song

Be Myself Again

It’s been a while since I have done a music piece, but this song by Eric Benét, “Be Myself Again,” I had to post this. It’s such a positive song and the truth is that sometimes we do lose our rhythm, those innate qualities that make us who we are as an individual, priceless and unique. We lose our true identity, whether we were trying to fit in intentionally or we unintentionally conform to the world around us. As a result, many times we wind up unhappy, unsatisfied and discontented, but that moment you decide to play the music of your soul, the melody God composed for us, that’s when our lives change forever. So if your life notes ever sound muffled, dull, off key, just plain sour, or all of the above, give it to the Lord and He can help you find your way again.

It’s an amazing freedom to be yourself without compromise. Listen to the song and rock out to it. Be you for a purpose. Be encouraged.

Devil’s Credit

You know what, the choir sang a song today, and the lyrics express a doctrine that many church people believe. With all that said, I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again, we give the Devil waaaaaaaaaay too much credit. In this scenario, like the song I heard them sing today and many other popular gospel songs, we talk about how the Devil came and stole this and that from us and we are taking it back. Now don’t get me wrong, Jesus himself said that the Enemy comes to steal, and yes he does; full-time he is fulfilling his purpose. But may I dare say, he doesn’t steal everything we give him credit for stealing. More times than we admit, we give it to him or we let him take it, or turn the other cheek when he begins to creep.

Just like what is in your house, you fight to keep it and safeguard what’s in it, so that if anyone tries to get to it, you fight for it. You put up an alarm system or keep a weapon close by, or take up some form of self-defense, and whatever other safety measures. Yet there are those that don’t don’t guard themselves or don’t put forth any worthy effort and pretty much hand over their stuff to the intruder. The Christian life is the same.

Too many of us just hand over our promises without even fighting; we give up too easily; we don’t prepare for the enemy so we can’t and don’t defend ourselves, for things that we never should have given him. To be real, he may not even have our possessions at all, we just let things rust for one reason or another. God says certain things belong to us, and like anything we own, we won’t just hand it over without a fight, and the blessed part about it, God has given us the resources and weapons to protect what’s ours just by His Word alone. What God gave you is yours, not the Enemy’s, to use for His noble purpose that He has for you. Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world, and if you believe that, there are some things the Devil shouldn’t have access to and should be protected at all times at least by the weapon of His promises. Joy, peace of mind, patience, love, and self-control, those are things that as a follower of Christ, the Enemy should never have the ability to steal, less we give him the keys, giving him access and permission.

Likewise, too many times the things that are going wrong in our lives and the situations that are anything but pleasurable in experiencing, we say the Devil set it up or set us up, or he is attacking us, and we rebuke it. Again, yes he is busy and forever disrupting the kingdom man or woman, but far too often we credit him for what we did too ourselves. To be honest, enough of the things that we do experience that unfavorable things people are giving the Devil credit for, its by their own merit, their own sin or wrongdoing. Sin, going against God’s Word or not doing what He tells us to do in certain situations, we set ourselves up for trouble whether we realize it or not. There is a quote that says “sin will take you further than you ever wanted to go, keep you longer than you ever wanted to stay, and cost you more than you ever wanted to pay.” On the flip side, sometimes the hell that is breaking loose in our lives is a result of prayer; we may have prayed for patience, a good man, a good woman, a sign that God wants us to leave a job or relationship, a more loving spirit, for God to keep us humble, a better house, or a better car without realizing what it will take for us to see His answer fully manifest; so we wind up upset and broken because we forgot what we prayed and neglect to remember that His thoughts and ways are not our own.

So in reality, when we are really reaping what we have sowed or God is setting us up for what we prayed for and preparing us for His purposes, we blame Satan himself. It’s time to wake up with a purpose so that God can get the glory, not the Devil. Lucifer was kicked out of Heaven because of his pride, stop blaming and giving him credit for everything and blowing his head up even more.

Life Song

studio

I once heard Jamie Foxx in an interview say something similar, if not repeating, what Steve Maraboli stated, “God is the composer; you are the song.” Frankly, I love that quote because there is so much in there. When you think of a composer, you think of one with a vision, one with a purpose. A composer starts off with a blank page and begins to write out the song of your life: all the notes and bass lines, the beats the breaks, the sharps and the flats. however sometimes when the song is being played, the music just kind of goes off the beaten path and before you realize it, there are broken chords and wrong notes, sometimes that weren’t even supposed to be a part of the original song. Still, any great composer can take those broken chords and turn those wrong notes into a beautiful piece, into a song that can never again be duplicated. “Life is a song; love your lyrics.”

When you think about a piano, there are white keys and black keys, so let’s say that the white keys are the good days or the more pleasant experiences, and the black keys are the less favorable ones. I love how someone else put it, “as you go through your life’s journey, remember the black keys make music too.” With all that said, I want to encourage you that your life is a beautiful song, full of white notes, and like the piano, more white than black. colorStill, however many you have, let your life’s music be glorious and resonate to those that would listen to your music. God’s song for you is far greater than you can imagine. Even though, sometime we want to be the composer and begin to add notes and lines and or even delete chords that were already written. This makes me love God all the more because He takes them and make ugly beautiful. So if you feel that you have hit a sour note in your life or things are just not as graceful as you would hope, remember that God is the Master Composer and He doesn’t make mistakes and knows how each part of your story creates a wonder that the world is waiting to see and hear. Trust God with every stroke of the key, because He had a purpose when He wrote your life song; He knew who it was going to reach, whose heart it would touch, and what life it would effect.

Know the Composer, know your music, for life is a song and God is the composer. Let the music of your heart and soul impact the world.