Discouraged…I was

Well I what a week so far, did about 1200 miles, got to praise God (even with the band) a lot this week, got to beat the devil down a couple times and it has all been awesome.

We drove 500 miles to a small west Texas town to play a show which turned out alright for the given circumstances. LOL We had a new drummer who was trying to learn the material the night before; I played my Strat through the sound check and at the end BREAK! there goes a string. So, no worries, I pick up my acoustic to play the next tune, and it’s electronics are not working, so I grab the backup, yeah BREAK another string. I usually do not have problems with breaking strings…..but I did that day.
So the stage guy takes my Strat, I give him a new E string and he starts to put it on while I played my buddies Tele…He breaks my new string. Don’t ask me how, but he did. So I played the Tele the rest of the show, and we made it through.

The monitors on stage had a horrible delay to them, you would hear the vocals (since my guitar disappeared after the second song, all i had were vocals and drums) then when he finished singing a line, it would repeat about ten times. LOL I was like what in the world is going on. Our singer thought it was the backup vocalist, but it wasn’t of course. LOL what a day!

So everyone always tells you that you did a great job, but i begged for some honest feedback and got it. Over all we did pretty well for the given.

Sold a few CD’s, made some new friends, and thats another show down and 999,999,999 to go.
It was awesome to have some of our friends from back home come all the way out to sit in the west Texas sun and bake, get sand blasted by the wind and sand, watch our set start to fall apart…but they were there and it made a difference. Got to love good friends.

We rolled back into our home town about 3AM, everyone took off to their houses, and the next evening we had a Family Fun night at the church. My buddy and I went over a few songs for the revival we would play the next night.

When we got to the revival, I was unfamiliar with one song, which I completely messed up, but I think we finished strong. Again it was awesome to see the people in worship, while you play.
Yeah, I got discouraged, the devil played with me pretty hard, but God came through and gave me some re-assurance.

They came to me by way of…Friends & Family. Several phone calls to tell me how much they like the demo CD,, the song writing, the playing, the ministry. Some of them knew I was on the down side of things and gave me words of encouragement, scripture, and just a general uplifting.

The message that was delivered at the youth revival hit home too. It was out of Hebrews chapter 12. Ôø?running with endurance for the LordÔø?. Some awesome stories of people who stayed faithful to the Lord even when all seemed against them. Awesome, God is awesome.

My friend and I were discussing how broke we were from the last couple trips to West Texas… spending money on fuel, strings, stuff for the band, eats, room and board, etc. Now we were not gripping, just discussing the fact that we were in catchup mode… bills coming in and all. LOL

He called me last night to let me know that God had blessed us with an awesome amount of money from the revival we played. It brought us up out of the debt we had occurred from the other stuff I mentioned earlier. We praised God, and almost fainted from the thought of it. LOL It is so awesome to know that when you are using your life for His purpose how He always comes through.

Well, this was a pretty long rant, so I am gonna end on that note and with a couple lines of scripture for you to think about. God Bless,

Ecclesiastes 5 1 Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, who do not know that they do wrong. 2 Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few. 3 As a dream comes when there are many cares, so the speech of a fool when there are many words. 4 When you make a vow to God, do not delay in fulfilling it. He has no pleasure in fools; fulfill your vow. 5 It is better not to vow than to make a vow and not fulfill it. 6 Do not let your mouth lead you into sin. And do not protest to the temple messenger, “My vow was a mistake.” Why should God be angry at what you say and destroy the work of your hands? 7 Much dreaming and many words are meaningless. Therefore stand in awe of God. NIV