So its been a pretty long time since my hair was this short.

I’ve loved how much cooler (as in the temperature) I am.

My girls say that it feels like a fuzzy bear.

I found this quote this morning about he work of Jesus on our behalf in prayer. I LOVE the images that Ryle uses in this quote, because its the exact same imagery used to talk about Jesus’ work among the congregation in worship. Jesus takes the feeble, poor words of his brothers and sisters and mingles them with his own so that they are a sweet aroma to God the Father. What PRECIOUS gift we have in worship.

This quote is from A Call To Prayer by J.C. Ryle

There is an Advocate and Intercessor always waiting to present the prayers of those who come to God through Him. That Advocate is Jesus Christ. He mingles our prayers with the incense of his own almighty intercession. So mingled, they go up as a sweet savour before the throne of God. Poor as they are in themselves, they are mighty and powerful in the hand of our High Priest and Elder Brother. The bank note without a signature at the bottom is nothing butt a worthless piece of paper. The stroke of a pen confers on it all its value. The prayer of a poor child of Adam is a feeble thing in itself, but once endorsed by the hand of the Lord Jesus it availeth much….Is not this encouragement?

I found this awesome cd the other day called The Apostles Creed.  It’s a compilation of modern Hymns by Stuart Townend and the Getty’s arranged with a band.  Some of the Hymns were familiar like In Christ Alone and O Church Arise.  But the majority of them weren’t, such as Merciful God, You’re the Word of God the Father and Jesus is Lord.

Its sometimes hard to find good band arrangements to these AMAZING songs.  So it’s cool to see a project like this working on making these songs accessible to a larger audience.  Well done Apostles Creed people….whoever you are.

Here’s the itunes link for the CD…..enjoy!

My daughter Eden has bought into that modern lie, that people won’t listen to your music unless its laced with profanity.

HAHAHA.

My friends James Childs and Andrew Puccio are over tonight working on some songs.  James is producing Andrew’s CD…which I think they’re hoping to start production on soon.  They’re still working through some writing and a ton of song arranging.  We’ve also been working hard and pounding tons of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.  Keep on the look out for Andrew’s CD…it’ll be a good one.

Tonight my friend Josh and I are heading out to see Beach House at the Cradle in Chapel Hill.  I’m kind of new to their stuff, but from what I hear I think I’ll like it.  Honestly it’s been a little while since I’ve seen a live show…so I’m just really excited to see some live music and get to hang with a good friend.

In other news, we’re still working hard on the children’s music.  It looks like it might take us most of the summer to finish the project, but the songs have been shaping up to be really fun and hopefully helpful.  The working title for the CD is “3 in 1 or 10 Super Fun Songs That Will Help You Think About The Trinity.”  It’s obviously a nod to Sufjan, but I really do love how intentional sounding it is.  However, Danielle isn’t that excited about the title…so there’s a good chance it’ll change.  haha.

I’ll try to post some more news about that CD soon, and maybe even some clips of the demos.

Talk soon.

Hello there y’all.
I’ll go ahead and say that I usually hate reading posts like the one I’m writing right now.  They usually say something like….”We had an incredible weekend writing some killer songs.  None of you can hear these songs for a long time….but that won’t keep me from telling you ever couple of weeks that something “BIG” is coming.”

I’ll do my ablsolute best to stay away from that kind of post….but I can’t promise anything…haha.

This past weekend James, Patrick, Mike and I all went to Wilmington to do some writing for our next record.  We have some sweet friends that allowed us to use their art studio space.  The studio was SO inspiring…very open and bright (See Pictures Below).  Very cool vibe.  So we took about 6 or 7 song ideas, and tried to flush them out a bit more.  It was such a fun process -pretty mentally draining, but so fun.  James, Patrick and Mike are three of the best musicians I know, and they have great musical instincts.  It’s really cool to see the different strengths of the guys come out in our writing times.

So the bummer in all of this is that we’re not exactly sure when we’ll be recording these songs.  We’re hoping that it’s very soon….but we’re honestly not sure.  I promise to not keep posting that we’ve got something really amazing and really big coming unless I have firm dates for ya….haha.

This is a painting by one my favorite artists Barbara Februar.  You can find her work here.

Video Update from danielrenstrom on Vimeo.