Friday, March 29, 2013

Buddy miller - With God on our Side - Dylan cover

Levon Helm - Wide River to Cross

Calvary - Levon Helm

And Can It Be - Indelible Grace

And Can It Be was written by Charles Wesley, and first published in 1738. This hymn describes the wonder that fills our hearts when we consider the mercy that caused God to take on flesh and die in our place.

Good Friday - "It is Finished!"

After Jesus drink the sour wine, and right before he gives up his spirit, He cries out “It is finished.” St. Augustine says,
The Maker of man was made man
That the Ruler of Stars might suck at the breast
That the Bread of Life might be hungered
The Fountain, thirst The Light, sleep
The Way be wearied by the journey
The Truth be accused by false witnesses
The Judge of the Living and the Dead be judged by a mortal judge
The Chastener, be chastised with whips,
The Vine be crowned with thorns,
The Foundation be hung upon a tree
Strength be made weak,
Health be wounded, Life die.
To suffer these and such undeserved things,
That He might free the undeserving,
For neither did He deserve any evil,
Who for our sakes endured so many evils,
Nor were we deserving of anything good,
We, who through Him, received such good.
"Lifted up was he to die, It is finished was his cry; Now in Heaven exalted high; Hallelujah what a Savior" (P.P. Bliss)

Thursday, March 28, 2013

How Sin Works

The law discourages us because it shows us the holiness of God; it shows us the deceitfulness of sin within us, it pin-points it; it brings it out; aggravates it and so stimulates it in us. It tells us not to do something and in telling us that it introduces us to it and arouses within us a desire to do it. The law cannot save us or deliver us.
This is why moral teaching alone to unbelievers is insufficient. It’s complete nonsense to believe that you can teach young people not to commit sin by merely telling them about the evil consequences of sin. What you are doing is to introduce them to the pleasures of sin. That’s the effect moral teaching generally produces. In telling them not to sin you are giving them a picture of the thing and at once they desire it. The basic passions and lusts are stronger than our minds. That’s how sin works.
Here’s a person under law. They are helpless, depressed and discouraged, and the more the law tells them not to do certain things the more they desire to do them. Isn't that what every child does? Tell them not to do something and immediately they want to do it. That’s human nature. Sin twists all the commandments and makes us worse than we were before. That's why we need a savior that's why we need grace.

Don't Start Me Talking - The James Cotton Band

Elvin Bishop - Callin' All Cows

Gary Moore - Still Got The Blues - Montreux 1995

Eric Clapton - Hoochie Coochie Man - New York City 1999

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Sunnyland Slim - The Devil Is A Busy Man

Levon Helm - Take Me To The River

Sunnyland Slim - Johnson machine gun

Personnel : Sunnyland Slim/ piano & vocals ; Lurrie Bell/ guitar ; John Riley/ bass ; Hasson Miah / drums ; Beau Riley/ trombone

How to Avoid a Broken Heart

C. S. Lewis:
There is no safe investment.
To love at all is to be vulnerable.
Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken.
If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal.
Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.
But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change.
It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.
The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation.
The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.
—C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1960), 169-170

Justin Taylor

Monday, March 25, 2013

CREAM - SUNSHINE OF YOUR LOVE - LIVE

What Evil has He done?

When the people cried out crucify him, Pilate said to them, “Why, what evil has He done?” The people shouted louder “Crucify Him”. Pilate wanting to satisfy the crowd released Barabbas and delivered Jesus to be crucified. Everyone in that crowd knew of the virtuous life of Jesus. A perfect man obedient to the Father, empowered by the Holy Spirit, who manifested the fruit of the Spirit, and the compassion of God; He went about doing good, healing people, helping people, feeding people, setting people free from all oppression. Even Pilate admitted “I FIND NO FAULT IN THIS MAN” (Luke 23:4), even the demons declared He was “THE HOLY ONE OF GOD!” (Mark 1:24).
Jesus was the summation of all moral qualities the incarnation of all virtue. Yet in spite of all of this the people cried “crucify Him!”, “crucify Him!” Think about it! Barabbas instead of Jesus. A thief instead of a giver, a sinner instead of a Savior, a killer instead of a healer, a peace breaker instead of a peace maker, an evil man instead of a righteous man. This is still happening today as people choose all kinds of things instead of Jesus Christ.

Howlin' Wolf - Smokestack Lightning

Mark Knopfler - Border Reiver - from "Get Lucky"

Friday, March 22, 2013

Where is your salvation, your righteousness?

“First, the Christian is the man who no longer seeks his salvation, his deliverance, his justification in himself, but in Jesus Christ alone. He knows that God’s Word in Jesus Christ pronounces him guilty, even when he does not feel his guilt, and God’s Word in Jesus Christ pronounces him not guilty and righteousness, even when he does not feel that he is righteous at all. The Christian no longer lives of himself, by his own claims and his own justification, but by God’s claims and God’s justification. . . Our righteousness is an “alien Righteousness”, a righteousness that comes from outside of us (extra nos). .. If somebody asks him, Where is your salvation, your righteousness? He can never point to himself. He points to the Word of God in Jesus Christ, which assures him salvation and righteousness. (From Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, pg.21-27)

Lyle Lovett & Kat Edmonson - Baby it's Cold Outside

Kat Edmonson - Nobody Knows That

Slowdown - Paul Butterfield

Woodstock, Bearsville NY 1977. With Levon Helm Dr.John and David Sanborn.

The Great James Cotton - Slow Blues

Balanced Budget VS Budget Of The Unbalanced


Stevie Ray Vaughan - Little Wing (Studio Version)

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

ZZ TOP - JESUS JUST LEFT CHICAGO - Crossroads Guitar Festival 2010

I love this song

Gods That Fail

Vinoth Ramachandra:

The people of the modern West are better fed, better housed, better equipped with health care than those in any previous age in human history. But paradoxically, they also seem to be the most fearful, the most divided, the most superstitious and the most bored generation in human history. All the labor-saving devices of modern technology have only enhanced human stress, and modern life is characterized by restless movement from place to place, from on experience to another, in a frenetic whirl of purposeless activity. 
Gods That Fail: Modern Idolatry and Christian Mission p.12-13

Buddy Guy with Ron Wood & Johnny Lang - Five Long Years 'Crossroads Guitar Festival 2010'

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Hope in a decadent age

“All that is meant by Decadence is ‘falling off.’  It implies in those who live in such a time no loss of energy or talent or moral sense.  On the contrary, it is a very active time, full of deep concerns, but peculiarly restless, for it sees no clear lines of advance.  The loss it faces is that of Possibility.  The forms of art as of life seem exhausted, the stages of development have been run through.  Institutions function painfully.  Repetition and frustration are the intolerable result.  Boredom and fatigue are great historical forces.”
Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present (New York, 2000), page xvi.
The ultimate historical force: “Behold, I am making all things new” (Revelation 21:5).

Ray Ortlund

Eric Clapton - Hell Hound On My Trail - From the DVD "Sessions For Robert J"

Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood - Presence of the Lord

Eric Clapton - Double Trouble With Steve Winwood Live At Madison Square Garden

Friday, March 8, 2013

Chávez’s Last Words and Yours

The head of Venezuela’s presidential guard was with Hugo Chávez during his final moments. His report on Chávez’s last words paints a picture of a man desperately clinging to life. According to this report, Chávez said:
I don’t want to die. Please don’t let me die.
As a rule, I’m no fan of socialist dictators—particularly those of Chávez’s ilk. But this strikes me as one of the saddest things I’ve ever read. I grieve to think about what the horror of his final moments must have been like. Death is no respecter of persons—not even of billionaire Presidents who command a cult-like following among their countrymen. Not even of you. As the old hymn has it, “Time like an ever-flowing stream bears all its sons away.” None of us will escape this great equalizer.
But the great question we all have to ask ourselves is this: Will we be ready? Will our last words exhibit the desperation of a person who knows that it is all slipping away? Of a person who has the foreboding sense that something more terrible than he can imagine waits just on the other side? Or will our final words reflect the confidence that Christ has defeated the final enemy (1 Cor. 15:26)? The confidence that whoever trusts in Jesus Christ will live even if he dies (John 11:25)?
If the moment of your demise were descending upon you and you could see it coming as Chávez could, what would you say? That is the great question of your life. It’s the great question of every person’s life.
by Denny Burk

Eric Clapton - Kind Hearted Woman - From the DVD "Sessions For Robert J"

Eric Clapton - Little Queen Of Spades

Eric Clapton - Traveling Riverside Blues

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Eric Clapton & BB King - Everyday I Have The Blues - Live At Earl Court 10 17, 199

Every Little Thing - Eric Clapton (From New CD Old Sock 2013)

The Pink Prophet: A Lenten Reflection on Control

Thus says the LORD: Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the LORD. 6 They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land. 7 Blessed are those who trust in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. 8 They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit. 9 The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse– who can understand it? 10 I the LORD test the mind and search the heart, to give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings. (Jeremiah 17: 5-10)
The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah (who died in Egypt in 586 BC) gives us two ways of living. You can trust in “mere mortals” (verse 5). Or you can trust in the Lord (verse 7). No other options. Trust in man, earthly things, human wisdom. Or rely on God.
The first way is the path of control. You look at your life, your surroundings, and you trust in what you can see and do. You try to control your career, your relationships, your health, your children, your world. You fix things. You send articles to people to convince them to see things your way. You offer unsolicited advice to people. You use formulas and strategies to get things to come out your way. Jeremiah says if you live like this, you’ll be like a “shrub in the desert.” That’s a lonely picture. This is because, as it turns out, people don’t like to be controlled. In addition, you quickly come to find out, control is an illusion. The sure-fire investment goes south. You are not able to have children. Acute depression forces you to leave college. Your daughter chooses the artists’ commune over business school. And despite your faithfulness to the gym and organic food, you find a lump. Just ask this Chinese government official who just missed his flight (for the second time):

The other path is to trust in God. You realize that you are not in control, and God is. There is a yielding, a resting here. This is the place of non-anxiety. You allow God to save you (that’s what the cross of Jesus is about, after all), rather than trying to save yourself.
When I tell people this, they immediately ask, “Well, how do I do that?” They want a formula to make it happen. They want to “do something” to trust God more. This is what the human heart does—assert its own autonomy. As Jeremiah says in verse 9, “The heart is devious above all else.” (Pink paraphrases this in her current single, “Try”: “Funny how the heart can be deceiving/more than just a couple times.” Check out Pink’s gymnastics-infused multi-colored dance-fighting in the video ()). The heart lies and says: “You can control things. Why don’t you give it another try?”
But that’s going back to the old control mindset. God is not ours to control. So what to do? Wait. Rest. Let things go. Pretend like the world isn’t on your shoulders. Many times, trusting God means you do less. And I bet you’ll find that God is already at work, through the circumstances of your life, to loosen your grip on things you can’t control anyways. The more you see things not yielding to your attempts at control, the more you can be sure that God is teaching you to trust him. So what do you do to trust God? Don’t worry—God will get you to a place where you don’t have any other option. And then, as the Psalmist says, you’ll finally find rest for your soul.

Mockingbird

Eric Clapton - "Gotta Get Over" [Official Lyric Video]

From Eric's brand new studio album "Old Sock"

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Never give up praying


“It is very apparent from the Word of God that he often tries

the faith and patience of his people, when they are crying to

 him for some great and important mercy, by withholding the

 mercy sought for a season; and not only so, but at first he

 may cause an increase of dark appearances.  And yet he

 without fail, at last prospers those who continue urgently in

 prayer with all perseverance and ‘will not let him go except

 he blesses.’”


Jonathan Edwards, “A Call to United Extraordinary Prayer,”


The Paul Butterfield Blues Band - Screamin'

The man in the middle of the picture is Sam Lay. I played bass for The Sam Lay Blues Band in the early 1970's

Paul Butterfield Blues Band - Driftin' Blues (Monterey 1967)

Albert King - Funk Shun

Albert King ''Drowning On Dry Land''

Albert King - Killing Floor

Friday, March 1, 2013

The Slide Brothers - Catch That Train

The Slide Brothers - Sunday School Blues

John Hiatt - Detroit Made

Possessing All Things

By virtue of the believer's union with Christ, he doth really possess all things. That we know plainly from Scripture. But it may be asked, how doth he possess all things? What is he the better for it? How is a true Christian so much richer than other men?

To answer this, I'll tell you what I mean by "possessing all things." I mean that God three in one, all that he is, and all that he has, and all that he does, all that he has made or done--the whole universe, bodies and spirits, earth and heaven, angels, men and devils, sun, moon and stars, land and sea, fish and fowls, all the silver and gold, kings and potentates as well as mean men--are as much the Christian's as the money in his pocket, the clothes he wears, the house he dwells in, or the victuals he eats; yea more properly his, more advantageously his, than if he could command all those things mentioned to be just in all respects as he pleased at any time, by virtue of the union with Christ; because Christ, who certainly doth thus possess all things, is entirely his: so that he possesses it all, more than a wife the share of the best and dearest husband, more than the hand possesses what the head doth; it is all his. . . .

Every atom in the universe is managed by Christ so as to be most to the advantage of the Christian, every particle of air or every ray of the sun; so that he in the other world, when he comes to see it, shall sit and enjoy all this vast inheritance with surprising, amazing joy.

Jonathan Edwards