Acoustic Story time with Jason Gray
I love music but I’ve never been so into music that I remember the artists. In fact, most of my music listening is while I’m driving so it’s not the primary focus of my attention.
It used to be, when I listened to pop music, that I’d tune out whenever the DJ talked or interviewed the artists. I became disenfranchised with pop music because the message was mostly negative (breaking up, treating someone bad or cheating on them, etc). That’s when God showed me Christian radio.
Today, I listen to a Sirius/Xm station called The Message. The music that is played has a much more positive tone to it. On that station, they have a show called Acoustic Story time with Jason Gray. If I understand his career, he has collaborated with a lot of Christian artists and this show brings them to his venue in Nashville to perform their songs and get interviewed. Such a blessing.
On one episode, they were interviewing a group called 10th Street Avenue North Band. The first part discussed how they, the original band members, had a daily devotion together. They took turns identifying a blessing to share with each other. Then they spent 3 minutes in silent contemplation/prayer and ended saying the Lord’s Prayer together. I thought this was a great idea to focus on the positives and decided that I’m going to try to incorporate this into my daily devotion.
The second part involved one of the revised group members (some of the original members decided to leave the group to spend more time with their families), who was an author as well. I didn’t catch the name of the book he had written but the example he described was running late to an appointment in Dallas, missing the exit ending up being an extra 1/2 hour late to the appointment. He told himself he was a loser for missing the exit. He was an idiot and so forth and so on for the entire 30 minutes it took him to get back to the exit.
He told the person that he was meeting with that he had been beating himself up for the last half an hour for missing that exit. The person he met with asked him how many minutes of that kind of treatment would it take to be considered abuse if it was done to another person?
He parlayed this into the general question of who is behind the voice in your head?
“So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” - Genesis 3:6-13 ESV
He used this passage to explain that God, when he is the voice in your head, asks reflective questions in a quiet manner meant to make you turn your attention to him. When Satan, or your own pride, speaks in your head it is always demeaning, negative statements suggesting a course of action of giving up or giving in or rationalizing whatever you know to be bad behavior.
I felt blessed just by listening to their dialog (I don’t remember what songs they played but it didn’t speak to me to nearly the same extent). I wish I would have caught the name of the book…
If you look for blessings, you’ll find them. If you don’t, you won’t.
