December 31
The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in. (C.S. Lewis, “Mere Christianity” pg. 226-227)
Happy NYE Family and Friends! I am going to put a quick little post here because I am super busy trying to clean up Christmas decorations, clean the house, go grocery shopping, and keep chipping away at finalizing our move by finding a home for everything we have currently cluttering our garage.
Click here for a recap from AP News over the biggest stories of 2022. The entertainment world lost another icon with the passing of the great Barbara Walters yesterday. It seems like God has made it a point to call some of His favorite’s home just before the start of a new year. Last NYE we lost Betty White, and now Ms. Walters and Pope Benedict XVI have passed away right before the start of 2023. While both were 93 and 95, I hope you readers do not take any day for granted, because the future is not guaranteed. As C.S. Lewis wrote above, it is time to submit to death, death of your old self, give your life to Christ and rise in 2023 to a new you, a new person in Christ. Look for Christ in everything you do and you will find Him, and with Him, “everything else” will be thrown in.
So here are my top albums of 2022, they are, of course, worship albums: the new album from Maverick City Music and my favorite album of the year, LION by Elevation Worship. Below is my favorite track from MCM, “Bless Me”. This was an amazing project, as the team from Maverick City recorded many of the tracks at the Everglades Correctional Institution in Florida. I pray many blessings and great fvor over all of you in 2023!
To arrive at my favorite track from LION, where every song was amazing, I allowed Spotify to guide me, as my most listened to track is the one below. But click here to listen to Elevation Worship’s latest and greatest. I pray that you all see what I see, and we can bring many more to see the same wonder working God in 2023!
While the songs above were my two favorites from the year, there was a stand alone song that is a perfect tune for the New Year. The lyrics from this song by Futures Worship really spoke to me all year, but as 2022 comes to an end, they hold even more weight: “We don’t get to see the whole picture. We don’t get to see the whole thing. We just get a glimpse of the moment, the promise, the future; and not the in-betweens”.
Here’s to the moments of 2023, and the blessed assurance that God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, so whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life. God did not send Jesus to judge the world, but to save the world through Him. (John 3:16-17).
Common Sense Reborn 