministry may have been taken away from you by deceitfulness or any wrong doing, remember the words of Paul the apostle as he sat in a prison cell by the hands of the people whom he tried so dearly to reach. Listen to what Paul had to say… Phil. 1:15 The Message   It's true that some here preach Christ because with me out of the way, they think they'll step right into the spotlight. But the others do it with the best heart in the world. 16. One group is motivated by pure love, knowing that I am here defending the Message, wanting to help.The others, now that I am out of the picture, are meerly greedy, hoping to get something out of it for themselves. Their motives are bad. They see me as their competition, and so the worse it goes for me, the better they think for them. 18. So how am I to respond? I've decided that I really don't care about their motives, whether mixed, bad, or indifferent. Everytime one of them opens his mouth, Christ is proclaimed, so I just cheer them on. And I'm going to keep the celebration going because I know how it's going to turn out.
   Let's learn to develope an attitude of blessing and not cursing no matter what the circumstances. Learn to cheer people on, celebrate their success with them. Your reward is not lost. Shift gears and move on. Jesus is the High Priest of good things to come (Heb. 9:11)
Keep that attitude and you will see your dreams come to past.

The Tabernacle of David

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 07:00:00 GMT

The Tabernacle of David, the New Testament way of worship as many have taught, has always been something of much interest to me. Understanding somewhat about it and probably understanding less than I should, I guess I had always approached it, looking for some concealed message that no one else would find but me and enlighten the whole world with my great theological understanding. And so I continued to look as Paul told Timothy, "Every learning but never coming to the knowledge of the truth". Ouch! Is our cry for holiness only so that we can show others how much better we are than they? Ouch again! OK, I'll move on.
If there's anything that impresses me most about this whole story is David's desire the have the presence of God in his city. Let that be our main focus as worship leaders and we will turn our cities on fire for the living God. He wanted to bring the ark to Jerusalem, the city of God. I think that's what seperated David from all others. It's what made him a 'man after God's heart'. Although the Bible does say that David turned not aside from any thing the Lord commanded him all the days of his life, save only the matter of Uriah the Hittite, 1 Kings 15:5. Did you ever have one of those 'save only' moments in your life? I would regret to say I've had a few…last week.(smiley face intended)
So what is so amazing about David's tabernacle that we all long to peer into it's deep spiritual meanings for us today? Fist of all, I have read, at least once, all of the strict, scrupulous guidlines for the priesthood concerning the tabernacle of Moses. There were so many ceremonial cleansings needed just to enter into the holy place and dare we even think of entering the holy of holies except once a year. Entering into that place seemed to bring more chances of death than it did life. So it blows my mind, (excuse my Cajun dialect) as to how in the world did David take the ark of the covenant, (the very presence of God), carry it into Jerusalem and set it up in a tent, with no veil and no one dies! Here we see sinful men; men with bad thoughts, short tempers and many other 'save onlys' in their lives, worshipping God without any fear of dieing! And they're NOT dieing! How did they tap into that? That's grace friends. I know it was not the timeline for the Dispensation of grace to take place but I do see it taking place anyhow. This is the tabernacle that Micah prophesied about, that God would raise up. Now I know there are many other things I could talk about today concerning the tabernacle of David, but to prevent you from not finishing my little blog, I'll keep it to just this one point… Men and women today now have the opportunity to come and worship before this holy God, solely because this God has chosen to not remember our sins and our inquities anymore thereby providing for us a new and living way to enter boldy to this holy throne and worsip Him without a sin conscious, being still with some sin or maybe just a 'save only' in our lives. Heb. 10:16-20… More to come on this I'm sure.
elman

A Happy Worship Team

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 07:00:00 GMT

What constitues "happiness". I looked up the definition in Webster's 1828 Dictionary and one of the definitions I found was…

Being in the enjoyment of agreeable sensations from the possession of good; enjoying pleasure from the gratification of appetites or desires.
If there was no other way to experience happiness than that all of my surroundings, that is, circumstances and people I come into to contact with present to me a sensation that agrees with my desires and expectations, then I dare to say that happiness just isn't going to happen. At least not for an extended period of time. We have to come to a place that we realize our happiness will not be derived from everyone around us meeting our needs that we've placed on them in order for us to be happy. I do not think everyone on my worship team woke up this morning with the thought on their mind, "What can I do to make Elman happy today".
Jesus uses this word "happy" many times in the beatitudes. Our Bibles have translated it as the word "Blessed". Many of the conditions Jesus describes in that particular text in Matthew chapter 5 would not be something to make one happy. But the reality of what Jesus is saying is that he dosn't bestow gifts to make men happy but rather he creates a condition inside of man which enables him to find happiness regardless of his surroundings. In other words, he doesn't create happiness by new surroundings but he creates new surroundings by his happiness. I'm finding more and more that it has to do with my character and not my surroundings. So, am I saying that I can walk into an environment, that by all rights, would not produce happiness but still possess happiness, because now the surroundings producing my happiness are coming from within? Absolutely!
So how do we possess a happy worship team? Romans 4:8 says Blessed (happy) is the man to whom the Lord does not impute sin. Impute is an accounting term. It means to take an inventory, to calculate and come up with a number. Calculators don't lie. God is not taking an inventory of my sin. Now that's something to be happy about! This truth alone can create a condition "inside of you" that will literally change your surroundings or let me say it like this, change the perception you have of your surroundings. Have I been taking an inventory of other's sins? If so, I will never possess happiness.
From sitting down and talking with our worship team, I've found that everyone of us want to change something about our lives and from what they all said, most of those changes would make me "happy". We are all aware of the Spirit of God working in our lives to perfect that which is lacking. The problem is that most of us can't wait for God to change each other. We think we need to come in and help them out a little. It becomes so much easier when I can learn to accept you the way God accepts you at this time in your life and vice versa. We are all on a journey together, not race against each other.
Let me finish my rambling on with this thought, Our happiness will come as we realize it's not based on performance, not on possessing but on being. It's who I am. The absence of "imputation of sin" is equivalent to "the imputation of righteousness". A condition that, if we allow ourselves to be, will allow everyone around us to complete their journey.

Grace, mercy and peace

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 07:00:00 GMT

I have found in a few of Paul epistles he began his letters with Grace, Mercy and Peace be to you… as also the apostle John in 2 John. I once heard a preacher say that Grace is when we get what we don't deserve and mercy is when we don't get what we do deserve. I can see why this would cause Peace in our lives. Christians, on a whole, have a hard time dealing with this issue. We tend to feel justice has been served if people get what they deserve. Yet God justified the ungodly (us) and we rejoice in this revelation.
I was recently on a worship forum and the discussion came up about a certain well known songwriter/worship leader who had confessed to sinful behaviour in his life. His songs were doing well, accepted as annointed of God. After the confession of his guilt, (he didn't get caught), many of the people on this forum said they would no longer sing his songs in church because of his sinful acts. Oh, we'll pray for him, but he got what he deserved…right? The problem is if God would reveal our lives to the world, we probably would have hard time singing anybody's songs. So I suggest let's just sing songs from the Bible. You know, the Psalms. These were songs mostly written by King David. Oh, you mean that guy that commited adultery and had the woman's husband killed on the battle field to cover up his sin that he got her pregnant. Wow, we never question David's songs. Maybe we need to go back and find out what Psalms were written before his sin and only sing those. I'm not saying you have to follow my suggestions, I may be having a bad day today.ha. I feel thing only thing left is… grace, mercy and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. I'm reminded of the words in a song I wrote (Faithful God) that says, "Your mercy is new each day, You never give up on me, reaching Your hand out to rescue me." I recently received an email from the chaplain of a prison who wanted the chord charts for the prison worship team to learn my song. It put a whole new perspective on those lyrics for me when I thought of these prisoners singing those lines. God help us to get a revelation that we are only righteous by the blood and not by our good deeds, accomplishments, etc. And when (not if) we fail, there is grace, mercy and peace from God and from our brothers and sisters as well.

Faithful God featured on CCLI TV

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 07:00:00 GMT

http://www.ccli.com/usa/Community/CCLITV/
Click on the link and go to the Open Mic section and check out the song. God has given us another great opportunity to get our music to the local churches in America.
elman

Faithful God (song of the year)

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Ok, it was my wife's song of the year, nevertheless, it's a song that I wrote and it did get a little noteriety. It was chosen at the National Worship Leader Conference out of all the songs submitted for the SD Listening Panel. Got some good reviews from Brenton Brown, Vicky Beeching and Jeremy Riddle. Most of all I think Phil Silas liked it too.
The song was almost 7 minutes long so I took out a verse and a chorus and was able to shorten it to under 5 minutes. This is the shortened version.

After All These Years (anniversary song)

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 07:00:00 GMT

After All These Years is a song I wrote after I got a phone call to sing at a friends 50th wedding anniversary ceremony. It'll work well for any wedding anniversary where the couple has children and friends, as the song says. So do you think I have a chance in Nashville?
I know it's not a Praise and Worship song but there aren't enough good songs for occasions such as wedding anniversaries.