Provident Label Group
Release Date: March 3rd 2023
Reviewed by: Jonathan Andre
David Leonard – Plans (Amazon mp3/iTunes)
Tag Archives: plans
Message Mondays: Just Follow the Headlights, and Know that Nothing Is Wasted When We Realise that God is God and We are Not!
There’s always a beauty and a tension in life. In the moments when you make a plan about how you want your life to look like and go. And then in the end, 99% of the time, it doesn’t end up that way. Rarely when you do make plans, does it do go to plan. Usually we are left with hindsight and looking back, and realising that where you are right now is far from where you wanted to be, either good or bad. And it is in that moment when we realise that there’s always a tension, from wanting to just follow the plan, to accepting that not only is the plan going to change, but rather, we’re going to end up in a place far from what we have initially expected. How do we reconcile these thoughts? How do we come to a peaceful place of being at a restful state, accepting that yes, I do have plans, but I have to be content that my plan will change? Because frankly, we are a controlling bunch of humans, aren’t we? We love to plan things and line it all up in a nice neat row. Never once do we realise that to follow a path, especially the one that we know God has laid out for us, is far more rewarding than we can ever fathom. But what happens when we can’t see what’s in front of us? When God doesn’t make it clear? When our plan goes out the window, and the Lord encourages us to follow Him- into the unknown, the places where we travel with only faith and trust as our guides, into the places where plans and maps are of no use? What then?
Kevin Max – Plans
Linchpin Productions/The Fuel Music
Release Date: August 4th 2017
Reviewed by: Jonathan Andre
Kevin Max– Plans (iTunes/Amazon mp3)
Message Mondays (Tenth Avenue North’s ‘What You Want’)
Tenth Avenue North have been one of my favourite Christian CCM bands of late. In fact, with songs like “Healing Begins”, “By Your Side”, “For Those Who Can’t Speak”, “Strong Enough to Save” and “Worn” to name a few, this quintet from Florida whose debut album on Provident Label Group was in 2008, have quickly become one of the most underrated and heartfelt bands over the last 5 years. Mike Donehey, lead singer, has always had something great to communicate across to us all through video devotionals about the band’s songs over the years. And while their most recent 2014 album Cathedrals only spawned 2 devotional videos (of their singles “No Man is an Island” and “Stars in the Night”), as opposed to the 5 from The Struggle (“Losing”, “Where Life Would Never Die”, “The Struggle”, “You Do All Things Well” and “Worn”), we are nevertheless blessed with what the band have to say for these two tracks. “No Man Is an Island” is a reminder to always live in community with one another, as we remember that we were never meant to live our lives outside of fellowship and relationship with our fellow man- we were meant for community just as God Himself is a community (of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit). “Stars in the Night” is also a comfort, as we focus our eyes on Jesus and remind ourselves that in the darkest of nights, it is the stars, or rather, who created the stars, that will lead us on, from despair into hope, from uncertainty into moments of clarity, from indecisiveness to direction and focus. Now as the band ready for their new album Followers releasing October 14th, they have released a new radio single- “What You Want”.
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Message Mondays (When Our Plans Become Awry)
Have you ever wondered what it means to be fully at peace with your life, currently where you’re at? The moment in your life where, even though everything chaotic is happening around you, you are still at peace, both two feet firmly planted on the ground of certainty and identity, even if everything else around you is crumbling apart? It’s an art, being able to firmly believing that you are loved unconditionally, even if everyone else gives love that is opposite to what you believe. And I don’t think that many of us have managed and discovered that art yet. To answer honestly my question that I posed earlier in the paragraph, no, I don’t think at any moment, I’m fully content and at peace with my life. I don’t think anyone is. And therein lies my point- that even if we cannot be fully at ease with the life we live, we at least can rest in the fact that Christ Jesus has our lives in His hands, and that everything that we experience, good or bad, can and will be used in whatever way the Lord sees fit, for His own glory and our good. Pretty cool, right? Knowing that even if we don’t have our lives all figured out, that we can rest assured, knowing that whatever we experience will be to the betterment of ourselves as whatever we go through will point other people to the God who has changed our lives for the better?
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