Sunday 4/28/13

I was scheduled to preach at Dryden Rd. this morning and it was great to be home. We were at home church Thursday night too and we hope to make it a few more services before we vacate the state. This morning was great. Bro. Bennie taught Sunday school and it was tremendous. God spoke to me through the lesson and I appreciate that.

After church we went to Acapulco with Bro. Jeff and Sis. Debbie Roberts, their son Nathan and Sis. Phyllis Styles. It was good as usual and the fellowship was super. It was the first time that all of them had been to Acapulco and they said they liked it too. It is a good thing they liked it since I have bragged on it so much.

Tonight we were singing and preaching at Corwin. It was great to be there too. My parents and Kelly Jo's parents and some more of my family were in service with us. I told them that Pastor Acy Lamb invites me because I bring my own crowd!

After church we went to Frisch's for our first visit there since we have been home this time. I think half the churches in Warren county had folks in there. We saw all kinds of folks we knew in there. One couple that we knew from our youth was there. The last time we saw them was at another Frisch's five or six years ago! Lol.

We topped it all off with their famous Hot Fudge Cake. Wow, it was good. I have had very little desert since February 1st and it was sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo delicious! I ordered mine in a bowl and with extra hot fudge.

I hope you all had a great Sunday. God bless you all.

Davy

Life is Short

Life is Short. If you live to be 100, life is still short. In the light of eternity this life is so short.

In this picture I am probably about 13 years old. Winning a baseball game was probably the most important thing on my mind at the time. Me and my friends wondered why we could not play more games in a season. Why couldn't we play four or five times each week? What is the big deal? Let's play ball. Let's play two games every night.

The coach's, parents, umpires and everybody else involved had life to deal with and we just had baseball. We had not yet learned that there were more important things than baseball. It seemed like an eternity passed if we had to wait a week between games.

At that age I also spent an awful lot of time on the bank of the Little Miami River and along the spillway of Caesar Creek Lake. I had to do something to fill the eternity between games. Two of the guys in that picture were with me a whole bunch of that time. I guess fishing was pretty important to us too.

33 years have passed since that summer and time has flown by. There are days that the time elapsed seems more like 33 minutes instead of 33 years. A week is no longer an eternity. A week is a blink of an eye. A year does not drag on forever, it races by with a roar and a flash. Where did the time go?

As time moved along, the priorities of life changed too.

I can not remember the last time I played baseball or cared one little ounce about baseball. Spending the night sleeping on the ground as close to the fire as I dare, does not sound fun at all. Life has moved on and I have moved with it. And it moved so fast.

Last Saturday all the kids in the picture above were still riding the speeding train of life, as far as I know. Yesterday one of them was laid in the ground. I attended his viewing Thursday evening. His brother told me that he was talking one minute and that he was dead the next. He literally fell over dead.

Life is short and it does not take long to die. 13 years old and nothing to worry about but baseball and fishing. The next thing you know you are 46 years old and you are hanging on for dear life. Life is so full of things and stuff, joys and problems, family and friends, jobs and obligations, bills and payments and laughter and tears. You do not have time for anything else. How can we fit one more little thing in to our busy lives?

Who has time to think about next month, much less what follows that? Who has time to die? Nobody. Nobody has time to die. But since life is so short and so crowded we MUST take time to prepare to die.

That is one sure thing that is coming. It is appointed unto man once to die and after that, the judgement. Oh what a thought. Every man must die and then every man must face God. Every man must be prepared to die.

We can not save ourselves. We can not prepare ourselves. There is no one that is good enough for God. But God loves us so much that He sent His only begotten son to die in our place, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life!

Believe on Jesus Christ.

Confess your sins.

Allow Him to radically and completely change your life.

Devote yourself to Him and to righteous living.

When this short life is over, you will be so glad you lived it for Christ.

Life is so short and eternity is long. I can live this short life for me and spend eternity separated from God. Or I can live this short life for Christ and spend eternity with God. 

I have made my decision and everyday I am renewing myself to that commitment. 

Have your made a decision about what to do with your short life?

Davy

New Recording - He Came

Thanks for all of the questions and interest in our new recording. Now we just need about 100,000 people to be interested enough to buy it. That would solve a whole bunch of problems! Lol

Pictures from our recording.

This is our first studio record in a few years so it was exciting to get back in the studio. It was also frightening because it reminds us how inadequate we are when it comes to these things. Thankfully folks that are really, really good at these things are willing to surround us and help us all they can.

Ben Isaacs has been so gracious to help us through the years. We can not say enough good things about Ben. He is so talented yet he generously lends those talents, mixed with genuine kindness to so many in the music industry. He is incredibly busy with the Isaacs touring schedule, his family time and playing on and producing records for many others.

He is really too busy to do all of the things he does for us and we are very thankful he takes time to do it. We could not do this without Ben. He uses his amazing ability to help us sound as good as we can and that is a miracle in itself.

We were also working with Mark Capps this week. Magic Mark (er) is a Grammy award winning engineer. He mixed our Havin Church' Live in California CD and was working hard engineering this one. He and Ben work together a lot and they are a great team.

The new CD has a Christmas theme. I would not call it a traditional Christmas CD although it does have a couple of traditional songs. We hope to communicate the great truth that Jesus came into the world to save sinners. In fact, the working title is He Came - The Gospel of Christmas.

If all goes as planned it will have eight songs and a Christmas sermon. Two of the songs are instrumental carols and I think they turned out great. Kelly Jo worked very hard on the piano. This is the first studio record she has played on for us. She felt so incapable but she did terrific.

Ben Isaacs played the bass and Greg Ritchie played the drums and other percussion. There is a possibility we might add a little more instrumentation but I do not think we will. I want to keep it as simple as we can. I think is sounds just fine as it is and once Ben and Mark work their magic it may be fit for public consumption.

We are planning on taking pre-orders as we did with Havin' Church. I will try to let you know more about that in the coming days. That was a huge help to us last time.

We arrived home very late last night or maybe I should say early this morning. We visited with my parents, my sister and one of my brothers for a while today and ate a late lunch at Acapulco in Lebanon. I guess you did not see that one coming, did you ?



We are planning to attend our home church tonight. I am really looking forward to that!

God bless you all.

Davy

Pictures While Recording

Another long day, another late night but lots of pictures. I hope you enjoy the pictures from our days in the studio. Some of the pictures have descriptions or names.

Davy

Kelly Jo, Ben Isaacs and Greg Ritchie working hard.

Charlotte Ritchie and her children

Ben and Odie

Mark Capps and Odie

Greg and Odie

Kelly Jo getting in the Christmas spirit dressed like Mary. Actually she is just cold!

Odie and Tim Dillman

Gotta go to Jack's at least one time!

Odie and Cameron. Cameron is one of Ben's daughters.

Steve Chandler and Ben. Steve was the engineer on our first three CDs  at Hilltop in 2001, 2003 and 2006. He is a super guy.

The very high dollar mic that I sang into for the recording. It made me sound exactly like me. That is NOT a good thing.

We stayed too late at night. I asked them to stand against the wall so I could snap a picture and this is what I got.

John the owner of Hilltop, Mark Capps, Ben Isaacs, Kelly Jo, Odie, Cameron