Sunday - 11.07.10

This past Sunday was a strong morning of worship together. One of our elders, Shannon Smith, taught on the life of Joseph. Shannon's words were comforting and challenging in remembering how God is always with us in the midst of all things going on in our lives. For me as an individual I was drawn deeply into the idea that which "man intends for evil, God can use for good." I have found myself this week seeking the good from God even in the midst of challenges.

The songs that we sang together that morning were:

Song of Hope - Robbie Seay
Hosanna - Paul Baloche
You Never Let Go - Matt Redman
Safe - Phil Wickham
Hungry/Falling on my Knees - Joy Williams
Our God - Chris Tomlin/Matt Redman

The musicians / vocalists were:

Ben Davis - Lead Guitar / Vox
John Enzor - Bass
Zack Van Hoy - Drums
Wendy Penfield - Vox
Aaron Chappell - Rhythm Elec Guitar / Vox
Jason Gore - Acoustic / Vox

Thanks for all who shared the morning with us. Please let us know if we can serve you in any way.

-Jason

Sunday - 10.31.10

Another great Sunday at Visio. Jeff delivered a pointed message about Jacob and Esau. Thank God that His purposes are not dependent on us being perfect! We wrestle with God almost constantly on different things. His grace is what allows us to see that He is God and we are not. Thank God for that.

Just about everyone involved in the story of Jacob and Esau is pretty messed up, but we see God moving the story forward in spite of that fact. Our God is greater.

Setlist for the morning was as follows:

• We Crown You - Fee
• Hosanna in the Highest - Hillsong
• Nothing but the Blood - Redman
• Doxology - Crowder Version
• Day After Day - Kristian Stanfill (this is off his new record and its a great song:))

The band for the morning was:

• Jason Gore - lead guitar + vox
• Jeff Haswell - Drums
• Scottie Wenger - Bass
• Julie Watkins - vox
• Marty Linn - Keys
• Patrick Downing - Rhythm guitar + vox

Again, thanks to everyone who came to Visio this week. You guys are part of the body of Christ and I consider a privilege to gather with you guys every week.

- Patrick

Worship: Creator_Created_or Ourselves

Here is the thing, everyone worships something.

It’s not a Christian thing. It’s not even a religious thing. Worship is a human thing. We are all worshipers. We hold things in places of glory in our lives. And we do that to the exclusion of everything else. We sacrifice for those things. In Old Testament times that meant going to the temple and sacrificing animals. Today, it means we give our time. We give them our talents. We give them our money. We love them. Some of us worship our jobs. Some of us worship our cars; our money; sex; sports. Some of us worship ourselves.

We are all called to worship God. And to have no other Gods before Him. You are called to worship the king of the universe. Our Creator. The Creator of all things. But our temptation is to worship CREATED things in place of the Creator.

Romans 1:24-25 “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!”

The thing is, we subconsciously believe that created things will save us. We think they will make us happy. If you are a guy who believes that only success and money will make you happy, its possible that you will sacrifice everything for it. You will sacrifice your health. You will sacrifice your family. Because you think it will make you happy. If you are a girl who is terrified of being alone your whole life you might sacrifice things to be with someone you shouldn’t be with. You might sacrifice your dignity. You might sacrifice your body. Because being alone is bad and a boy will make you happy. These things are idols. We worship them. We sacrifice for them. We love them.

We become like what we worship. If you worship food you will become a glutton. If you worship alcohol you will become a drunk. If you worship sex you will become a pervert. It’s because we become dedicated to those things. They promise to make you happy but it’s a lie. Remember Romans. They “…exchanged the truth of God for a lie..”. But only God will make you happy (editors note: probably more accurate to say 'only God has the ability to bring you true joy' in that we only truly find ourselves in light of who God is.')

I'm reminded of our current series in Genesis when Adam and Eve believed they needed something more than what they already had in their relationship with God. They trusted in something else bringing them their true 'identity or happiness' and so they took the bite. It's not even that they bit something terrible... they just put their trust in themselves to decide as opposed to their creator. Thy were worshipping in a sense themselves... we do the same things in what we give ourselves to.

We have to repent of worshiping things other than God. He is jealous. And to worship anything else is to exchange God’s truth for lies. It's not what we were made for and it's not what God deserves. Lets make sure we worship Creator.

-Jason and Patrick

Sunday - 10.17.10

Wow... such a powerful morning of worship together this morning. Thanks so much to all who were there. It's so great to hear and be apart of the church singing and celebrating together truths of our God. I left feeling very confident that Jesus was made much of and that the gospel was clearly set in front of us. A big thanks also to Ken Cantrell for teaching us this morning. Lots of clarity and very impacting... I pray it moves in us this week to trust more in our Creator. (You will be able to find the podcast here) as the week goes on)

We get asked on a regular basis what particular songs are each week that we sing so we're gonna use this site to keep you up to speed on that as well. The set list for today was the following:

Everlasting God - Brenton Brown
Desert Song - Hillsong United
Mighty to Save - Hillsong
Come Ye Sinners - Joseph Hart / Robbie Seay / Public Domain
Because of Your Love - Phil Wickham

Thanks again for worshipping with us this morning if you were around. Please feel free to let us know if we can do anything for you or help out in any way.

-Jason

Come in Everyone. Can You Hear Us?

Well if you can, welcome to Visio Dei Worship.

As you might have guessed from the title of the blog, this is a blog for the musical worship team at Visio Dei, a church community in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina. As of now this blog us unofficial in that it is not directly connected to the Visio Dei website. We hope to migrate over there soon.

In the meantime, we wanted a place to get the conversation going. We will be updating this blog regularly (hopefully) with thoughts on musical worship, thoughts on the church, thoughts on musical worship IN the church, thoughts on our world, thoughts on music IN our world, thoughts on the culture that we live in and much, much more.

We hope you come back often. Thanks!

- Patrick