Christian Guitar Resources Newsletter February 6th, 2001 www.christianguitar.ws ------------------- CONTENTS ------------------- 1. MESSAGE BOARDS 2. DATABASE ERRORS 3. LESSONS 4. MONTHLY DEVOTIONAL 5. INTERVIEWS ------------------------------------------------ 1. MESSAGE BOARDS Our message boards have just received *another* major upgrade, and the response has been amazing. In just our second day on the new boards, we had over 500 messages posted. Join the fun! http://www.christianguitar.ws/boards/ ------------------------------------------------ 2. DATABASE ERRORS Many of you probably noticed that we had some pretty serious problems with our database over the past weekend. I'm happy to report that all of the problems have been resolved, and the entire database is back and running as it should. Sorry for any inconvenience that this may have caused you. ------------------------------------------------ 3. LESSONS We've been adding more and more lessons to the site, and we now have 22 lessons available to help you with your guitar skills. A huge thanks goes out to Tyson for writing these lessons for you to enjoy! http://www.christianguitar.ws/lessons/lessons.htm ------------------------------------------------ 4. MONTHLY DEVOTIONAL Here's Ben's monthly devotional. You can find more of his devotionals at: http://www.benkraker.com/ ******************* Seek God First In today’s devotional, you will notice that none of the Scriptures referred to are printed in the text. The reason I wrote this devotional in this way is because it is important that you crack open your Bible and read these verses for yourself. That way you will be able to highlight or mark them so that you can refer back to them in the future. Sometimes my life seems to be slow, like God doesn’t do all these huge and awesome miracles as I expect Him to. Way too often I get caught up in seeking revival, but not seeking God - the One who brings revival. I end up scurrying around putting together events without stopping to spend some serious time with Jesus Christ. God commands us to be still and know that He is God (Psalm 46:10). We are created to know God and to make Him known (Romans 10:9). When it seems like God just isn’t moving in our lives, those are the times that we need to take time and get to know God better. If we want to see God pour out His presence among us, we first need to be patient and let God prepare us. We need to develop a hunger for God and seek Him with all we have (Psalm 63:1-8). We need to let God work in us. Just as a potter needs time to sculpt a masterpiece, God also needs time to sculpt us to be the masterpiece creations He wants us to be (Isaiah 64:8). It takes patience on our part, along with a teachable spirit willing to learn what it is God has to teach us. If God doesn’t seem to be doing huge and awesome things in your life, maybe its time to seek His face and spend some one-on-one time with God. Don’t get to caught up in ministry that you don’t spend time with the one true Minister - God Himself. Just think about this for a moment: God wants to know you! God, the creator of our everything, wants you and Him to have a personal, intimate relationship! Are you spending time to develop that relationship? Does that relationship exist in your life? If God is going to pour out revival on our generation, that out-pouring needs to start with us. We as Christian teens need to be overflowing with God! We need to seek Him with all we have and have the Holy Spirit fill us up and take presence in our entire lives. If we truly seek God with all we have, we would overflow with the things of God! The Gospel of Luke teaches us that out of the overflow of our hearts, our mouths speak (Luke 6:45). What that means is that if we have God in our hearts and He is truly why we live, He will overflow and come out of our mouths. How are you living? Are you over-concerned with revival, but not concerned enough with developing your relationship with God? We need to overflow with God. Have you ever heard a mom pouring a drink for her kid and say "tell me when its full enough"? With God, we should never say "when". We should continually let God fill us up and let Him overflow into every area of our lives. Revival starts here, and I am sure of that fact. We need to keep letting God fill us up and never say "when". If you’re ready to let God overflow in your life and you want to seek Him with all you’ve got, that is awesome. If you want to let God continually fill you up and you’re willing to do whatever it takes to overflow, tell God that. Let Him know your heart, and ask Him to make Himself known to you in awesome ways. For encouragement to seek God read Jeremiah 29:11-13. Never say "when"!! In Christ, Ben Kraker ------------------------------------------------ 5. INTERVIEWS The big new feature added to the site this month? Interviews. We started with a big one - Jennifer Knapp! We're working on lining up some more interviews with the top names in Christian music. However, until then, check out what Miss Knapp had to say about Creed, Napster, songwriting and host of other subjects. http://www.christianguitar.ws/interviews.htm ------------------------------------------------ Have a great month, and feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions or problems with the site. IHL, Mickey mickey@christianguitar.ws http://www.christianguitar.ws/