~~ 2+2=4 ~~
Shortly after Gwen and I were married, we had two more children. Kalla Miranda Fawn (shown to the left with her husband Jimmy) and Charles Timothy Matthew (shown to the right with his wife, Shelly).Like I said earlier, Gwen and I were in love as two people could get, but years of being totally blind to the Truth tried our bond in every way imaginable.
There was hurt after hurt. We have endured just about every hardship you can imagine. And yes... Even the some of the unimaginable. We had many trying times with our children, but also... things much worse. For twelve years of our marriage there was little to "celebrate"...
Life in the "fast lane" continued. I kept playing in the bands... Most notable I guess was a group called "The Southern Knights". We played with such groups as Pirates Of The Mississippi, Conway Twitty, Jerry Lee, Sawyer Brown and more I don't care to remember. I had to make myself remember the ones mentioned. Oh... We really thought we were something...
There was another group I played with for years, and they probably wouldn't care for me to mention them in this type of atmosphere, but they were a great bunch of guys with whom I probably had the most "decent" of times. With them I began playing the keyboard (which is now what I play with our Praise and Worship team at DTC).
Some of the guys with which I played music were real friends to me. "Chucky Ray" has always been a real pal... And a great guitarist... We now pick together in Church. I can always count on him...
Eddie Day and Chucky Ray once bonded with me in a very special way... He voluntarily stood with me (supported me because I couldn't stand up) in a shower one night, fully clothed, in a desperate attempt to revive me from my drunken, puke-soaked condition in a motel room late one Saturday night (or maybe it was more like early Sunday morning)... Now days, I see Eddie regularly in church, when him and his wife Mary aren't traveling across the country preaching The Word Of God...
But, as the "Good Ol' Boy" lifestyle went on, it had already claimed one marriage of mine, and was about to claim another. Leaving out the many times I let everyone around me down and being nothing more than a "curse" to everyone I knew, I swore off playing music. I vowed never to strike another note... of any kind... on any instrument... for ANY reason! Little did I know that this was my "training ground" for things to come...
God's gifts are, according to His Word, "irrevocable" (Romans 11:29). And I have no problem believing that. I was given a gift to be a musician, and if gifts were revocable, mine would have been taken from me, without doubt.
I did learn many things from my past about music. It was created, by God, to be a very powerful thing. I did have the ability to put a piece of wood about my neck, and with that piece of wood, I could influence people to do anything I wanted... "Oh, you're bragging now!" you might say. But it isn't bragging at all. It is Truth. Anyone who does not have The Spirit of God within them are very easily swayed this way and that... But music is even more powerful than that...
King David had the gift of "making the demons flee" when he played his instrument... Proof that music even holds influence in the spiritual realm... satan's own body is composed partly of musical instruments... And so are ours...
Music can be used to do anything from praising God and inviting God into your presence, to influencing someone to blow their brains out, and this includes all things in between. This is the power of music.
God gives the gift... then it is fully up to us as to what we do with it... We can suppress it, making it null and void of any real effect... We can use it for all the wrong reasons (as I have done in the past)... Or we can use it to glorify our Father, God... In whichever the case, the power is there... The reality of this is what I have whole-heartedly learned from my past experiences.
So... Was it worth it? Maybe it was... Just maybe... it was.
posted by Motivated By Grace @ 6/20/2005 09:48:00 AM
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