Thoughts from a guy just trying to chase after God!

Once again I have not blogged in over a month so I though why not now. I have been up since 2:30 in the morning due to the fact my wife began having hard contractions and so we are here at the hospital awaiting the arrival of the newest member of our family, Zoe Joy Blair.

It is in moments like these that I am able to pause and reflect on just how amazing God is. I have been blessed with an amazing woman of God for a wife ,who daily blows me away with her passion to serve God, with what an awesome mom she is and the fact she can put up with me. Right now she is lying in the hospital bed resting after receiving her epidural, some ladies reading this just said AMEN for the epidural. If you have never met my wife Erin it should be on your to do list before you die, as funny as that sounds, I believe everyone who meets her leaves a changed and better person.

God has also blessed me with 2 and soon to be 3 incredible daughters. To some that sounds crazy, 3 GIRLS!! It does to me as well, but it also sounds exciting and awesome. I love having daughters because I see it as God entrusting me to be the Godly example of a man for them. To love them, and respect them. To tell them how beautiful they are, how wonderfully they are made. To nurture them and help them grow in their gifting the Holy Spirit has placed in them. To show them Christ in all I do. I hope and pray daily I am doing that with Kaylee and Abi and I will continue that trend with our New Baby girl Zoe.

God has blessed our family with an awesome church family at Life Community Church and I hate we wont be there today to worship with you all but we’ll be back there next week. All 5 of us!!!

It has been a month which means I should probably give a quick fill in of what has been going on in the Blair house. We are in the 5 week countdown for baby #3 joining us. Zoe Joy Blair should be here soon and we are very excited about God blessing us with another baby girl. I will now live in a house with 4 ladies so prayers are appreciated. Erin is in that real tired starting to get over it phase of the pregnancy, but she continues to press through and shine Jesus in the midst of all of it.

We moved into a new home at the end of September and it is AMAZING!! We were so blessed to live in a 3 bedroom condo that some friends owned and allowed us to rent at an unbelievable price, but God has blessed me with a raise at church and that allowed us to expand into our 1700 square foot 3 bedroom 2 bath wide open house in Lake Brewster. More than anything it felt good to know that God has allowed me to get to a place where I can provide a good home in a great neighborhood for my family. My disobedience and bad financial choices had hindered me for so long, but God has taught me the true meaning of obedience and hard work and I don’t ever want to lose that or leave this place. I will try and upload some pics of the house later.

Kaylee (our 4 year old) is doing great. She is in pre-school 3 days a week after going 2 days a week last year. First we LOVE!!! Myrtle Grove Christian School and are so thankful to have her there. She is a sponge right now soaking up knowledge and desiring to learn more and more. She is growing into quite a little awesome girl for God. I am humbled everyday by what God does and says through her. Abi will be TWO in 2 weeks and she continues to be our sweet loving and also very funny child. She too is soaking in so much and just has a sweet heart that loves people and serving even at this young of an age. They are both so excited about being big sisters to Zoe and can’t wait for her to join our family.

As for me I am busy with church work as we are seeing God bless us tremendously at Life Community Church inside of Independence Mall here in Wilmington, NC. Being in the mall is such an amazing outreach opportunity and it is humbling everyday to see how God has planted us here to reach a hurting and desperate city. We have so much planned for this Holiday season to reach out to the community since we are in the busy hub of a mall during Christmas season! God has me personally in a cool season of teaching me more and more about freedom to sing out to him in the Spirit led moments. The last 4 times I have led worship He has given me spontaneous songs to sing over our church during our time of prayer. I am blown away by that and so grateful for the words He births in my heart. I am preparing this Saturday to play with Building 429 and Todd Agnew at an event called Ampfest here in Wilmington. I am pumped about playing with the guys from my album again. Outside of Brooks I have not played with all of them since April so it will be great to worship with them all again on Saturday @ 2pm at Myrtle Grove Baptist in the open field next to their church. Pray that the Holy Spirit will just lead us to help people go deeper and come to know Jesus as Savior and Lord.

Well that is about it except be on the lookout for a link to a new Christmas Song in the next month you can download a little gift from me to you during this hard financial season and holidays. Below are a few pics from some of our Pumpkin Patch Trips!

So funny that in the busyness of day to day life you forget to do things you really need to do. You don’t spend enough time with your wife or children. You don’t spend enough time in the word of God or in prayer or in fasting. You don’t take time to tell people about how Jesus has completely transformed your life. You don’t even have enough time sometimes to be kind to someone you pass by. Most of all though we are a people who neglect the one who deserves the bulk of our attention and time and that is God.

But we do have plenty of time to twitter, facebook, email, text, blog, ichat, instant message, fill in the blank of digital community that has no depth to it. Now before you get all bent out of shape I am just as guilty as the next person and I am using a blog to share this instead of calling or telling every person I meet with about it. No worries though I will do that as well. I guess it has really hit me lately because I am so guilty of being at work and checking my twitter or facebook, or checking ESPN every 10 minutes, instead of digging in the word or spending time in prayer or just having fellowship with God or a brother in Christ. It is because we have become a culture and society that cannot survive without technology. It was so bad when I came home when I should be spending time with my daughters whom I haven’t seen all day or talking with my wife I am still checking twitter or ESPN on my phone. Not good, not good at all.

Psalm 91:1 says “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.” I had a buddy send me this Psalm and I want to encourage you to go read this Psalm today. That first verse is a call to drop every technological distraction and any other thing that is keeping us from God and to rest in His presence for there we will find rest and the nourishment we need to live life. I read in a book that talks about how in our times of emergency we call 911 and God offers his own 911 in Psalm 91:1. It tells you where to rest so that when emergencies and trials come nothing will overtake you. The rest of the Psalm tells us that no harm will come to us, verses 14-16 end the Psalm with this.

14 “Because he loves me,” says the LORD, “I will rescue him;

I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.

¹⁵ He will call upon me, and I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble,
I will deliver him and honor him.

¹⁶ With long life will I satisfy him
and show him my salvation.”

That is a great comfort for us. This passage of scripture and pushing from one of my mentors really got me to this place of knowing I need to spend more time with God. I had never had an effective time with God where I was in His word and just praying in the spirit and in my understanding with him every day. Since God brought all of this to light I have woken in the mornings for the last 26 days and the first thing I do is spend time in God’s word doing the one year bible reading plan and in intimate prayer with Him. You can go to http://www.oneyearbibleonline.com to find the plan I am using if you are interested.

I guess I write this to say, that before you twitter, facebook, or all the other things you do, make sure you are not neglecting your one true love, which is God, and that you are not neglecting those closest to you; your wife, children, family etc… Make sure you are obedient to what God has called you to first and that you have real authentic community not what is online or on your phone. Just my thoughts and I hope that challenges us all a little. For those of you who don’t struggle with this keep fighting the good fight and praying for those who do.

Yesterday our church, Life Community Church, had our first service in our brand new location inside of Independence Mall here in Wilmington, NC. Let me just tell you that I can’t find enough adjectives to tell you how Awesome, Amazing, Fun, Mind Blowing, Incredible, see I told you not enough adjectives to describe how good it was. We had somewhere around 420 adults and children come worship with us. What is so crazy is throughout June and July we were averaging somewhere around 230-250. So we almost doubled our average in the first week. Even in the midst of a huge group of people we still passionately chased after God in worship and our volunteers KILLED IT yesterday. They loved on children and served every person that walked through our doors. I love being a part of such a great group of Christ modeling servants who desire to see people grow in their walk with the Lord and come to know Jesus as their Savior.

Now if you read the title I did not mis-spell Turkey, I meant Hurkey. During our first song “You Deserve” I had promised our church that in my excitement I was going to do a Hurkey during the first service….Promise Kept. Right after the bridge during the instrumental break down I jumped maybe higher than I ever have right leg kicked out straight in front of me, left leg bent behind me and did a HURKEY!! It was awesome! The whole morning was so awesome to see people just pressing into God and singing out as loud as they good in worship to our Great God.

Now before all of this happened I celebrated my 30th birthday on Friday and the only thing I can say is I love being 30, and I love my wife. She got her mom and stepdad, her dad and stepmom, my mom and stepdad, my dad, my Nana, her gramps all to come together and put money towards me getting an LCD HDTV. She knows I have wanted one for 2 years now. So here is the link to see what I was able to get on sale at hhGregg. http://twitpic.com/cjp8w. Now remember I have a 4 year old an a 21 month old, hence what is on the TV.

As I sit here reflecting this morning on all we experienced yesterday I am just blown away by the provision and goodness of God. It has been an incredible weekend and just the beginning of all the awesome things God is going to do through our church here in Wilmington. Come join us in the Mall!!

When I was on the road I made time every night to blog and update. Now that we are back in Wilmington and back in the swing of things life takes over and it is hard to find the time. So I wanted to update you all on some exciting stuff going on.

1. This Sunday is our church’s last Sunday @ our current location, which leads to #2
2. We are only 10 days away from launching our first service inside of Independence Mall August 2nd @ 10:30 am. YOU NEED TO BE WITH US THAT MORNING!!!!!!
3. Erin’s pregnancy is going great. Doctors appointment this morning and she has gained 15 pounds already and the heartbeat and everything look perfect.
4. Since getting back we have found a new challenge in our disciplining of Kaylee, but God is giving us some amazing breakthroughs their
5. That being said both Kaylee and Abi are doing great, they get more beautiful everyday, and we see God forming and shaping them daily.
6. I have begun writing some new worship stuff. Very excited, I will be getting with my buddy Brooks Joyce next week to demo a new tune called “Right Here”. Just think upbeat Hillsong United songs, it has that kind of feel to it.
7. I have a couple of upcoming dates playing out, August 9th in Gastonia, NC for Focus Student Ministries @ Chapel Grove Baptist Church and August 15th for Ignite ‘09 @ Northpointe Church here in Wilmington, NC. If you are in the area come on out should be awesome times.

Other than that not a whole lot going on other than crazy busy helping the church get ready for this move and getting ready to turn 30 on Friday July 31st. Doesn’t bother me just cool that I am about to reach that plateau. I will write again soon……hopefully. I stink at blogging.

Yes we made it home safely and we are so glad to be home, but at the same time we had an amazing 2 weeks on the road leading students to engage God’s heart through music and worship. The girls have been awesome since we got home. It is amazing what structure and routine does for attitudes in your children.

It was so great to be back leading worship @ Life Community Church yesterday. The people were singing so loud and just passionately chasing God. The mall looks amazing, hard to believe in just 3 short weeks we will celebrate our first service there. August 2nd @ 10:30am, we would love to see you there.

On a different note I finally broke down and joined the Twitter revolution. If you are someone who tweets then you can find me @mattblairmusic. That is all I got for now. Hope you are all doing awesome and we will chat soon.

I could tell you how awesome these two weeks have been. But I am going to let a video from tonight do all the talking. This is the last song of the camp we just did. It is We Shine by Fee and if you could see the video of the first night of camp when we did this and the kids just standing there with no emotion or worship and then see this, it is crazy. So awesome to see God transform hearts and lives and grow students into worshippers.

Now as you watch this yes I realize my dancing and jumping may seem awkward to you, but in that moment I am surprised I did not do more. I love leading worship and just letting the Spirit flow!!!

We hit the road back to Wilmington and Greensboro for the Brady’s so pray for safe travel!!

The word for the day is Slip-in-Slide.

Yes today at camp they had a giant slip-in-slide made out of about a 100 foot roll of plastic going down a steep hill. Couple that will water and baby shampoo to slick it up and you have a recipe for fun and disaster, not to mention it was drizzling rain. Now I have been doing camps long enough to know that what the kids really want is to see the worship team just have fun and be normal with them. So Ed, Isaac and myself obliged by taking our turns down the slide. It was awesome. We forgot the chord to hook our camera to the computer so when I get home I will upload the video and pictures. If you were wondering were Brooks was he and his wife Angel took some time to celebrate his 25th birthday, which was Sunday since he has been busy with me.

Aside from the slip-in-slide, today has been an incredible day of worship with the students. It began this morning by really getting them involved when we sang We Shine and then it carried over to tonight when they were just all in it to win it during the worship time. See what happens when you just have fun with students is they begin to relate to you better and are much more open to you leading them in worship. They look up there and say, “I like this guy, he is normal just like me, and I know he only wants me to grow deeper in my relationship with Christ”. Let me just tell you all something that is a huge WIN for us as worship leaders.

I want to finish tonight by telling you a young girl named Sarah gave her life to Christ last night during our worship time and we celebrated that on stage with her tonight. So thanks for the prayers and support and keep it up.

You can be praying for the girls they had a much better day but still need prayers for Kaylee’s defiant spirit. Also pray for Erin to have rest and rejuvination. Pray for my voice and spirit that I finish strong. Also pray for the guys, this has beyond a shadow of a doubt been the best experience I have had with a group of guys since I have been doing this. We have become like brothers and their hearts to serve and love on these students has been amazing, not to mention they are super talented. Also it has been so great having Alex (Isaac’s wife) and Angel (Brooks’ wife) our here as well. Pray they will also finish strong.

Write again tomorrow…

Today started out awesome and ended pretty good. Now let me clarify.

We woke up this morning and prayed as a family that God would give us a great day, with great attitudes and no tantrums (that one was for Kaylee, but can also apply to Erin and I). After that we had breakfast, went a led the morning session of worship, then when I got back Alex (Isaac’s wife) and Angel (Brooks’ wife) and the guys offered to watch the girls so Erin and I could have some alone time. Last night Erin’s mom offered to buy Erin some new clothes since all of hers are to tight with the pregnancy, so we went to Old Navy and the to Ross and had a couple of hours alone to shop and relax. When we got back the girls were at the pool with everyone and we all dried off and went to grab some lunch.

Normally this would be the part of the day where we would face a possible Kaylee meltdown but today she was GREAT! It was Abi that was overly tired and is now at the stage were staying in a high chair is the last thing she is interested in doing. So I cut my lunch short and walked back to the hotel, nice that it is next door to where we ate lunch, and put Abi down for her nap. I went and worked out while Erin and the girls napped and when I got back the guys and I headed over to rehearse and prepare for tonight. Erin, the girls, Alex and Angel joined us for dinner with the students and again things were going great.

Then it came time for Erin and the girls to leave. Erin is just exhausted and wanted to get back and put them down. Abi was fine, but I carried a crying and somewhat screaming Kaylee out to the car. She calmed down some, but I received a text from Erin saying they had been great, then when it came time to go to sleep Kaylee melted down and Abi copied big sis in the crying tantrum game.

They are both out now and mommy is showering while I write this. Please pray for Kaylee as we understand she is a child who needs structure which is hard to do when you are on the road. You cannot discipline like normal, or do the things that help her. So pray we have wisdom to know how to help her and discipline her during this time. Pray for Erin that God will multiply her rest and rejuvenate her.  Pray the guys and I will continue to lead these students from a real and authentic place.

Thank you for all of your prayers and support. Write again tomorrow…

Whoops I realized I forgot to post last night. Last night was the kick off to Creed Camp here in Anderson, SC on the campus of Anderson University. 4 or 5 churches from the Raleigh, NC area as well as a church from Florida have gathered together to do this camp. It was your normal first night of camp crowd, in the since that some of the kids were really into the worship and some were feeling everything out. I think that as the week progresses we will see more and more kids lock in and go for it.

The main thing you can be praying for is yesterday was a tough day for Kaylee. She had quite a few meltdowns and since I am leading worship Erin catches the brunt of that. She just melts down when ever things don’t go the way she thinks they should. So when she has to leave the worship services or doesn’t get what she wants, she doesn’t know how to control her emotions and she just flips out. So please pray that we have wisdom on how to parent and how to help her control her emotions. Also pray for the students at the camp that they will be open and ready to worship.

I will write again tonight…