The story behind the song is really amazing - Bluetree were on a mission trip to Thailand and got the opportunity to lead worship in a bar/brothel. In the middle of the worship time they got ‘God of this City”as a prophetic song and now it’s being sung around the world.

Chris Tomlin talks about the song …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co-RP2isqZY 

A video by Bluetree with cool pictures of Belfast (where the band is from) -worth it for the pictures alone I’d say…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqQhZKpZVCo&feature=related

I should also say that Dave has been talking about this song for a few months- thanks for letting me know about it! If you have a  song you’ve discovered recently let me know …

G

The Global Impact Team seems really interesting- I’ve wanted to do a trip like this for a while now and it’s great to see that it’s happening in cool places like India! The Songwriter’s Journey is also a great idea and something I’ve never heard of being done before- the concept sounds really good and I wonder if it would work closer to home or does it only really work in a totally different environment/culture?

Anyway, here’s the link so check it out …  

http://www.worshipfoundations.com

Over the past few days I found a couple of Christmas CDs in the basement which we’d bought last year and stored with all the lights and ornaments,etc. One of the CDs was highlights from Handel’s Messiah which we listened to on Christmas Eve. I’ve heard the Messiah performed before but it’s been quite a few years and so much of it felt new to me. As I listened to the performance I was drawn into experiencing the wonder of Christmas and how Handel managed to capture so much of the splendor and greatness of the season.

This morning I did a quick spot of research on the all-knowing Wikipedia and discovered some interesting Messiah facts:

- It was first performed during Lent not Advent and is still used at Easter as well as around Christmas.

- The work is in 3 parts and only part 1 deals with the birth of Christ. Part 2 deals with the Passion and part 3 is drawn from the events of Revelation.

- The famous Hallelujah chorus is actually found in parts 2 & 3 and not in part 1 which deals with Christ’s birth, though we associate it with Christmas.   

- There is an fascinating apocryphal story cited of Handel in tears declaring that he thought he “saw the face of God” while looking at the score for the Hallelujah chorus.

The full article is worth reading at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handel%27s_messiah .

Have a great Christmas season!

It is also a place to think about the new things in worship … a new song… what God has been saying/doing in recent worship times… prophetic words…

Where did the idea come from?? A couple of years ago we went to Japan to minister to a church and we prayed and worshipped at various places throughout the trip. One of the places we visited was a small, local shrine. We brought a guitar and worshipped Jesus as a team_ it was simple and unrehearsed yet resulted in a  profound moment I can’t forget. As we paused to pray, our pastor Cameron began to speak out a vision of God seated in heaven, turning and looking at us as we were worshipping and saying, “I’ve never heard worship from this place before”. It was as if God was saying that we were the very first people in history to worship Him from this place on the earth! 

I long for more moments like these were God is worshippped throughout the whole earth. This a small part of that vision to see worship arise in new places, in new ways, from more people who love God … 

Worshipping in Japan