Today marks the 14th anniversary of my mother’s passing. She was only 67 and we never saw it coming. Every time April 19th rolls around it is bittersweet; that day changed us all.

After her death, Brenda, the kids and I moved to North Carolina to be near my Dad. That ended up being a four-year blessing. In that time we met so many life-long friends. We were able to partner with my buddy, Mike Snelgrove, to start Cornerstone Fellowship Church. I am proud to say that the church is doing extremely well. Even as we’ve been away for almost ten years now, our time with my Dad and the church was priceless and fruitful. Dad is doing well and prides in being the oldest member of Cornerstone Fellowship!

The bitter part of today is that Mom is not here. The sweet part is that her legacy of being a first-rate mother, grandmother and wife lives on forever in our hearts.

God is good!

I stopped to watch a show last night called Inspector America on the History Channel. It is based around the crusader, Timothy Galarnyk, an infrastructure safety inspector with over 35 years of experience. He asserts that if America doesn’t pay attention to it’s aging infrastructure (bridges, dams, tunnels, sewers, railways, roadways, etc.) and make necessary repairs, we are headed for trouble. Over the decades, the infrastructure that helped our country grow hasn’t kept up with the times. Galarnyk wants to see some changes.

Galarnyk mentioned the term “fracture critical” in the show last night. He pointed out some startling examples of rusted steel and crumbling cement pilings on the still-used, severely degraded Stillwater Lift Bridge in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota. The basic definition of the term “fracture critical” is that if one critical area of the bridge’s support system were to fail, the whole thing would certainly collapse. Just four years ago, an Interstate 35W highway bridge in downtown Minneapolis loaded with rush-hour traffic dropped more than 60 feet into the Mississippi River, sending at least 50 vehicles and passengers into the water and ultimately taking the lives of 13 people. Galarnyk wants to avoid this happening to anyone else again.

How many areas of our lives are “fracture critical?” Last year my life was shaken as I learned of a personal, two-year bout with high blood pressure that caused irreversible heart damage; I didn’t even know I had it until I visited the doctor with severe headaches. I had to make some big changes. Maybe a relationship, a job, or a life-style is “fracture critical” and we don’t even know it. Many times, like in the case of the Stillwater Bridge, we re-pave the road, making it look new, but under the roadway there are cracks, holes and erosion that threaten eminent danger.

Proverbs 4:20-27 (New International Version, ©2011) 

20 My son, pay attention to what I say;
turn your ear to my words.
21 Do not let them out of your sight,
keep them within your heart;
22 for they are life to those who find them
and health to one’s whole body.
23 Above all else, guard your heart,
for everything you do flows from it.
24 Keep your mouth free of perversity;
keep corrupt talk far from your lips.
25 Let your eyes look straight ahead;
fix your gaze directly before you.
26 Give careful thought to the[a] paths for your feet
and be steadfast in all your ways.
27 Do not turn to the right or the left;
keep your foot from evil.

The good news is that if we learn of the areas that are failing and we take steps to repair the damage, we can start anew. The problem with our broken lives is that we cannot make the repairs alone. Maybe a doctor, therapist or a health professional can guide us back to health. But ultimately God, the Creator and Sustainer of our lives, can make the most important changes. Our hearts are the wellspring of our lives and we cannot live up to our potential without His saving grace and regeneration.

In this Easter season, it would be good to make an inspection to see if there is any threat of “fracture critical” areas in our lives. God wants to make you strong, just ask Him.

For years I’ve had trouble sleeping. I would sometimes surrender to those little blue, over-the-counter sleep aids from Walmart if it was impossible to get my racing mind to stop taking laps around the days activities. Some nights I would just channel surf into the early hours of the morning, every so often looking over at Brenda as she peacefully slept. I am jealous that she can just close her eyes, hit the pillow and fall fast asleep.

Last week Betsy let us borrow a little sleep machine that they weren’t using. When we got home and plugged it in, I was skeptical that the sounds on this little machine could help me over this dreaded problem I’ve had for so long. When we were kids we would put a portable fan in our room, not so much for the cooling factor but more for the sound it made. It helped us sleep. This little sleep machine sounds like that fan. The next morning I woke up feeling refreshed–that crazy machine actually worked. I have used it every night for a week now and it has never failed to help me fall asleep, and stay asleep for eight hours. Brenda is the real winner here!

I learned some amazing facts from the National Sleep Research Project about the importance of a good night’s sleep:

-The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska, the Challenger space shuttle disaster and the Chernobyl nuclear accident have all been attributed to human errors in which sleep-deprivation played a role.

-Tiny luminous rays from a digital alarm clock can be enough to disrupt the sleep cycle even if you do not fully wake. The light turns off a “neural switch” in the brain, causing levels of a key sleep chemical to decline within minutes.

-Ten per cent of snorers have sleep apnea, a disorder which causes sufferers to stop breathing up to 300 times a night and significantly increases the risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke.

-Snoring occurs only in non-REM sleep.

-Teenagers need as much sleep as small children (about 10 hrs) while those over 65 need the least of all (about six hours). For the average adult aged 25-55, eight hours is considered optimal.

-Some studies suggest women need up to an hour’s extra sleep a night compared to men, and not getting it may be one reason women are much more susceptible to depression than men.

-Experts say one of the most alluring sleep distractions is the 24-hour accessibility of the internet.

-The extra-hour of sleep received when clocks are put back at the start of daylight in Canada has been found to coincide with a fall in the number of road accidents.

Even though we sleep for one third of our lives, the quality of life during those other two thirds are attributed to a good night’s sleep. I’m gonna keep that little machine by my be for as long as Betsy and Adam can do without it. I wanna be ready just in case someday I am asked to fly the Challenger or operate an oil tanker. It’s not cool when you fall asleep on the job in those situations!

My first worship-leading gig wasn’t even known as such. It was back in the late 70s and I was in a Christian rock band. We would play our tunes and add a few sing-a-long worship songs to the set. We didn’t even know what to call those pop-style congregational songs then. The break in tradition for me was that I was in a band. Most churches in those days had only a piano and maybe an organ facing the pulpit on either side of the stage to accompany in worship. A few years before that, I played bass for an older gentleman who sang Christian country music. I was 15 and my brother Jon, the drummer, was a mere 13-years old. I remember we played in one very conservative church that didn’t even allow Jon to play because drums were considered “secular.” We were too young to understand.

When I began my professional career as a minister of music, it was right at the beginning of Integrity Music and their massive influence on the way the church worships today. I still had in mind, then, that leading congregational songs stemmed mainly from the hymnal. In college, after I left the road in 1985 to finish my education at the University of Mobile in Alabama, there was no such thing as a “worship leader” course of study. All of the music courses were classical in nature and were designed to train leaders to build choirs and sing from the strict musical cannon of the hymnal. We were taught to wave our hands to the beat of the music as if people took our cues seriously. The only songs chosen from the hymnal were those that already had frayed pages. There were sometimes six or seven verses in a hymn. Traditionally, only a select number of verses were ever used, typically the first two and then the last.

I remember learning the worship songs from Integrity Music and started mixing them in with the songs for Sunday night worship–a more relaxed, casual service in the week. These songs were typically more personal in nature and were usually sung as a direct conversation to God. The hymns were mostly songs about God. People seemed to enjoy the praise songs, but made it known that Sunday morning was for the hymns.

I started writing my own Christian songs back in the 70s while in the aforementioned rock band. I would visit Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa as a teenager on Saturday nights for their youth concerts. There we would sing very personal worship songs to the Lord that originated from Maranatha! Music and were led by long-haired hippie musicians. I would feel the sweetness in the congregation as the Holy Spirit seemed to fill the sanctuary. I knew that Calvary Chapel was a special place, but only later, after I moved to the South, did I realize that the rest of the country hadn’t caught up with the praise music rolling out of the Jesus Movement on the West Coast. Integrity Music, ten years later, also helped usher “praise and worship” music into the conservative church, but not without resistance.

Promise Keepers, a movement founded by college football coach Bill McCartney, and dedicated to introducing men to Jesus Christ, began holding large rallies. There was always a strong worship element in these programs. The music was led by a “worship leader,” and accompanied by a band. Since the events were non-denominational, and usually held in non-church settings, many pastors–who normally were hymn-singing people–found a deepened connection with God while singing these non-traditional songs. This example helped break the grip that held churches back for years. Before long, pastors encouraged their congregations to adopt the band/worship-leader approach to their weekly services. There are other music companies and spiritual movements that influenced praise music in churches today–too many to list here.

I am honored to have worked with both Integrity Music and Maranatha! Music in my career– helping to train churches in this “new” form of congregational worship. For years I have traveled the U.S. and the world teaching praise bands how to improve their playing, and songwriters how to write better songs. I love to compose worship songs that the church sings each week. As I write this, I feel a keen sense that God has led me along this path with purpose and destiny.

These days I can call myself a worship leader and most people know what I am talking about. For the longest time there was no place in the church for guitar-slinging songwriters like me. There are currently several colleges and universities that offer worship leading as a course of study, including my alma mater, the University of Mobile. Each week, in my home church, I have a wonderful time leading God’s people to the Throne of Grace. It is in this application of my skills that I find the most personal fulfillment.

On the way to Memphis this past weekend to visit our daughter Betsy and her husband Adam, we scanned the Sirius/XM radio in my car to find some tunes that helped ease the 3-1/2 hour road trip. We usually settle on the 70s channel.

Most of the songs that play on the 70s channel are tunes from the top 40, AM radio of the day, and not the deep album cuts from FM. In fact, the sound of the high-quality, digital stereo playing in my car is a bit foreign since most of those 70s tunes were played through a mono AM radio. Today, I hear musical parts in the songs that I never knew existed–guitar and vocal parts that never translated through those cheap car or home radio speakers we had back then.

My emotional connection to 70s music is obvious: I am a 50-year old guy; I graduated from high school in 1978, and by the time the 80s rolled around, I was huffing it on the road making music in a traveling band. Those 70s songs always keep me emotionally grounded. When I hear one of them, it can bring me back, in an instant, to how I felt, where I was, and the little house on Southgate Avenue in Fullerton, California, where I grew up. By “grounded” I mean the music helps me put into perspective that, as an adult, I can move away from those disappointments, insecurities, and failures. The memories that flood in help to remind me I am all grown up, and the perceived limits I faced back then have given way to new opportunities as an adult. Don’t we all remember the longing to have someone to love and to love us back; to wonder what we would do when we graduated high school into the big world of responsibility; what our kids would look like and where we might live? These 70 songs have the unique ability to unlock all of those doors that lead into our sub-conscience and into the basement of our past life.

When I turn my car radio to the 80s station, I am not as emotionally moved. I was, as I said, rocking the US for the first half of the decade, and then soon married and started to raise kids with Brenda. When one is deep into family life and parenthood, it is the time when ” trying to be cool” gives way to “how do I keep this ship afloat?”

70s music always sounds good to me. As a guitar player, all of my guitar tones are based on my heroes from the old days: Richie Blackmore (Deep Purple), Tony Iommi (Black Sabbath), Billy Gibbons (ZZ Top), Mick Jones (Foreigner), Mick Ralphs (Bad Company), all the dudes from the pre-plane crash Skynyrd, Dickie Betts (Allman Bros.), and the list goes on. I very rarely hear people say, “I want to dial in that ’80s’ guitar tone.” The Seventies are still alive. I don’t want to go back there, but when I am transported through my Sirius/XM radio, I am in heaven.