Urgent prayer for my dad needed

I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted an update, and I’ve placed a number of projects on hold due to some other priorities, but right now my dad is in ICU fighting for his life. The doctors have given him 24-48 hours to live, but I believe in my heart that this sickness is not unto death. We NEED him alive! Please please please pray for my dad – that God would heal him from the liver and spleen cancer, his lungs would be cleared, that his liver and kidneys would kick back in and start cleansing his body of the toxins, and that all his blood levels and vitals would get to and stay normal!  His name is Ron Sr. and he desperately needs the Grace and Mercy of our King right now.

“My Father in Heaven” album pre-order instructions

This past Thursday, I listened to the final CD provided by Masterpiece Mastering and I have to say I’m extremely excited about the impact this is going to have for God’s Kingdom! I immediately sent it off to be replicated and published to all the digital media outlets (iTunes, Amazon, etc.)  so it will be available in about a month.

For those who have donated over the past 2 years, I will be sending you a copy.  If your address has changed, or if you would like more than one copy, please contact me and let me know.

God has put it on my heart to do something special for churches. My vision is that this music would be made available for new believers, prayer teams, and pastors of Bible-believing churches at no cost. I will even cover shipping. It has been on my heart to seek out churches around the world proactively (starting in the US), but have never gotten around to it. Maybe after this recent wake-up call, I’ll make it more of a priority.

If your church would like to make the Music To Pray By Album available to your congregation, please click here and provide the requested information:  http://musictoprayby.com/church-album-request/

If you would like to have a copy mailed to you, feel free to use the “donate” button on the side of the page, provide your address along with any donation amount, and I will ship a copy to you as soon as I have them.

If you would prefer to have a digital copy, please stay tuned – links and instructions will be posted shortly after they are available.

Alex did an outstanding job designing the album art for me – here’s a preview:

Album Art

Matthew 26:40 – Album Update

Life certainly goes by fast. I can’t believe this is my first update this year! I know many of you are ready for another Podcast as my last post was over a year ago, but after establishing a really good recording and mix for Podcast 70 on the new piano, I came to realize that all of these songs are original, and I have another 5-6 originals already tracked. So I’ve been praying and talking to friends and family about it and have decided to do a full-length album instead as its been on my heart to do this for years. The album title, “Matthew 26:40” I believe is a great fit as it will be an hour of MTPB songs recorded and arranged in a way that I hope will make an hour in prayer and communion with our Maker seem like far less. This is a perfect opportunity as God has blessed me with the funds to re-vamp my studio gear which will complement the new piano in a way that I’m very excited about! I know this means an even longer period of time before the next podcast, but I truly believe it’s what God wants me to do. Sorry for getting hopes up with my post of Facebook earlier last week, but my goal for the album is to have it completely done and ready for mastering by the end of June at which point I’ll begin work on the next podcast with the goal of posting it by August at the latest. Please keep me in your prayers as “…the spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak” 🙂

I’ll try to post updates more frequently as this forum will help in my accountability moving forward. Thanks again for all your prayers and support.

Miraculous update on the prayer request

Our prayers have had a tremendous impact! While Yoko was in Okinawa visiting her sister, God opened up a perfect opportunity for her to share the love of Jesus with her sister, and Eiko agreed to pray with her and received Jesus into her heart! That which seemed impossible God made possible!

I had also asked for prayer that God would put in Eiko’s path believers. Before Yoko arrived in Okinawa, she was transferred to a hospice founded by a Christian, filled with Christians, prayer rooms, live worship, and New Testament Bibles! Out of all the places she could end up, this is truly a miracle.

One more update – Eiko’s health appears to be improving! In fact, she has improved so much that the staff at the hospice have encouraged her and her family to get a second opinion. She is also out of the wheelchair and is getting around more on her own. Still no official word yet on the cancer, but I believe God has fully healed her from this terminal disease! My prayer now is that she will fully recognize God’s Hand in all of this and give Him all the Glory – please pray with me, also that the Holy Spirit would give her boldness in her new faith.

We hear these sort of stories on occasion, but something this close to home just leaves me in awe of God’s Wondrous Mercy and Grace! Please continue to pray for her and her family as I believe through this the door will be opened for the rest of Yoko’s family to know Jesus! I post this with much love for you all and can’t thank you enough for your prayers as they have had a miraculous impact.

Our God is an Awesome God!

A quick MTPB update – Podcast 67 has been recorded and I’m in the process of editing. My goal is to get it posted this weekend or next so please stay tuned.

Huge prayer request – please pray now and often for…

Yoko’s oldest sister, Eiko was recently diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer. It has already spread to her brain and liver and the doctors are giving her 2 months to live. She has 3 siblings ranging from 20 years old to 9 years old. She is only 48 years old, and has played a very special role in Yoko’s life as she’s mailed stuff and communicated more than anybody else in her family except for her mom. She is scheduled for radiation therapy on Monday. She does not know Jesus, and Yoko is planning to fly to Okinawa soon.

When I found out, I immediately started to pray that God would put in her path people who know the Truth, and God has already answered that prayer. Within days, Yoko’s mom told her that a parent whose child attended the same private school her daughter went to asked Eiko point-blank if she believed in Jesus and Eiko did not know what to say. Yoko’s mom made it sound like an awkward encounter, and the fact she said “believe” instead of “know” is a little odd, but the fact that Eiko felt it important enough to communicate this encounter to her mom, and for her mom to communicate it to Yoko means something. I do believe this was a direct answer to my prayer considering that only around 1% of Japanese know and believe in Jesus as their Savior – truly a miracle!

It will take many more miracles for Eiko to believe in Jesus, but with God,  ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE! Please pray that Eiko’s heart would continue to be softened, that she would be open and curious about the Truth, and that she will begin to seek out the Truth! Also pray that God through the Holy Spirit would prepare Yoko for this unbelievably important encounter – that God would give her a courage and boldness she’s never experienced before. Pray that the Holy Spirit would give Yoko the right words in order to speak the Truth in love in a way that Eiko will hear, understand, and receive.

Also, please pray for healing. I truly believe through healing God could open the doors for Yoko’s entire family to come to Christ. The doctor stated it would take “a miracle” for her to make it through this stage of cancer. We know our God is more than capable of miracles.

I thank each one of you from the bottom of my heart for praying with me – Eiko means so much to Yoko, and even more to our Loving, Heavenly Father.

The invisible war wages on!

It is difficult to get into the details of what has happened to me over the past 3 months, but I feel it is important to share this with you. Mid-April was a huge turning point in my life. I had just left my job at AT&T to become a consultant with a much smaller company, the Soundwave tour was in full swing with weekly practices and concerts, there was my commitment to The Connection Church ministry leadership and worship teams, and Yoko and the kids were getting ready to leave for Okinawa without me for 3 weeks. On top of all of this, the enemy took huge advantage of a very weak point when I was under for a dental surgery. I literally thought I was dying and it was as though every Truth about our existence in God’s Word ceased to exist and my entire foundation was shaken to the core. I was flooded with more doubt and depression than I’ve ever experienced in my entire life. I began to spend every spare moment I could find listening to God’s Word in the car, praying, reading the Bible, but the “near-death experience” had me convinced EVERYTHING was meaningless. It was so crushing that it took me 3 days just to recognize it as a spiritual attack. When I did, the enemy no longer tried to hide the evidence of the attack, which increased exponentially with fear added to the mix – unexplainable fear. I immediately began to call and text family and friends to pray. That night, I sought after God and relied on The Holy Spirit more than ever.

Over the past few months, there have been victories, but there have also been struggles with depression, doubt, and fear like never before. A split-second thought followed by wave after wave of spine-chilling goosebumps, sometimes occurring over and over for hours! Throughout most of my life, the enemy has used my flesh with sinful desires and bad habits, occasional doubt, etc., but this was different. It was truly a non-stop war on my mind. I have never had thoughts enter my mind that made my soul cringe like this – thoughts I don’t have the words to describe, and the enemy would trick me into pondering these thoughts to the point of spiraling into deep, dark depression that would last for days. Over time, God began to bring into greater light the spiritual war that was going on. Truth in the scriptures like 2 Corinthians 10:5, prayer, family (especially my bro David), and the same Power that raised Christ from the dead gave me renewed hope and peace. Our God is so faithful!

I truly believe that God is doing some GREAT things through this ministry and the enemy is not happy about it. Prayer IS the way we wage this invisible war by the Power of the Holy Spirit, and this fact has never been more real to me. A few days ago when I posted on Facebook asking for prayer, it had been another very rough few days dealing with a weight of depression that had no explanation whatsoever. I could literally feel the depression lift as you guys prayed for me.

I hope this encourages you to pray continually. Pray for the state of our nation. Pray for those affected by the Colorado shooting. Pray for the unsaved in your churches. Pray for your pastors, your family! …and if you have time, I am eternally grateful for any prayers lifted up on my behalf. Satan is a formidable enemy, but GREATER is He that is in me than he that is in the world!!! – 1 John 4:4

Is the Texas drought ending? Is prayer a factor?

Over the past few months, people throughout Texas have been praying for rain. We have had the worst drought in my lifetime this year. I took the family to Burnett for a “Day out with Thomas” and on the way saw some amazing damage this drought has caused. Here are some images:

These are very small examples of some of the damage. There have been hundreds of fires all over Texas, and as a result of this horrible drought, there has been a surge of prayer at church, schools, rallies, and in homes all across Texas for rain. There was the prayer event in Houston inspired by the Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, and now I believe we are truly witnessing an answer to prayer. The Bible has many examples of God’s people praying for rain and it’s very clear in Zechariah 10:1 Who sends rain. We’ve had modest amounts of rain over the past month but are in desperate need for more and theres some promising chances of rain in the forecast so please pray with me for Texas – that God sends thunder clouds full of rain! Thank You LORD for Your Grace!

I’m finally going to…

Every year since 2008, Cisco has spammed me constantly the months leading up to the event, and every year I have asked to go and have been denied the privilege. I was certain the same would happen this year. In fact, my manager told me last Wednesday he was unable to make it happen, which was no surprise, but the following day, a reservation within our company became available! God is good!

For those of you who don’t know, Cisco Live! is one of the largest technical conferences out there, and is by far the largest in regards to the technologies I work with on a daily basis as a Network Engineer for AT&T WiFi Services. Not only will I have the opportunity to learn from some of the best in the industry, I will get to see and possibly play with some of the latest and greatest network technologies out there. The conference will be held at one of the hottest tourist destinations in the U.S. – Las Vegas, NV. With that in mind, I think of Psalm 119:11 – “Thy Word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against Thee…” might I add, “…while in the heart of Sin City for the first time” 😕

Please keep me and the family in your prayers this week – it breaks my heart to leave them for 5 days straight. It also breaks my heart to miss Sunday Morning service at TCC – especially with Jeremy, lead singer of Soundwave, leading worship.

For the techies, here are some of the seminars I’ll have the opportunity to attend:

– Enterprise Network Virtualization using IP and MPLS Technologies
– Advanced Enterprise Campus Design: VSS, Routed Access, and Resilient Campus  Networks
– Advanced Scaling for Core and Edge Networks
– CCIE Service Provider Operations
– Data Center Town Hall: Enabling Cloud Adoption
– Cisco NX-OS Software Architecture

For the non-techies – I also get to hear William Shatner give the closing keynote, and Train will be performing one evening as well. Another huge bonus is I’ll have the opportunity to attend an AT&T VIP event as well as a CCIE-only VIP party.

* On a side note, as the audience for Music to Pray By grows, I have considered moving these personal posts to a different blog. If any of you subscribers are annoyed by them, please send me a message using the contact form and I’ll make this a priority.

 God bless, and stay tuned for Podcast 61 coming early August. It was recorded over a month ago, but I remember it being special with a new original starting it off.

WordPress 3.0 upgrade broke the MTPB podcast…

Unfortunately, the WordPress 3.0 upgrade has broken quite a few things on the site including podpress, which is the plugin I use to post MTPB. I’ve been working on it for a while now and I can’t figure it out, and since this version of WordPress hasn’t been out for very long, there isn’t really any information out there on this problem. I’ll likely have to figure out a way to downgrade to the previous version. I have Soundwave practice tomorrow so it will likely stay broken through Thursday or Friday depending on how long it takes me to fix it. I’ve got the new MTPB podcast ready to post too! Please pray for me that I’ll find a fix quick.

Song suggestions anybody?

Just in case anybody would like to submit a request this week – here is the blog to use. Just so you know – I’m not holding my breath since we’re 0 for 2 now ;-). The same disclaimer applies this week as the previous weeks. Because of the way this week is shaping up, I probably won’t be able to record this week’s podcast till Saturday around noon so there is some time to post a request or suggestion if you’d like, and I’ll do my best to work it in.

Let’s try this again…

Last week, I blogged asking if anyone had any praise and/or worship songs they would like to hear incorporated in the next recording I do. The response was OVERWHELMING! Ok, so I’m exaggerating just a ‘lil bit, but I figured I’d give ya’ll another chance to put in song requests for this week’s posting.

The usual disclaimer: I cannot promise to use every request since there were SO many last week :-), but if there are any, I will print out a list and place it somewhere I can see while I play.

Are there any songs you’d like to hear?

Well, there are 4 days left before the next audio blog will be recorded and posted, and I’ve been trying to think of ways to keep this idea fresh. Something I came up with was to see if anyone had any praise and/or worship songs they would like to hear incorporated in the next recording I do which will be posted sometime this Saturday. If you have any ideas, please comment and I will work it in IF I can. I can’t make any promises, but if there are any requests, I will print out a list and place it somewhere I can see while I play. I believe this could add something to the whole MTPB experience. Sometimes hearing a familiar song during prayer can just create an environment for worship!