In the moment of desperation when every attempt seems to fail the cry arises, “all I want is...”

 

This little phrase which I have said both in my heart and with my mouth many times in the past has now become a great indicator of what my greatest desire is in a particular moment. Recently, I have had some difficulty with my eyes after one of the lenses to my glasses got lost in the woods. As a result, I found an old pair of glasses to wear from about 6 years ago. Things were blurry, but it was much better than trying to wear a pair of glasses that only had one lens. Nevertheless, one thing was clear, if I didn't get a new pair of glasses soon I was going to be getting head aches and having a difficult time reading. Therefore the same day I lost the lens I went to an eye doctor that assured that I they could get me a new pair of glasses with in a week. Nearly three weeks later and having been told that my glasses should have come in on 6 separate dates, my eyes were really starting to bother me, and I found the cry coming up from my heart: “all I want is to get my glasses so I can see.”

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~ Summary Index ~  
1. Godly Christian Ministries General Updates  
2. Godly Christian Ministries - Site Updates  
3. Godly Christian Music - Site Updates  
4. Godly Christian Music - New Songs  
5. Prayer Requests

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1. Godly Christian Ministries General Updates

This month has been slow in making progress on the various projects. Nevertheless, things are moving forward. Due to a couple people specifically requesting a download all feature (for albums), I took the time to add it into the music site. Unfortunately, at the last minute I found it had some problems for Mac users. I intent on fixing this issue in the future, but for now it will have to do. I am continuing to work on the play list feature, but I had some set backs when my glasses got damaged and it took a couple weeks for my new glasses to come in (note: check out the short article I wrote while going through the trial of not being able to see well: click here to view article). I just got my new glasses yesterday afternoon and I am now gearing up to get back to work.

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2. Godly Christian Ministries - Site Updates

If you haven't been to www.GodlyChristianMinistries.com you may consider stopping by there on occasion as I have been posting articles, videos, and poetry from various people a couple times each month. I hope to make this more consistent in the future, but currently with all the work on the music site and other responsibilities my time has been fairly limited.

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3. Godly Christian Music - Site Updates

One the main things I have been working on is the play list feature. The project to implement the play list feature has three phases. The first two phases are complete and now I am working on the final leg of the project. The last thing I need to do is integrate all the components of the play lists together. Please be praying for me as I am significantly stretching my programing knowledge and experience on this project. Unless something slows down progress (like last month), I hope to have the player up and going by the end of this month.

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4. Godly Christian Music - New Songs

The variety of music continues to grow this month with 105 new songs added to the site!

Red Roots (1 New Song)
Jason Bellard (68 New Songs)
Susan Hawthorne (7 New Songs)
Jeff Wooldridge (2 New Songs)
Daniel James (2 New Songs)
David Young (1 New Song)
Scott Ogden (2 New Songs)
Jeff Rice (1 New Song)
Charity Ministries (21 New Songs)

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5. Prayer Requests

As always please keep praying for the sites that the Lord would lead people to the content that will encourage and inspire them to know Him more. Please also continue praying for me that I might have perseverance to keep working on everything. At times, it is difficult to be motivated to turn on my computer because I know that the stuff I am currently working on is very mentally taxing. Also, please ask the Lord to give me wisdom of how to invest my time properly between personal interaction with people and remotely through the websites.

Make us a symphony of One

Focused upon One conductor

Tuned to One concert pitch

Submitted to One tempo

Content to play One part

Perfected to One sound

Resulting in One purpose

The praise of our Composer

We can have two reactions to tribulation - we can be OVER-WHELMED if we focus on the details of the difficulty and potential pain and suffering about to occur; or,
we can allow ourselves to be OVER-WHOMED by focusing upon
the One WHO holds our lives in the palm of His hand.

When our focus in upon Him - this is our reaction:
"who can be against us?" "What can separate us from His love for us?"

"Thou wilt keep in PERFECT PEACE him whose mind is steadfast
because he is staid upon THEE!"

We should check our reactions to sudden difficulty to learn where our focus is.

Are we seeing WHAT might happen or are we seeing
Him Whose grace is always sufficient?

We will nearly always submit to what we have focused our thoughts upon. If we focus upon the danger or the difficulty facing us, we will submit ourselves to fear and our actions will indicate where our focus is.

When we become more conscious of His sufficient grace than we our of the degree of difficulty we are in our, actions will begin to reflect the calm assurance derived from focusing upon the One WHOSE love nothing can sever.

"Though a thousand fall at my left hand, ten thousand at my right hand
it will not come near me."

May we learn to cease being overwhelmed by
the WHATS of life

and be steadfastly OVERWHOMED by

the HIM of LIFE!

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~ Summary Index ~ 
1. Godly Christian Ministries General Updates 
2. Godly Christian Music - Site Updates 
3. Godly Christian Music - New Songs 
4. Prayer Requests

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1. Godly Christian Ministries General Updates

Its about that time for another update and there has been a ton going on as usual. In the beginning of January, Godly Christian Music finally surpassed 1,000 free songs to download on the site and more music is constantly going up. As with the last couple months, most of my time has gone toward the music website and this will continue into the next month. My first priority is getting the play list feature up and working, but once this is done, I may start on a new Music Sharing feature. This will allow people to send emails with a link to a particular song, post a song on Facebook & Twitter, and embed a music player on their personal blog or website. Nevertheless, if I am too burned out programming I might start working on something else on one of the other sites as a diversion. Please keep me in prayer, as I seek to make the best use of the time I have been given.

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2. Godly Christian Music - Site Updates

Godly Christian Music has been getting all kinds of updates lately. Some of the more noticeable changes are the new icons for playing, downloading, viewing lyrics and displaying chords. In addition, the music player now starts playing automatically and also has a pause button (if you aren't experiencing these changes you may need to clear your browsing cache or your temporary internet files). Also, the news article page is now feeding from GodlyChristianMinistries.com and the new articles that were archived on GodlyChristianMusic.com have all been moved to the ministry site.

On the back end of GodlyChristianMusic.com (which artists use to manage their music), a few updates have occurred as well. There have been several bug fixes in order to improve reliability. I found out that the Event listing page hasn't been working for several artist for quite some time. Nevertheless, the problem should now be fixed and hopefully some artist will start taking advantage of this feature. Also, I have reprogrammed what happens when a new song gets added to the site. I am hoping that this will make the process more smooth and if there is any problem I will now be notified immediately with specific information to remedy the issue. The other changes on the back end of the site were mostly aesthetic.

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3. Godly Christian Music - New Songs

Once again, there are no shortages for all you who like new music. This month there were 98 new songs...

Nick Mott (New Songs 31)
Hopesong (New Songs 31)
A Church in Indianapolis (New Songs 1)
Amanda Baker (New Songs 5)
Rob Haymes (New Songs 1)
Dynamomin (New Songs 1)
Jeff Wooldridge (New Songs 1)
Scott Ogden (New Songs 4)
graphite412 (New Songs 1)
Jeff Rice (New Songs 2)
Jerry Lockett (New Songs 18)
Sobrina Pugh (New Songs 2)

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4. Prayer Requests

Prayer is also always needed for the artist! Please consider writing to an artist sometime in the next week to let them know how much you appreciate their efforts. Most people have no idea how much work goes into put together one professional sounding song. From writing a song to distributing it to others an artist can easily spend 40 hours. If they want to cut down on this time, they will have to spend a bunch of money to get really nice equipment or hire others to do things for them. Each song is different, but I think you get my point. When an artist is giving away their music to you for free, it is no small thing! All this being the case, it can be easy for artist to get discouraged doing so much work and never know if it is blessing others. Therefore, please pray for the artists and try to let them know when you have been blessed by their labors.

Also please be praying for me. I am now getting over a cold that I had for the last week. While I have been sick, I have been meditating on perseverance. It has been hard to be motivated to bless others when I have been tired and not feeling well, but I have found that more grace has come to me as I have sought to lay down my life for others. Nevertheless, I do ask that you pray that I may stay healthy while a lot of sickness is going around the people I interact with regularly. In addition, please pray that the Lord would give me clear direction about what to work on during the month of February.

Lastly, also pray that the Lord would draw people to the Godly Christian Ministries websites and that they would be strengthened in their faith by this ministry.

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

Though many of us know that we should love each other, the weight of this instruction is often held lightly. If we truly understood what was at stake if we did not keep this command, it would likely motivate us all the more to learn how Jesus actually loved His disciples.

Jesus was patient when His disciples didn't understand Him. He explained simple truth again and again when they failed. Though He was honest, He was never obnoxious nor did He treat them like they were worthless. Rather, He sought their good even unto the sacrificing of His soul. This is the kind of love we are called to have toward one another.

"There was silence, and I heard a still voice" (Job 4:16, margin).

A score of years ago, a friend placed in my hand a book called True Peace. It was an old mediaeval message, and it had but one thought--that God was waiting in the depths of my being to talk to me if I would only get still enough to hear His voice.  I thought this would be a very easy matter, and so began to get still. But I had no sooner commenced than a perfect pandemonium of voices reached my ears, a thousand clamoring notes from without and within, until I could hear nothing but their noise and din.  Some were my own voices, my own questions, some my very prayers. Others were suggestions of the tempter and the voices from the world's turmoil.

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~ Summary Index ~ 
1. Godly Christian Ministries General Updates 
2. Godly Christian Music - Site Updates 
3. Godly Christian Music - New Songs 
4. Prayer Requests

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1. Godly Christian Ministries General Updates

It has been a busy month and progress continues to be made. 
Currently, most of my time has been invested with www.GodlyChristianMusic.com. 
New Music is regularly being added to the site and new features are 
also being developed.  In addition, some bugs were fixed on the 
administrative side of the site too.  Toward the end of this month I 
posted up several articles to the www.GodlyChristianMinistries.com
Blog.

The focus of the coming season will remain on the music website as 
new features and fixes will continue to be developed.  The news 
article page of the music (and ecard) site will be modified so that 
its content will fed in from the ministry site.  This will provide a 
more streamlined way of passing along information by allowing me to 
post one article and have it appear on three sites.  In addition, the 
mp3 player on the music site will probably be getting changed.  I am 
hoping to integrate a media player which significantly improve the 
current play list feature.  Several other smaller things will likely 
be added or modified in the coming months too.  In regards to the 
ministry site, I hope to add some more outreach content soon.

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2. Godly Christian Music - Site Updates

This month, I have been in the studio mixing Joe Garrity's new songs 
which were posted on his download page a few days ago.  In addition, I 
implemented a major site-wide update that integrates ID3 tags into 
every mp3 file on the site.  You may wonder what this means... It 
means that when you download mp3 files from www.GodlyChristianMusic.com
and put them onto your computer or mp3 player they will no longer be 
listed as unknown title, unknown artist, unknown genre and unknown 
album.  Instead, the files will now automatically be sorted and 
organized according to their proper categories.

[Note: Artists should notice that there are less errors messages 
displayed when they are managing their music on the back end of the 
site.  I think the main bug that was causing the back-end of the site 
to crash was eliminated.]

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3. Godly Christian Music - New Songs

There were 81 new songs since the last update!

Christ Our Life: new song(s) - 1 
Jerry Lockett: new song(s) -  10 
The Voice of God: new song(s) -  28 
Andrew Price: new song(s) -  1 
Susan Hawthorne: new song(s) -  6 
Josh Godfrey: new song(s) -  4 
Dynamomin: new song(s) -  1 
Steve and Danny Thomson: new song(s) -  2 
Naked Like Adam: new song(s) -  2 
Jeff Rice: new song(s) -  1 
Daniel Asher: new song(s) -  6 
Joe and Angela Garrity: new song(s) -  8 
Jonsong: new song(s) -  11

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4. Prayer Requests

The end of the year is coming up and I am currently on the road 
visiting my family and friends in a couple northern USA states.  It 
has been a good year, but it has been filled with trials.  The Lord 
did a deep work in my heart this year bringing me to a much greater 
level of peace and contentment.  In addition, the ministry has grown 
considerably.  This year GodlyChristianEcards.com had about 30 new 
ecards custom made available for everyone to use. 
GodlyChristianMinistries.com was completely rebuilt and lots of new 
content was added.  A bunch of new equipment was obtained for music 
recording and several improvements were made to 
GodlyChristianMusic.com, including bug fixes, new features, and 
hundreds of songs.  Now the year is coming to a close and the horizon 
of the new year is quickly approaching.  Please be praying that the 
Lord would grant vision and provision for the ministry in 2011.  I 
have high hopes to increase the content and the exposure of Godly 
Christian Ministries' site during the next year.  My desire is to see 
all God's people become one with Christ Jesus: sharing in both His 
mind and actions.  When all of God's people become properly tuned to 
Christ, they will come in tune with each other.  Please pray that 
Godly Christian Ministries will be effective in bringing God's people 
into union with Christ Jesus and likewise each other.

Trials are a big part of our daily life, but some are much bigger than others. When difficult situations arise that have a great impact on our lives they have a tendency to become the focus of minds.  It is as if we get a magnifying glass and repetitively scrutinize our problems. Here in this whirlwind of thoughts, fear creeps in and worry takes over. In this moment, spiritual wisdom and discernment quickly fade to carnal / natural reasoning. We can be sure that when our hearts are no longer at rest our thoughts are not coming from God. It is at times like these that we must follow the example of the apostle Paul: “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18). When we face great trials we must fix our eyes on what is unseen. This is the life of faith to which we have been called! It is the core essence of Christianity to not see the world through carnal / natural eyes, but to look into heaven and discover the perspective of the God who loves us. This is how our Lord was able to walk in the Spirit while He was being brutally mocked, beaten, and killed. His eyes were not fixed on His trials, but on the eternal glory that His father was accomplishing (Hebrews 12:2). Likewise, we too can share in Christ's power by simply setting our minds on things above.

"I trust in thy word" (Ps. 119:42).

Just in proportion in which we believe that God will do just what He has said, is our faith strong or weak. Faith has nothing to do with feelings, or with impressions, with improbabilities, or with outward appearances. If we desire to couple them with faith, then we are no longer resting on the Word of God because faith needs nothing of the kind. Faith rests on the naked Word of God. When we take Him at His Word, the heart is at peace.