Bootleg Renditions: Prt 3 - A Christmas Carol

Published at December 20, 2008 in Song. 4 Comments

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Song Title: O Holy Night

Original Artist: Mariah Carey

For the third episode in my “Bootleg Renditions” saga I’ve recorded an adaptation of a very popular - and my favorite - Christmas carol.  This particular arrangement was made popular by Mariah Carey. Since I’ve sung this selection quite a few times I was able to record it through in just one take. Hope you enjoy it.  Merry Christmas!

You can purchase the original song from Mariah Carey’s Christmas album off of Amazon.com by clicking this link - http://tinyurl.com/7grk9h.

Sexual Healing

Published at December 2, 2008 in Inspiration. 3 Comments

Part one of three:
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Part two of three:
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Part three of three:
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This past weekend I made my second trip to the Seattle area with a few friends. While my friends and I were traveling back home, we listen to this powerful and insightful series on sex and sexuality by John Nixon. When we had made an end of listening, the cerebral and deeply spiritual words of the minister conjured up in my home-ward bound vehicle several noticeable minutes of silent reflection before we discussed at length for most of the remaining drive how blessed we were by the series. Therefore upon arriving home it became a priority for me to share this blessing with the next few folk who’d holler “Yo Stevo” via the web to learn what’s been poppin’ in my neck of the woods recently.

Pastor Nixon being one of my favorite religious speakers, as I have afore mentioned, certainly exceeded my expectation with this series. For I usually find that when the topic of sex is discussed in religious venues that most of the time is devoted to talking up the hard-line moral commandments on the issue or perhaps mulling over to the ubiquity and dauntingness of the sexual struggle in the young Christian demographic, but while the youth lick their wounds the pervasive problems concerning sex and infidelity in married and older couples only receive a brief after-thought. What I liked about Nixon’s Spirit-led approach was that he sought to provide his listeners with a well rounded and deeper understanding of God’s design and intent for our sexuality while highlighting the practicality and statistical findings that make a case for doing things God’s way when it comes to sex. At the end of the series it is easy to conclude that it makes sense for singles to wait, for married couples to remain faithful while enjoying freely in the gift of sex as a holy sacrament blessed by God, and for all to devote their thoughts and the entirety of their character to be in keeping with the benevolent guidelines which God has given. Nixon emphasizes throughout the need on of divine help, and the message is saturated with hope for those who have floundered in this area and are seeking healing and reform.

Perhaps, though, I could have spared myself some typing, and you the rambling, if I reasoned that it would suffice to just say that I found these sermons to be a very meaningful, and I think they will be to you too if this topic is relevant in your life.

You can find more of Pastor Nixon’s stuff here: http://www.collegedalechurch.com/?id=121

*Update - You can access the podcast from iTunes that includes this series by clicking this link: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=211678825

Bootleg Renditions: Part 2 - Sista Songs

Published at September 9, 2008 in Song. 4 Comments

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Song Title: No Greater Love

Original Artist: Rachael Lampa

Well I’m back at stealing people’s music once again… well, not really. You can read what this experiment is really all about in my first installment of the bootleg series: http://yostevo.com/blog/?p=28.

As you may notice I’m doing something a bit different with this selection in that I am here singing a song originally made popular by a female contemporary Christian artist. While I recognize that such a thing is not a ground breaking first in the popular music realm, when I originally sang  this selection at my church it was a first for me. Before I did I actually asked a friend from church what she thought of me performing a piece among an audience that would most likely recognize it as being synonymous with an artist that was of a different gender than my own. I can’t remember all she said but her reply did include scoffing me for even raising an issue that no one will even care about. So perhaps by just raising the topic in this post I’ve already blown the deal out of proportion. Well now that you are my audience, you can decide, but in the time being here are a few fast facts:

- “My Father’s Heart” was the first song I heard that was made popular by Rachael Lampa, but I originally heard it sung by a fellow classmate from college during my junior year. The message of the song so moved me that I genuinely desired to know who the original artist was, but for some reason it never crossed my mind to ask the sister (who was my friend) about it. Later on that semester I heard  a portion of “No Greater Love” on the radio, and I was again similarly touched by the message of the song. It wasn’t till that school year ended that I found out who the artist was that sang “No Greater Love” on the radio, and to my delight while browsing her albums on iTunes, I found that she also sang “My Father’s Heart” so I purchased both tracks with expediency.

 - Rachael Lampa was as a matter of fact in concert at my university during my senior year in college but the most facinating part of the story is that I actually paid $10 out of my humble college budget to hear her . She was sick during her performance but she managed to do a pretty good job. She has been blessed with an enormous voice for being such a small person. Unfortunately she was unable to do either of my two favorite songs of hers because her band knew not the songs. Major let down.

 - You can find more about Rachael Lampa on the web by visiting: www.rachaellampa.com . You can purchase and download the original song sung here at Amazon.com’s mp3 downloads site: http://www.amazon.com/Kaleidoscope/dp/B00123JRTE/ref=pd_sim_dmt_dmusic_4

“My Father’s Heart” can be downloaded here: http://www.amazon.com/Live-For-You/dp/B00123FF9A/ref=pd_sim_dmt_dmusic_3

 

The Holy City

Published at August 27, 2008 in Song. 2 Comments

This summer I was invited to sing to close out the Upper Columbia Conference of Seventh-day Adventist camp-meeting at Walla Walla University. It was my first time in the city of Walla Walla and the campus was pretty nice. The song I chose was the Holy City (Jerusalem), and its becoming another one of my favorites to sing because I like the fact that it challenges my range a bit but not too much, and because of its powerful message of hope and promise afforded us by the life of Christ.

God “[Re:]ally” Exists

Published at August 17, 2008 in Inspiration and Design. 2 Comments

The Adventist brigade is on the move again with yet another effort to counter the skeptical claims of the today’s postmodern society concerning the existence of God, and to be honest I can’t begin to tell you how well-pleased and excited I am about what I’ve seen and read so far concerning this particular production. From what I gather from the producer’s website, this trailer is promoting the first in “a series of powerful shorts called [Re:], or The Reply, breaking down the God debate”. The host in this production is David Asscherick, one of my favorite speakers among Adventists and Evangelicals alike partly because of his gift of animation and articulation, but also because of his dedication to addressing secular and postmodern minds in a few of his evangelistic efforts.

Another thing I noticed from the trailer and the website is that product features great cinematography and design. This plays a huge role in my satisfaction because I am really big on seeing Christian productions packaged in the best aesthetic form possible, and from what I see they seem to be on the right track.

My copy of the first installment of this DVD series is already on order.

Find out more about it at this website: http://theenzyme.com

You can order the DVD directly here: http://theenzyme.com/Store.aspx

Phil Ill

Published at July 17, 2008 in Design. 0 Comments

Philip Illustration collage medium

Collage Process

As my recent unprecedented busy streak was drawing to a close, I’ve took a few moments to do something creative that was outside of my employment responsibilities. My brother, Philip, who has done some contract work for my ministry as an illustrator, has spent some time with me this summer furthering the capacity to express his talent by learning how to digitize and color his illustration, a job that I had done for him in the past. He picked up very quickly and produced an illustration of himself and colored it in the industry standard software Adobe Illustrator. I was well pleased with the work he had done, and wanting to get in on the beauty of it some how I confiscated a copy of the Illustrator file and threw into Adobe Photoshop to produce the grungy image above. I kinda liked the way it turned out, although I must admit I do enjoy better just looking at the illustrated image by itself with out all the grunge and digital dirt around it. Clicking on the pictures will take you to a larger version of the images. Clicking on the processes image takes you to an images that describes the process in more detail.

Another thing you might find interesting — I’m not the only one, apparently, who thinks Philip’s work is pretty cool. Recently he submitted a colored illustration of one of his homeboys to a notable sneaker shop in Chicago.  The character in the drawing was wearing a shirt with the company’s name on it. Shortly thereafter they posted it on their website. You can check it out here: http://leaders1354.com/v2/?p=473

Bootleg Renditions: Part 1

Published at June 28, 2008 in Song. 0 Comments

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Song Title: I Need You Now

Original Artist: Smokie Norful

I figured I should provide something a bit different for this blog post considering how I have recently neglected this blog by reason of my record setting busyness over the past few months. So here’s a little background concerning what you are hearing. Since finishing college and subsequently leaving Michigan to reside in Spokane, my opportunities for singing ministry have been slowly becoming a bit more consistent. When I was in college I enjoyed a extensive array musicians to choose from to accompany me, including my buddies from my high school singing group who all play an instrument very well. I never once had to sing with a background accompaniment track, and as a matter of fact my view of background tracks grew continually negative. I started thinking of them as being somewhat cheezy, but since moving to Spokane my choice of skilled musicians slimmed drastically. At first, of course, I had no options. Now I know a few capable people whose schedules rarely coincide with my sometimes spontaneous singing appointments. So I slowly had to lay aside my spite for background tracks and embrace them as a savior from a lonely, plantation style acapella performance.

Now because of my substantial collection of background tracks coupled with a recent desire to try out the different recording softwares on my computer along with my small mixer I have decided to create an original bootleg rendition of a few songs in my collection. WARNING: You will be disappointed if you hope to hear some vast  departure from the interpretation of the artists that originally recorded and performed these songs. My goal in this exercise as a developing singer is to seek to match the original artist’s quality of delivery while taking a few liberties for some personal expression where I feel its appropriate. Of course this homemade recording will not be capable of holding a candle to the original recording’s sound quality.

I have chosen for my first bootlegged rendition a song made popular by gospel singer Smokie Norful, or perhaps the song that made Smokie Norful popular, “I Need You Now”. Smokie first caught my attention with this song when I was a freshman in college. He has since joined my personal elite list of artist that inspire me vocally and influence my singing style.

Well hope you find this to be delightful and interesting till I have the necessary time to come up with something more creative and original.

You can purchase and download the original recording of this song here at Amazon.com’s mp3 download site: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000TDIEBK/ref=sr_f2_album_1?ie=UTF8&child=B000TDB354&qid=1214722572&sr=102-1

Since Adam

Published at March 2, 2008 in Inspiration and Design. 1 Comment

The battle concerning our origins rages on. Skeptics and promulgators of evolution are ever lifting their forceful and uncompromising voices against intelligent design with increasing intensity. Yet with all the hoopla, many still remain unconvinced that the beauty and genius that we see all around is the result of chance. They see in nature the handy work of a designer of titanic intellect. Many of us (a few billion) who share this world view have found in the Bible a sensible and reliable account of the origins of the human race and the races’ interaction with this great Designer. But few who share this world view have any idea of what the chronological and historical landscape since Adam (the first human to live) actually looks like according to the Bible.

Since Adam Logo

My buddy from college, Dustin, has created an elegantly designed Flash application that visually depicts the life spans of Old Testament characters on a virtual timeline that begins at the year zero with Adam, and ends with Jesus.
One of my favorite features of this app is the ability to copy a snippet of the timeline and embed into your website or blog like a Youtube video (as I have done above). When selecting an area that you want embed from the timeline the app lets you choose and in and out point, and when the timeline loads into your website it will animate from that start point to the out point that you have set. Another cool aspect of this application is that it is tied to a blog where select users have entered their thoughts and observations relevant to the timeline and the characters therein. When you click on name in the timeline a window appears that lets you see all of the posts relevant to that person.

Now enough of all this talk. Go see it for yourself at once: http://sinceadam.com

His Strength is Perfect

Published at February 28, 2008 in Song. 3 Comments

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A few weeks ago I started experimenting with recording the sermons at my church with a small mixer that I bought for 100 bucks off of Amazon.com and the recording software that comes with my Mac laptop. The hope is that in the near future I could help my church put some of the services online so those who were unable to attend a particular Sabbath morning could listen from home.

In the second week of experimenting I had to sing a selection for the service, and this is a sample of what we came up with. The song I sung is entitled “His strength is Perfect”, it was originally written and recorded by Steven Curtis Chapman.

Digital Media & Photo Department Promo

Published at February 26, 2008 in Design. 0 Comments

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This a project that I worked on with three other buddies of mine during my senior year in college. It took us two weeks of college scrap time to complete it (sleepless night included). The part I played in its development was concept design, storyboarding, and script writing (the least amount of time attributed to the latter). As with other projects I worked on in my college years, I felt this one would have been better if we had more time to devote to it (check out my college music video project here: http://yostevo.com/blog/?p=17). Nevertheless I thought some of you might find it interesting to watch.

You can check out what some of the other guys who worked on this project are up to here:

http://curiousmedia.com

http://hoodproductions.com

Vintage Last Chapter

Published at February 17, 2008 in Song. 0 Comments

Two months ago I recounted in my post, “The Last Chapter Files”, a brief history of my high school and college singing group and provided footage of one our final appearances in college. Well today I got my digital hands on vintage video of our group captured 7 years ago when we were in high school!

In this clip you get a chance to see footage of our pianist, Evert, in the days when he neglected to trim his hair. In the previous video Evert could be heard playing the accompaniment but was not pictured. Our first tenor, Joe, also makes an appearance along with Andrea and me. Our drummer, bass and other tenor are still missing in this one.  You may also notice a change in lyrics between the two videos. This is because we often times forgot the original lyrics and would have to rewrite a new set to replace them. This sometimes would shamefully even occur on stage during a performance.

Well, I hope you enjoy this rare blast from my past.

Were it Not For Grace

Published at December 25, 2007 in Song. 3 Comments

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Over this past year (2007) I’ve ministered this song 6 times at 6 different venues here in Spokane (three times by my choice and three times by request). This recording of my 8th overall try at this piece was shot in November. The recording revealed to me that there was still room for improvement with my pitch and with the smoothness of delivery.

This song has quickly become one of my favorite, although now I rarely listen to the original rendition of it by Larnelle Harris because I’ve thoroughly played it out. Never-the-less just about every time I rehearse the song on my own its hard for me to keep the tears and the shouts of praises back because of how real the lyrics are to my life experience.

If managed to like what you heard, then I would recommend the original 1998 rendition by Larnelle Harris for your collection. Click here to get it on iTunes.

What Adventists Teach About Salvation

Published at December 22, 2007 in Inspiration. 0 Comments

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This sermon was taken from here: http://www.collegedalechurch.com/?id=121. The speaker in this recording is John Nixion, the head pastor at Southern University’s campus church. Six years ago Pastor Nixion was the head pastor at the Oakwood College church, it was my freshman year in college. During my first semester he preached a week of sermons that opened my eyes to the reality of the Savior’s deep love for me. Just before the week was over I asked Christ into my heart.

Six years later am as still, by the grace of God, a Christian Seventh-day Adventist (SDA). At times I have heard and read others say that SDA’s teach a doctrine of salvation by works. I am convicted by the scripture, “Let not then your good be evil spoken of” Romans 14:16. Hence I have posted this sermon here as voice on the web as to what SDA teach and hold to be true on the all important topic of Salvation in Christ.

Today as I heard this sermon (a recent one by Nixion) I felt rejuvenated to seek and serve my God with all He has given me, and I am certain you will in like manner be blessed. This is just about 30 minutes in length.

The Last Chapter Files

Published at December 17, 2007 in Song. 3 Comments

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This incomplete cellphone quality video footage captures one of the final apparitions of our high school male singing group, “The Last Chapter” (to be spoken with an echoing deep voice). Andrea, Ean (piano, unseen in the video), and I were all in our final year of college with this was shot. The song is one that we wrote in high school and was originally intended for four voices.

We started out as Freshmen in high school. We wanted to do the guys group thing but we wanted to do our own way, so we committed to writing all the music we performed. After a year in highschool, a couple insignificant performances, and some slight changes in personel (due to a couple members who moved away), we nailed down during our sophmore year a core group of 4 singers, a pianist, and drummer. We also adopted the name “Last Chapter” given to us by our pianist’s mother who suggested the name for a group of singers who would be seeking to give God’s message during the last chapter of earth’s history.

A fifth singer/musician joined us a year later, and our last 2 years in high school saw dozens of performances and a couple of concerts. In what appeared to be our final performance we sang an original composition accompanied by our high school stringed orchestra during our high school graduation ceremony.

As we all went our separate ways for college, this group was very rarely thought of in my mind. My freshman year was a blast. I joined my college traveling choir, a gospel mass choir, met up with a few other guys who sang and did few performances, made a ton of new friends, and started kicking it hard with this brother named Jesus (He’s really cool, you should get to know Him too).

But the “fat lady” hadn’t finished singing yet. My second year of college saw four members of our group together again at the same university (2 tenors, our baritone, and our pianist). Yet because we were all so busy in our respective fields of study the resurrected Last Chapter didn’t accomplished nearly as much as did its high school incarnation. We did manage, however, to write a few new songs and do a decent number of performances, including a talent show (in which we won 2nd place) and live world-wide broadcast performance on the campus church for a Christian television network.

We continued only to get busier and busier as we neared the end of our college years and a couple of times our “group” dwindled down to a duet and our pianist as was the case in the above clip.

Currently the Last Chapter is awaiting its third resurrection (which may just happen concurrently with the resurrection the dead, 1Thessalonians 4:16).

Click the vintage photo below to see the full size pic.

LC Preview

Back: Dave (bass), Ezra (tenor), Andrea (baritone)

Front: Evert (piano), me (tenor), Joe (1st tenor), Sean (percussion) 

Holy Spirit (46 degrees) Music Video

Published at November 23, 2007 in Song and Design. 2 Comments

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This video was the final project for my introductory video editing class that I took during my second to last semester in college. I shot most of the footage last minute in the cold Michigan December. Ironically the song speaks of the weather being 46 degrees outside, but on the day we shot the video it was precisely 20 degrees colder than that (26 degrees)! Though the project was edited and burned onto a DVD just minutes before I had to present it in class, the teacher said for an intro class that he had no negative critique of the project save the fact that I forgot to clean off some dirt on the lens of the camera on a few shots. The project also earned a 3rd place award in my departments end of the year gallery which was supposedly judged by local professional videographers. Yet there is no doubt that the final out come of this project was a bit crude and unpolished and could have been much better if we had more time and if we weren’t all as busy as we were.

Ezra and Geoffrey (Flow Track Star), the artist featured in this video, are both good friends of mine that go way back. Geoffrey and I go back to our scrappy high school years, and Ezra and I go back to before our conception (Our mothers’ were roommates in college).

I could say a lot of other good things about these characters but you can find out more for yourselves by visiting their music pages on Myspace:

Ezra: http://www.myspace.com/ezraseven

Geoffrey: http://www.myspace.com/flowtrackstar

Hollywood, God, & Me

Published at November 21, 2007 in Inspiration. 0 Comments

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This video is taken from the website hollywoodandGod.com, which seems to be calling Christians to take a stand against the unholy use of God’s name in Hollywood films. While the primary focus of this site seems to be calling Christians to consider the 3rd commandment (“Thou shall not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain”) in their choosing of films to watch, the video presentation also seemed to be calling to question the acceptability of other films that Christians watch that blatantly ignore and disobey many of the commandments of Christ. While at times while watching this video presentation I felt sorry for the people that were put on blast in such a manner (especially how they slow mode’d some of the interviewee’s guilty expressions), I couldn’t help but concede that the orchestrators of this presentation had a strong point from a Biblical perspective. David in Psalms 101:3 purposefully declares “I will set no wicked thing before mine eye”, and again in Psalms 119:7 he pleads with God, “Turn away mine eye from beholding vanity”. Yet the Bible goes further. In Isaiah 33:15-17 God promises to supply and bless those who turn away from beholding evil:
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A Better Way to Live

Published at November 7, 2007 in Inspiration and Design. 0 Comments

A couple of months ago It Is Written launched a new web initiative called A Better Way to Live. This microsite provides a new video devotional by Shawn Boonstra each of the 5 work days every week (that equals approximately 240 morning devotionals every year). These devotions are on average only 3 minutes long, and are designed to give busy people an added “spiritual boost”.What makes this website extra special to me is that I given the task of designing and developing the custom player on the website (The overall site design and css was developed by my co-worker, while most of the back-end functionality was handled by our programmer using the Drupal content management system). While building a custom Flash video player wasn’t something new for me coming into this project, like my previous Flash project for It Is Written, the vision for A Better Way to Live demanded me to cover some uncharted territory.

The new custom player features the ability to provide users with code to embed a particular devotion into their website (as I have done above), the ability to email a devotion to a friend, and (my personal favorite) the ability to watch the devotion fullscreen (this feature is only available at the home website: www.itiswritten.com/betterway). All these features are made available within the Flash video player via the option button on the bottom left. While these features are old news in today’s web, I thought this undertaking was special since not too many Christian ministries have yet taken advantage of some these new and powerful Flash-based features.

All the same, my hope is that you (the reader of this post) do find an opportunity to take advantage of this devotional site. I myself have already found some these simple devotions to be enriching and encouraging. In the “midst of a crooked and perverse” world we can use all the help we can get to turn our minds heavenward. “You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You” Isaiah 6:3 nkjv.

Radio Debut

Published at October 15, 2007 in Song. 0 Comments

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Perhaps in a later post I’ll write more about this experience, but here’s the skinny. A couple of weeks ago I had an opportunity to sing for a small rally in downtown Spokane promoting an end to domestic violence. Afterwards I was approached by a radio show host who invited me to sing on his local poetry program that airs on KYRS a low-powered community radio station here in Spokane. In general, the program was quite informal, I was interviewed by two gracious assistant hostesses, high school juniors, who made me feel most comfortable and welcome. I had to sing all songs without accompaniment or backup - just bare plantation Acappella. I was supremely nervous, mostly because of the fact that I didn’t spend the proper time thinking through what I was going to sing and say. The end result: a dry mouth, compulsive melismas, and stuttering speech that would make Porky Pig appear to be a proffesional orator in comparison. Never-the-less I thank God for the opportunity which I think turned out better than it should have. And now I believe I must reappear next week to sing another set of songs along with one of the hostesses. I’m not sure if I’m up to another show as yet, but we’ll see.Ah thinga thee, I thinka thiga think, thats all folks! Oh and here are some pictures.
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Watch!

Published at September 27, 2007 in Inspiration. 0 Comments

“But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Take heed, watch and pray; for you do not know when the time is. It is like a man going to a far country, who left his house and gave authority to his servants, and to each his work, and commanded the doorkeeper to watch. Watch therefore, for you do not know when the master of the house is coming—in the evening, at midnight, at the crowing of the rooster, or in the morning— lest, coming suddenly, he find you sleeping. And what I say to you, I say to all: Watch!” (Mark 13:32 – 37)

I looked up the word “watch” in the original language that Jesus uses in this text and it means to be sleepless, to stay awake. But why is Jesus so urgently asking us to stay awake? What is that supposed to mean to me?
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“Be Not Afraid”

Published at September 13, 2007 in Inspiration. 0 Comments

When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” For he and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish which they had taken; and so also were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid. From now on you will catch men.” So when they had brought their boats to land, they forsook all and followed Him. (Luke 5:8-11);

Many a time I have felt as Peter has in this text. Because of my sinful and unworthy condition I hesitate to enter into the presence of God. I have also met many people who feel that they have jacked life up so badly that they cannot draw close to God until they get it all together first. But Jesus’ word to us is the same as it was to unworthy Galilean fisherman, “Be not afraid”.
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