If you haven't already heard, Jeremy Camp put out an acoustic unplugged album today.  If you are a Camp fan this is a must have for your collection.  This album combines his extrodinary lyrics with his heart-felt passion, overtop of the melodic notes that send you into a deeper passion to understand the creator. The purity of his voice and lyrics is allowed to shine, like light piercing through darkness.  Possibly his best work yet.

Go and get it!!  If you download it from iTunes you get the digital booklet.  $9.99 for 11 great songs and the artwork.  Must have!

If you don't know, I am a youth pastor at Rock Springs Church in Smyrna, TN and we meet at LaVergne High School.  This past wed. night we were going to having a huge event.  We had the band Clemency come out and we were giving away a video iPod and tons of other things.

Well, we arrive at the school to start to set up.  Clemency comes with their huge truck and trailer.  And we goto the front door to be met by two cops, custodial staff and the administration to tell us that we can no longer meet there on Wednesday nights.  So after a huge tuffle and intense fellowship (arguing) we couldn't meet there. 

We ended up turning away around 100 students, which looks bad on our church, and had to send Celemency back to Brentwood and call little Caesers and tell them we would not be picking up the 100 pizzas we order.

God has things happen for a reason.  I just wish he would hav told me that was going to happen before putting three month of planning and promotions into it.

May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through.
May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of
our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it. 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24

What will He do? He will sanctify us wholly. He will carry on the work of purification till we are
perfect in every part. He will preserve our "whole spirit, and soul,
and body, blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." He will
not allow us to fall from grace, nor come under the dominion of sin.
What great favors are these! Well may we adore the giver of such
unspeakable gifts.

Who will do this? The Lord who has called us out of
darkness into His marvelous light, out of death in sin into eternal
life in Christ Jesus. Only He can do this: such perfection and
preservation can only come from the God of all grace.

Why will He do it? Because He is "faithful"—faithful to
His own promise which is pledged to save the believer; faithful to His
Son, whose reward it is that His people shall he presented to Him
faultless, faithful to the work which He has commenced in us by our
effectual calling. It is not their own faithfulness but the Lord's own
faithfulness on which the saints rely.

Come, my soul, here is a grand feast to begin a dull month with. There may be fogs without, but there should be sunshine within.

Shelby

Would you rather have an unfaithful man or women that treats you like a queen/king 

Or

A faithful man or women that treats you like crap?

Just curious, I had to answer this today in class.

In Nebraska a gas station was offering gas for $.29 a gallon!! That's right, 29 pennies. The manager meant to put $3.29 but did not enter the "3". As the news leaked, a line formed for over 2 miles.



photo from scfutebol77

One man said that he filled his Dodge Ram Ful-Size truck for only...$4.00. Maybe somebody will be clumsy and gives us a break. The mamnger that made this mistake would not state her name but then was later on fired.

If you read the blog below this one, you will see that best buy really just hooks you up. Today, I will be going to Best Buy and picking up my new Video iPod which has 10 more GB of space and will be black...all for the low price of free!!!

Today is my new favorite day!!

Back in the spring of last year I entered to win a free iPod from Best Buy. After shopping for many month's i get a email confirmation saying that I won!!! Yay for me. It cam with a 3 year service plan and replacement policy. Well let's fast forward a few month to today and that is where my story begins...
Today itunes told me that my ipod was corrupted. I thought, well I have a service plan, let's use it. So I take my 20GB B/W iPod to Best Buy and they tell me the best new i heard all day. "We don't carry the black and white iPod's any more, but you can just go and pick up a color one and we'll replace this one."

So I get a 20GB iPod Photo for my old black and white one. I hope that Apple comes out with something cooler, because as long as it is under $300, I can replace my stuff for new things!!!

So I am on iTunes searching through the podcast on leadership or religion. As I am scrolling through the list of relegious podcast, I see a name that stuck out. I am pretty sure you all know who he is...Lane Wood. What Lane Wood?? Yup, has his very own podcast!! You should subscribe to his podcast and support his ministry in Manhattan. (goto podcast and search "Lane Wood") Sent him an email of encouragement and let him know that you are praying for him.

Also, while you are at it, email Nathan the same. Let these guys know that we support them and what God is doing through them in NY and NJ areas.

Rock On,
Shelby

Since Switchfoot did record this album in a studio and only in greenrooms on their tour. This album is creative and very well put together. If you didn't know, they would record a song, then ask their fans, wherever they were playing, if they liked it. With that kind of feedback, it is bound to be good.
This album is everything one can come to expect from Switchfoot with a major label release. The production has been significantly upped, leaving each song more lush and full than any recording the band's done previously, without compromising the song's raw energy.

The band has never been known as one that has an especially evangelistic message. So when the listener looks into the "everything is meaningless" messages that Nothing Is Sound adopts, finding the word "Lord" as the only potential reference to our Jesus (used thrice in one song), there really shouldn't be any surprise. The band's debut The Legend Of Chin possessed a similar subtlety.

But where Nothing Is Sound lacks in direct spiritual and Christian message, it makes up with hopeful or relevant writing. Songs like the hooky first single "Stars" point out the problems with being self-centered and the implication of something greater beyond ourselves. It also provides a slam on post-modernism. "Lonely Nation" Is my favorite. It shows a side of our world that maybe only christians may see. The view of our world is lonely and searching for something all the time, but missing it everytime. "Easier Than Love" is a beautifully blunt attack on the world's view on sex and love, declaring the obvious reason that "sex sells" in the media is because sex is easier than the more difficult and seemingly impossible "love." The catchy rock song opens with bold verses like "Sex is currency / She sells cars, she sells magazines / Addictive, bittersweet, clap your hands / with the hopeless nicotines..." It's songs like this that offer a message mainstream listeners seldom hear and probably doesn't even know what to do with. It's refreshing to say the least.

Ferociously catchy songs like "Lonely Nation," "Stars," and the Bob Dylan-inspired "Happy Is A Yuppie Word" drip with emotion and passion, all the while capturing a fine sense of the band's engaging live performances. The album is sensitive and desperate, while offering glimmers of light at the same time. "The Shadow Proves The Sunshine" is a rock ballad inspired by a fact-finding trip Switchfoot took to South Africa earlier this year to see for themselves what poverty and disease was doing to the country. "The Blues," which Foreman penned on New Years Day 2004, is a song about finding beauty in the world ending and resonates with the pretty laments of songs like "Let That Be Enough" from the band's second album. Musically, much of the album remains in the same vein as signature Switchfoot fare. The bittersweet ballads are all there, and the rock element that band has explored in recent years is worked further throughout the album's songs. But fans of the more stripped-down sound of their earlier releases may have a hard time swallowing the more produced approach.

Nothing Is Sound is a sonically rich album that fits nicely among the band's impressive discography, offering fans something new, but keeping it very much Switchfoot from start to finish. Whether or not the mainstream continues to embrace the band's music, Switchfoot remains to be one of the best bands in today's current music scene.

Life is Good!!

I have been following Switchfoot for forever. I got thier first CD when I was like 14,and have bought everyone since then. Well, today just got sweeter. I am chillin' in my PJ's watching some infomercial when the doorbell rang. I slowly get up and go to the door and guess who was there...SWITCHFOOT!!!

Ok, not really, but it was the postman with their new CD that doesn't even come out until Tuesday. On top of that, I received a free poster!! I love days like today!!



photo from scfutebol77

Then I pop it in my DVD player to find that Switchfoot was in my TV playing the CD in 5.1 Digital Surround Sound!! A DVD and a CD all in one!! The day just gets better!!



photo from scfutebol77

I got bored in class and was thinking of random things and came up with this. Let me know what you think.


photo from scfutebol77

Outdoor beauty!! It blows me away to see God at work in the design of our universe. How faithful the sun is every morning, gives me chills. How committed to moon is to give way to the sun, brings me trust. The effects of wind. The growing process of plants, trees, and insects. Have you ever stopped and just paid attention to how busy the bugs are under your feet?? There is a whole world under there.

Then after looking at the beauty of my world, i see the destruction of others. Katrina, God made, God Design. When the Tsunami happened I asked myself this question and I do now. Did God send this storm to get rid of the sinful acts in the towns that were wiped out? I mean, God sent a flood to get rid of all the sin in the world, why wouldn't he do that again? Is he trying to send a wake up call to the world and say WAKE UP!! I am still God!!

I also look at this and realize how close the end of times are. Jesus says that there will be great natural disasters and people will become greedy; stealing and only thinking of themselves. Yet, that is present on our televisions everyday.

I am not always sure of God's plan and I don't think I want to be. If I know what he is going to do next, then that strips away every ounce of faith and trust that I gave Him when i surrendered to His love. I will continue to pray and seek God's face and ask him to reveal himself to me in all that he does. And trust him through it all.