“Sing unto the Lord a new song, play skillfully with a loud noise” (Psalm 33:3). The words of this verse have been in my heartbeat my entire Christian life. For as long as I can remember, I have been on a never-ending quest to make music excellence my passion and anointed praise my calling card. Perfect Praise is the cumulation of years of wisdom, knowledge, and revelation about what makes music ministry in the church perfect. It is the understanding that perfection is the highest attainment of excellence that one can render. From prayer to passion, from the presentation of the product to the pursuit of practice, Perfect Praise will inspire, enlighten, and give you practical tools to build your music ministry to the ever-flowing fatness of anointed glory.
By Dwayne Moore Experience deep, authentic worship... Sometimes worship feels like it’s on autopilot. This nine-week study inspires new passion and understanding of what genuine worship looks and feels like. Each lesson encourages you to turn to the Bible while allowing your heart and mind to meditate on and absorb Bible truths about expressing your devotion to God. This is an ideal personal or group study for both individual worshippers and worship teams grappling with the questions “What is worship—and how can I worship more authentically?” You will... • Experience the true meaning of worship • Understand the best motivation for worship • Explore various methods of worship • And so much more! Includes daily devotions designed to fire up your passion and heart for worship. And uplifting devotions for worship teams—just right for starting rehearsals on a foundation of authentic, biblical worship.
For Sanity’s Sake is a 365-day survival guide for women experiencing moderate to severe symptoms of perimenopause. Anxiety, fuzzy-brain, fatigue, and headaches are only some of the symptoms plaguing menopausal women. With such menacing symptoms, concentration on long, drawn out Bible Studies is often impossible. Many women feel guilty and often force themselves to muddle through, gaining nothing but frustration from the experience. Each devotion is designed to help women cope spiritually and emotionally with daily hormonal fluctuations and distractions. Women struggling with severe hormonal imbalances often struggle with deciphering the right or wrong of their emotions. Even when they know the right or wrong, their extreme emotional state makes it difficult to always choose God’s way Everything women need to persevere through menopause is provided through the power of the Holy Spirit, and it is imperative that women learn how to launch a counter attack against their fleshly emotions. For Sanity’s Sake provides that added spiritual boost needed to fight and ultimately win each daily battle. Through personal experiences, experiences of other women (and men), and Bible characters, this devotional helps women come to a realization that they are not alone in their menopausal struggles and that the best years of their lives are yet to come.
Many of our praise and worship services have been reduced to mere social gatherings. Several people now visit various Houses of God and yet never get to access the very Presence of God. Unfortunately, in several other settings, praise and worship have been reduced to ordinary prologues to other sessions within gatherings or sheer stopgaps in the event of some delays and challenges. It is about time we worshipped God in Spirit and in Truth by doing the right things in order to attract His pleasure and blessings rather than His wrath and curses, which we so often do when we dishonor Him. How many times have we not deliberately or mechanically offered abominable sacrifi ces to God? We sometimes inadvertently burn strange incense before God and feel our sacrifi ces must be acceptable simply on account of their quantum or quality, but if God could Himself, acknowledge that the praise songs of His people were harmonious, and that their sacrifi ces were fat, and their services solemn and yet reject them all, then what we render to God must certainly transcend our nominal readings on our man-made, selfgratifying gauges and emotional feelings. We must guard against neglecting our call to do the right things as regards the praise and worship we offer to God, for the consequences thereof could be dire. Reasonable Service a ration of my passion does not provide formulae for praising and worshipping God, but rather provides a unique revelation and understanding of the subject in a bid to enhance our intelligible service to God. Hold yourself in readiness for an exceptional biblical voyage through the prestigious ministry of praise and worship.
Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God: (Ephe.
God has always had a way He wants to be worshiped. He has outlined that way for us in His written revelation—the Bible. In it, He has commanded us to worship Him with our entire being, holding nothing back. According to Jesus, this is the first and greatest commandment. The reasons God has given us for obeying His commands to worship Him are: because of who He is, and because of what He does. Worship is the biblically declared reason for mankind’s existence. However, how and when we worship is just as important as the fact that we do worship. Also, what God means when He uses the biblical synonyms of the word “worship” is important to understand when we are trying to obtain a more complete picture of how God wants us to worship Him. Biblical Worship is a book for every Christian, regardless of their preferred worship style or worship traditions. The fresh, new insights contained within its pages about what type of worship God desires from us all have the potential to shock you at times. At the very least, this book will cause you to never view worship the same way again.
Exploring Music as Worship and Theology invites greater attention to the diverse cultural music emerging in our Christian assemblies and underscores the need for more dialogue between our theories of liturgy-music and the actual practice of local communities."--BOOK JACKET.
Between the first and last words of a black gospel song, musical sound acquires spiritual power. During this unfolding, a variety of techniques facilitate musical and physical transformation. The most important of these is a repetitive musical cycle known by names including the run, the drive, the special, and the vamp. Through its combination of reiteration and intensification, the vamp turns song lyrics into something more potent. While many musical traditions use vamps to fill space, or occupy time in preparation for another, more important event, in gospel, vamps are the main event. Why is the vamp so central to the black gospel tradition? What work-musical, cultural, and spiritual-does the gospel vamp do? And what does the vamp reveal about the transformative power of black gospel more broadly? This book explores the vamp's essential place in black gospel song, arguing that these climactic musical cycles turn worship services into transcendent events. A defining feature of contemporary gospel, the vamp links individual performances to their generic contexts. An exemplar of African American musical practice, the vamp connects gospel songs to a venerable lineage of black sacred expression. As it generates emotive and physical intensity, the vamp helps believers access an embodied experience of the invisible, moving between this world and another in their musical practice of faith. The vamp, then, is a musical, cultural, and religious interface, which gives vent to a system of belief, performance, and reception that author Braxton D. Shelley calls the Gospel Imagination. In the Gospel Imagination, the vamp offers proof that musical sound can turn spiritual power into a physical reality-a divine presence in human bodies.
