Why do we do what we do? Why am I a Christian today? Why do I live this life and try to share it with others who don’t? Is it because it’s the cool thing to do? Is it because it’s my job and I support my family in this way? All of those things have popped into my head at some point. As I deal with these things, I notice that none of them have anything to do with Christ himself. They all have to do with me. I tend to struggle mightily when I take my focus away from where it should be. My heart gets hardened towards ministry and the work of Christ when I turn things inward and look with my own eyes. It’s not until I step back and refocus that I get another glimpse of the cross and Christ hanging there for me and my sins as well as those that we try to reach.

I did something yesterday that I haven’t done in a really long time. I woke up, got myself ready and went and did some work in some other place than my office or my home. I went to Hartford Coffee Company in South St. Louis City. If you’ve never been there, find yourself there soon. Great people and the coffee is pretty amazing. The atmosphere is really cool. One of my favorite places in the city. Anyway, I was there because I thought that I’d have a better chance to meet some people that might not know Christ if I wasn’t in my home or in the dungeon that is my office. What was the result? I met a couple that sat next to me at a table and I was able to talk to them for just a little bit. I also met an area columnist who comes there frequently to write and get coffee. None of these ended up being real long conversations, but they were conversations I would have never had working in my home. The other plus, I got a whole heck of a lot more done in the 3 hours I was there than I have in a really long time. But the focus changed for me from getting things done to being in a place where work is really secondary to presenting the cross to someone I may come in contact with. I feel that if I’m going to be able to lead people to the cross, I have to go where they are. For me, that also means that I need to be continually led to the cross myself. A lot of times I know that the cross is there and that’s where I leave it. I don’t go up to it, I simply look from afar just to keep an eye on it. I still have to allow myself to be led. Allow myself to let the power and severity of Christ’s death penetrate my hard, crusty heart. This became very clear to me as I was getting ready for this upcoming Sunday’s service. The pastor asked me if I could sing ‘Lead Me to the Cross‘ by Hillsong. I had already planned to do another song, but I listened to this one anyway and immediately decided that the Lord was putting this song here for me. I need to be led. Am I the only one? Am I the only one that needs to take a step back and refocus on Christ and what He’s done? I would venture to say that I’m not. I leave you with the words to the aforementioned song.

Savior I come
Quiet my soul remember
Redemption’s hill
Where Your blood was spilled
For my ransom
Everything I once held dear
I count it all as lost

Lead me to the cross
Where Your love poured out
Bring me to my knees
Lord I lay me down
Rid me of myself
I belong to You
Lead me, lead me to the cross

You were as I
Tempted and trialed
You are
Te word became flesh
Bore my sin and death
Now you’re risen

To your heart
To your heart
Lead me to your heart
Lead me to your heart

Yesterday was a pretty good day for me. I got something that I’ve been wanting for a long time. When the FedEx guy knocked on my door I about jumped out of my seat to open it. I spent a few minutes just staring at it. I spent the rest of the day figuring out how to make it work. I had a pretty good idea by the end of the day. So what is this thing? Well, it’s this. The reason the Zoom R16 was something that I’ve wanted for a while was because I have wanted to find a way to record music using my keyboard that I have had for a long time. I had purchased this beauty Friday and I was ready to put them to work together. I had some fun working that out. With all of this working now, I’m ready to start writing again.

Here’s my question for the day for any of you writers. What’s your writing process? I have tried a few different things. One of the things that I have learned is that I cannot write at home. It doesn’t matter if there are 60 people in my house or I’m the only one here. It just doesn’t work. I have learned that. Other than that, I haven’t found any other things that DON’T work. The problem is that I haven’t quite found the one thing that really does work. I’m still searching. Most of the songs I’ve written have just sort of happened. It always takes me a while to get going and so many things will run through my brain. I have to work really hard to concentrate. It happens eventually, but it takes longer than I would like. Just ask my friend, Brittany Howard.

So how do you work this? What’s your method? Do you have a certain thing that you always do? I’d love to hear from you. I’m gonna keep trying to find what works for me.

I have been in a severe drought as of late. I can’t remember the last time I’ve sat down to be creative. For me, creativity pertains to writing music and making stuff up. I’m starting to think that I’m trying to hard. I’ve been looking for the conditions to be perfect: the lights to be low, soft music in the background, the water is warm and the bubble are soft and fluffy…wait, wrong conditions. But I think this mindset is killing me. I haven’t had any time to just sit and think and let my mind do what it does. It has been filled with so many other things, life, that I have crowded out all my other fun stuff. I realize that it is starting to affect how I am around other people. I don’t want to be that person who has all these regrets and wanted to do all this stuff and never did because of whatever reason. I’ve been stuck for a long time

My question to all of you(whether it be 200 or closer to the 6 that might actually read it) is this: What do you do to make sure that you don’t lose yourself in all the busyness of this world? It’s so easy for me to throw myself into things that I forget to take time to be me; the me that God created me to be. How do I work through that whole thing? How do you work through that whole thing? I have officially stumped myself and am wanting to hear your thoughts and ideas…

I thought about this the other day when I was sitting in my office. I was writing something down and because it was on my mind and I wanted to finish it, I wouldn’t stop for anything, even to go to the bathroom.  So I finished what I was doing, went to the bathroom and then came back. When I looked at what I had written right before I went to the bathroom, it was ridiculous! It was quite scattered and disjointed and I ended up having to write it all over again. I wasted time and almost peed on myself.

This got me to thinking though. How many other things do I try to rush through when I really have to go to the bathroom? Do I look back at those things and realize how much I messed them up before I finally went to the bathroom? So I started running through all the times that I’ve really had to go to the bathroom at some point during a worship set. I vividly remember rushing through a song set when I was playing for a church in Arkansas because I didn’t get the chance to go between rehearsal and the start of the first service. I then thought about how bad I must have sounded. After that, I replayed countless mornings where I may have rushed a song or cut out a song in a set because nature seemed to be calling while God was working.

Now I KNOW I’m not the only one who has dealt with this issue. Am I the only one willing to talk about it? I hope not…

I’m conducting a worship180 check-up. I’ve been writing this blog for quite awhile now and I started it because I wanted to think about worship in a different way. Even more, I wanted to share my thoughts about worship with others. So what I want to do over the next couple days is just talk about how these thoughts have affected my life over the past few months and I hope to hear your thoughts as well. With that being said, here’s the first one…

Encountering the Savior

I have been having such a tough time trying to spend daily time with the Father lately. I can tell when I am not spending time with God because my days don’t flow like they should. If you go and read my writing about Encountering the Savior, then you know how important this is for me and should be for you. I am writing to confess that I haven’t been doing a good job of spending time with God. As a matter of fact, I am wanting to start a Bible Study. Who’s in?

I’m asking that you guys continue to pray for me as I try to get better at spending time with God. How about you guys? How are you doing with spending time with God? What have you learned in your time with God? Share your comments…start a discussion. I want to hear from you guys. Tomorrow I will be talking about Enriching Your Community. I will be talking about spending time with members of the body. Be blessed tonight. Thanks to my friends who kept on me throughout the night so I could get this done.

I has been a little while since I’ve blogged and…that’s just not right. I’m sorry. I will not, however, try to update this whole week in one post because that would be long. This has been a good, but tough week. God has been teaching the Walls Family a lot of stuff. Here is some main points from the week.

I have been working on music this week trying to get some things in place for the singers who have agreed to sing with me. What fun I have had going through some of my favorite songs that I have written and thinking about sharing them with friends. That was a big plus for my heart this week.

I heard from Grace Community Church this week that they have decided to go with the current candidate which says that we are officially out of the running for that job. That was sort of tough to hear, but we knew that it was coming. So we had to deal with that as a family. We were okay I guess.

We had been waiting to get our disconnect notice for our electricity. We finally got that this week. So we went to Catholic Charities for help. They told us they would help with part of it. So then we started praying about how to take care of the other half. In steps Jim Barnard. These guys love us and we love them. Jim asked how we were doing and we told them that we were struggling and were working to keep our lights on. So the Barnards help us out immensely by taking care of that other half of our electric bill. Praise God we can see!!!

We had to let our cell phones go this week. We haven’t been able to pay the bill so they were turned off. We are hoping that we can get them back soon, but in the mean time we are without them.

Please keep praying for us that we can continue to stay strong. There are some other really cool things to share, and I’m hoping that I can share them a little later. This may be a 2 post day. Seeing that I haven’t posted in 6 days, I may owe that to my readers. Until then, it’s off to yardwork.

Well, I’m doing my best to continue writing my thoughts about worship styles and how I see them. In response, to my friend Charlie, I’m making sure to write about worship from a contemporary viewpoint today. I may take a break tomorrow and write about another on Monday. With all that being said…

So my answer to this question will be the same as the answer to the previous blog’s question…NO! I will step out on a limb and say that everything about contemporary worship is not good. We have gotten some great songs over the years from some great musicians and writers. We have also seen this music be something that has brought up some new musicians. We think about songs like “How Great is Our God” and “Your Grace is Enough” and you wonder how anything about contemporary music can be bad. But here is what I feel has been the BIGGEST issue with the world of contemporary music. Surprisingly enough, it won’t have anything to do with Chris Tomlin or Steve Fee. It has to do with the people in our churches…

People who have contemporary worship services tend to be alienating of other worship styles. Most of my experiences with people who sing contemporary music has been where the singers have negative thoughts about hymns of the past.  Now I know that to some degree this is an overgeneralization, but I’m just speaking for arguement sake.  I feel that sometimes we can get so excited about something new that we just blast whatever was old. That is something that hurts harmony within the body. Then we start seeing seperate services for traditional and contemporary in the same morning. Although I’m not a huge fan of separate services because of differences in style, I’ll take it over the other thing that tends to happen.

Some churches will attempt to update music and do things in a new way, but with people who don’t understand the music. When musicians try to do things they aren’t familiar with without the help of someone who IS familiar with it, that is really frustrating to me. I will try my best not to run off on a tangent, because I’m sure that’s not helpful to anyone. I think at this point I’m going to stop and leave this up for discussion…

Even as I’m sitting here writing this sentence, I can’t believe that I’m writing it. I love this idea and am slightly overwhelmed by it at the same time.  As I was getting ready to sit down and really think about this idea, I was having an awesome conversation with a very good friend of mine, Charlie. He was sharing some excerpts from a book that talked about how we must realize that the circumstances around us are put there by God and if he had something different for us that would work better he would use them. I look at the circumstances that have happened in my life and I realize that if it weren’t for the people that God has placed in my life I wouldn’t be where I am today. I won’t even begin to name people because I’ll forget someone and they’ll be the person to read this   Here are some of my thoughts though…

We as a people are so enthralled by the idea of doing things on our own. There’s something about being able to say that I did something myself or I made it somewhere without any help. But in reality, we weren’t even designed to do things on our own. We are built to help each other and be helped by each other. God loved us enough to put people in our lives so we wouldn’t have to try to be independent. Why do we run away from what God has for us?

I am so thankful for all the people in my life that help me get through this crazy life. Even though I have so many people in my life that want to be there for me, I find ways to try to be independent as well. What am I doing? I have a guide that shares all kinds of way for me to depend on Christ and the people that he puts in my life. No where does it mention me being a loner or trying to handle this life by myself. However, I try to do it all the time. It gets even harder when, like me, you’re married with a family. Now I have people closer to me all the time and instead of embracing that fact, I work harder to try to be independent. We are weirdos sometimes…

What am I saying? I guess what I’m trying to say is Christians are called to help each other. We aren’t doing anyone a favor when we don’t lend a hand to help or we don’t make ourselves available for our brothers and sisters. One day we will realize this. Who knows how much of an impact the body can have when we decide to finally work together in the ways that God planned…

⁹ Two are better than one,
because they have a good return for their work:

¹⁰ If one falls down,
his friend can help him up.
But pity the man who falls
and has no one to help him up!

¹¹ Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm.
But how can one keep warm alone?

¹² Though one may be overpowered,
two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.

Ecclesiastes 4:9-12

I have decided today that the battle is not mine. What does that mean? I realize that God is prepping me for something big and I don’t know what it is. However, Satan surely knows what it is and has decided to see if he can wear me down with all these peripheral discussions, arguments and dilemmas. I have had the most random day and I thought I liked it, but I’m pretty sure that I don’t anymore. I know that my hopes of starting it over won’t be granted to me, so my only bet is that I can try to do better tomorrow.  But sometimes I wonder…

I wonder why these things happen? I wonder why without notice things can switch and what was a good relationship is now being questioned. I wonder why miscommunication happens even when there was nothing being communicated? I sometimes wonder how men handle the pressures of being men. Responsibility is ours and we know that. Sometimes we like that, especially when things work out right. However, the dark, ugly side of responsibility shows up sometimes when we really don’t want it to or maybe can’t deal with the emotional aspect of it.

I’m writing today as someone who knows the battle has come to his doorstep. I’m dealing with a lot of things, and I’m glad to be done with school so I can attempt to concentrate on all the things swirling around my head. Even with the extra time and minimal extracurricular items, life can still be pretty taxing. That’s what I’ve noticed today. These are times that, as my friend Danielle says, “I know God is teaching me something and I sort of feel like we’ve had this lesson already. I’d like to say ‘God, I understand this lesson…can we move on to another one?’” That is what is in my heart today. I don’t know if that helps anyone, but it helps me to write it out. Sometimes I wonder if anyone cares…

The LORD himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.

In chapter 31 of Deuteronomy, Moses is talking to Joshua and getting him ready to become his successor.  This is a pretty big deal and Joshua is pretty young.  He has a large task in front of him and it is about to get larger once he is the one in charge of leading this massive group of people.  These words are designed to help Joshua to understand that he won’t be alone because the same God that has help guide Moses will guide him as well.  I can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to have that responsibility.  He had a extreme amount of pressure on him to take over this position and there was no way for him to get out of it.  He was chosen by God to succeed Moses and that was the end of it.

Something else that I noticed is that Lord had just said the exact same thing to Moses a couple verses before. Moses wasn’t too keen on the concept of not being able to go into the Promised Land, and it was hard for him to conceive that it would happen without him.  The Lord knew that Moses would have reservations about this set up, and so he gave him a similar message (31:6).

Why do I say this? Joshua and Moses were both looking at the situation and they were so focused on the way things were looking that they need God to step in and reminded them that He would always be there. They got overwhelmed by the situation and lost focus of the one who had brought them to the Promised Land in the first place.  God had already promised them something and they got sidetracked by what they saw…

As I write this today I am being sidetracked by the fact that I’m trying to graduate from school and getting all this stuff done by Friday. I am also slightly sidetracked by the fact that I don’t really know what lies ahead for me in the job realm after I’m done with school. A couple weeks I got so overwhelmed that I had to lay in my bed for almost 3 days and sleep and cry.  The only thing that I could see was all the stuff that was in front of me and that I had tons of deadlines and there was no way that I could finish them all.  Fortunately, I had a wife that gave me the encouragement that said God hadn’t left me and wasn’t going to. I knew that and have told other people that before, but it seemed so far away in my own heart and mind.

Shortly after that conversation, I was at the park and started to notice really simple beauties like freshly cut grass and birds singing…you know, things that only God could have done. It was at that point, I really grasped that God had been there all along.  He just sat and waited for me silently to recognize him.  I wasn’t thinking about how good God was, I was thinking about all my problems.  However, he ‘stole’ a moment and caught my attention just enough to say, “hey, I’m still here…” I’m so thankful for the stolen moments. They are moments that God turns into quiet times and reflective moments where we cannot deny him and his existence.  So when you’re bogged down with all that is going on with life, keep your eyes open…God is probably doing something that will catch your eye and make you remember who He is…