Live Road Blogging

So as is standard with me being out, I like to take pictures on the
road and blog them. This picture is over Cool Springs in Franklin, TN.
Hot air balloons were out this morning!

Psalm 42

My focus lately has been seeing God's faithfulness, and then living my life in response to that.  For me, one of the best places in scripture (besides the cross itself) to see this is the Psalms.  This post has been a long time in the making (a week exactly), but hopefully more will follow on how different Psalms have been impacting me.  Today is Psalm 42.

I am an incredibly insecure person.  I don't know why I never noticed it before, but this year it has become incredibly obvious.  I've watched it effect my self esteem, my music, and my relationships with my friends, family, and girlfriend.  yet most tragically, I've seen it tear me away from God.

I've come to discover that the reason for this is that my insecurity stems from a lack of trust in God.  I see the depravity, and complete lack of an ability for good  in myself, without seeing the ultimate good of my God.  This is where Psalm 42 has found me.

I have recently heard 2 messages on this Psalm.  One of them by CJ Mahaney, given at a conference that many of my friends attended, and one by John Piper a week later.  The main focus of the Psalm was verse 11.  "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?  Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God."  I love this.  The psalmist is literally talking to himself.  He is reminding himself of the character of God and in doing so, giving himself hope in his affliction.

 

Why should my soul be downcast?  Why should I be discouraged?  God has proven himself more than faithful in my life on a daily basis.  How can I not trust the maker of the universe to provide for me?  How can I not trust someone who loves me enough to die for me?  So I must remind myself that my hope is not in myself.  My hope is in my Salvation and my God.  I must fall before Him daily seeking His grace to face every moment of the day.

As a side note, the Piper message can be found here.

New post

So I started a post last night and didn't get a chance to finish it.
Now I'm in Baton Rouge seeing some friends get married. I'll post it
when I get home Sunday.

Psalms

If I ever pick up my Bible and don't have anything in mind to read, I generally end up in the Psalms.  I love the honesty and pain in them, but also the joy and the amazing expressions of the character of God.

Right now, John Piper is going through a series on the Psalms called The Psalms: Thinking and Feeling with God.  It's amazing to me how week after week he chooses one of my favorite Psalms, and ones that I'm reading a lot right now based on where my heart is.  I'm going to save my comments on some of them for a little later, but go look into these messages.  They're great.

Blair doing his butt out stance

Bowling pictures

I realized that I forgot to blog the pictures I took while we were
bowling last night. This one is Kyle. I know it's blurry, but the
thing to take away from it is look how far back he is and he's already
almost thrown the ball. It was ridiculous.

Another bored update

Just so you know, our dead deer count is 20 for the trip. Thank you
for your time.

Funny trip quote

Me (after seeing a Kerry Edwards sticker on a car): Honestly, who
still has a Kerry Edwards sticker now?

Blair (in his Australian accent): Oh, is that a country singer?

I hope you enjoy.

Thoughts from the road

I get to go home tomorrow.  That is a beautiful thing to say.  I miss Laura.  I miss my bed.  I miss privacy.  I miss friends and people my age in general.  I cannot wait to be in Nashville again.

I've been trying to figure out exactly what I would say to sum up this whole experience.  I don't know if a lot of what I want to say is appropriate for a blog.  I just know that in a lot of ways God has reassured me that I don't have to worry so much about my future.  I came into this experience terrified that I wouldn't be able to do this and I think that I did a pretty darn good job all week.  This of course was not of my doing.  God totally pulled me through stuff.  Thus the comfort.  I just need to keep reminding myself of this week. I just need to remember...

Jesus Jesus how I trust him

How I've proved Him o'er and o'er

Jesus Jesus, precious Jesus

O for grace to trust Him more

This is who I've been on the road with this week...

This is Blair.  He plays drums.  This is what he does on one of our nights off...

Edit:

Apparently he took it off Youtube.  I apologize to anyone who missed out on it.

WTF?

The Wall Ball Gang

The story of Julia's fall...

I feel now that enough time has passed that I can talk about Julia's injury.

Many of you may not know that the configuration of where the strap pins are on 335 style guitars is not one that leads to the strap staying on the guitar very well.  It's also one that doesn't lend to using strap locks either.  This is what caused the accident.

Yesterday morning in rehearsal I was playing Julia.  I leaned over to pick something up and not one, but both ends of the strap let go.  The guitar fell to the ground and landed first right on the cable going into the guitar.  The force of this shoved the cable and jack up into the body of the guitar.  I think that it will be repairable, but I probably won't be able to gig her as much ever again.

Let's all take a moment of silence for Julia.  She was my favorite guitar, and will be greatly missed in her place as my primary guitar.

If you missed it, there is a picture in the post previous to this one.

The result of the accident with poor Julia

For anyone I haven't told the story to, I'll post it later. My heart
is broken.

Eddie Munster

So yesterday I was walking through the cafeteria here at Bridgewater College when some of the parents volunteers that came to the camp stopped me and asked me if I knew how the theme song from The Munsters went.  For those of you who don't know, the Munsters was an old Black and White TV about a family of monsters (ie, Dad is Frankenstein, mom Mrs. Frankenstein, Grandpa was a Vampi

re, and the son was a Vampire).  I didn't really question why they asked me this, I just assumed it was a friendly debate amongst them.

Then it happened.  Everyone at camp started calling me Eddie Munster.  Apparently I rem

ind everyone of Eddie Munster.  It is because I have a widow's peak in my hair.  However, this is not a compliment.  Let me first remind you 

of what I look like.

Next, let me show you Eddie Munster.

I don't feel that my widow's peak is nearly exaggerated enough to be Eddie's.  Plus with my bangs, the lowest point is on the side.  I don't think that's right because I definitely do not want to look like Eddie Munster.

Thank you for your time.

Lots of blogging...

I know I've posted 25 times since Sunday, but I'm bored and have some time on my hands.  I'm also experiencing cool things right now that are worth blogging about.

Today was a pretty easy and typical day.  I thought that I would tell an amusing story from today though...

You may know that I posted on my twitter feed that I played Wall Ball with some of the kids at camp and was beaten by 2 girls, ages 12 and 13.  Yet that was not the most demeaning part of that game.  At some point in the game, I looked at them and said something to the effect of "They should call us the Wall Ball Gang" to which one of them responded "Yeah, because that would make us sound cool."

Other than put downs from 7th graders, the night was a success.  I'm just kicking back and chilling until it's time to wish Laura a Happy Birthday at midnight!  Good times.

Two Craigs!

Raising the bar

An amusing picture I took with a few campers and one of the leaders
tonight. The tall guy next to me is 7ft tall. The shortest girl is 4'11.

States visited?

I decided it would be fun since I'm a bit bored and have been traveling a lot to write all of the states I've been to in my lifetime.  I count going to a state as getting out of the car or off the plane.  If you drove through it and didn't stop, or landed but never got off the plane it doesn't count.

Georgia

Florida

Tennessee

Alabama

Mississippi

North Carolina

South Carolina

Virginia

West Virgina

Louisiana

Kentucky

Indiana

Illinois

Iowa

Maryland

New York

Massachusetts

Rhode Island

Connecticut

Texas

California

Hawaii

Total: 22

That's almost half.  That's not too bad.

I think it would be cool for everyone to post where they've been.  I would get amusement out of it in my boredom.  So do it.  K thanks.

Ed Newton bringing the word.

The kids

Morning Setlist

We ended up adding Mighty To Save to the end of it as well...

The living room

Our Kitchen

My bedroom for the week

How do I even begin?

For anyone who doesn't know, I'm currently on the road with Dana Jorgenson, a Christian artist from Nashville.  This is my first time on the road really and it's been fantastic and crazy.

Here are a couple stats on the trip...

States Performing In: 2

States Travelled Through: 6

New States for Me: 3

Number of Deer seen as Roadkill: 19 (No Joke)

Number of Hours in the car so far: Approx 30 in 3 days.

We left Nashville Saturday morning to head to Mason City Iowa.  I posted some pictures of the trip.  I'm not going to lie, for a state that has Chicago in it, Illinois might be the most boring ever.  All it is is corn.  I hope I don't have someone read this at some point from Illinois.  We spent the night in a hotel in Mason city on Saturday night.

Sunday morning we played for a church's Sunday worship.  We didn't play at the actual church though.  It was apparently the church's 5 year anniversary and they were having a celebration a middle school gym.  For some reason, I thought that there would be a stage in this gym.  This was incorrect.  The congregation sat in the bleachers and we played in the middle of the floor.  It was interesting to say the least.  We had a few flubs as a band.  It was just interesting playing some songs we had never played together with people that had never played together before really.  It worked out fine though.

The people in Iowa made that possible really.  They were so appreciative and nice to us.  It was amusing to talk to them with their midwestern accents.  They wanted to talk music and see if we knew any people they knew in music in Nashville.  Of course we didn't, but it was fun.

After church we drove for maybe 700 miles to Louisville and spent the night.  We drove today the rest of the way to Bridgewater, VA.  We're playing at a camp at Bridgewater College all week.  For you Belmont people reading this, it's kind of an MFuge thing.  We lead worship twice a day, 11AM and 7 PM.  It's pretty nice.  We get plenty of free time during the day and hang out with kids too.  It's the best stuff of Camp Glisson without the stress and exhaustion.

We played tonight and it was great.  I've forgotten how much I like leading worship for youth.  Tonight we mixed a few old songs with new ones.  We played:

Salvation is Here

Undignified

Every Move I Make

Trading My Sorrows

Mercy Is Falling

Mighty to Save

It was a lot of fun and went really well.  I'm excited for the rest of the trip.  I have a few more posts planned, and of course will continue taking pictures.  This should be fun!

Done for today.

So we just got done for tonight and are off to Wally World. Turns out
we need Ethernet cables to access the Internet from the place we're
staying. Who doesn't have wireless? Honestly? Once we get the Internet
up and going in my apartment, I will finally post for reals.

The Room

The stage

Done!

This is Blair and Kyle's thank goodness we're out of the car face.

So bored in the car!

Driving Picture

Blair, the drummer, driving us through WV.

Greetings from West Virginia

I'm currently sitting in the van in West Virginia. We are 213 miles
away from our final destination for the week, Harrisonburg, VA. It's
been an interesting trip so far to say the least. I have added 4
states to the list of states I've visited. I've sat in a car longer
than anyone should ever. I've also learned a ton. I don't really know
how to write it all in an email from my iPhone so I'll try to do more
when I get there tonight. Your prayers are greatly appreciated. More
later.

Louisville

So I'm in a hotel room in Louisville right now. It's late and I'm tired so I won't post much. I have a lot to say about the touring and how it's going so far, as well as a lot of work to get this blog working how I want to. For now though, I'm just going to go to bed. Tomorrow, we're on to Harrisonburg, VA. I'll have way more time once I'm there, so hopefully this will get set up the way I want it to.

Cool Picture

Bugs on the front of the van.

The ONLY thing you see in Illinois

Wind Turbines in Iowa

Giant Cross in Illinois

Saw this yesterday. It was huge!

Another new blog for Craig

I am the king of starting blogs and not really updating them. I
apologize for that. I really loved doing the iWeb thing, but it was
impossible to update from anywhere but my house. That's no fun. I'm on
the road and bored so I want to update. That's what the next few posts
will be.