This year saw the 20th anniversary of Operation Christmas Child, so as you can imagine there was lots of celebrating to be done. It is always really amazing to see people from so many different backgrounds, denominations, countries come together, because everyone is there for the same purpose, and you could barely tell that people there don’t all go to the same church. It just goes to prove that however ’split’ Christianity is in this country, actually when it comes down to it, we’re not really split at all, because we all have the same, one goal.

I was lucky enough to have a wonderful band to play with for the weekend, below is a picture from the weeekend.

Left to right: Pete (Keys) Steve (Guitar) Becca (BVs) Henry (Bass) Gaz, Harry (Drums)

It was definitely one of the best bands I have ever played with, and was such a laugh to just hang out over the weekend. It was quite hard to believe we only all met on Friday!

So thats that, If anyone that reads this is around the Chesterfield area next Saturday 26th June, I am playing at All Saints Church, Wingerworth at 7:30, It would be great to see you there.

I admit the one bit I am not looking forward to is the photoshoot! Not really a big fan of photos of myself, so we will see how that goes!

I am just working on a pre-order form for the EP, If you would like to pre order one, do let me know. Hopefully in the coming months this blog will be turned into more of a website, and as soon as I can give you a listen to some of the EP, i will let you know!

In the meantime, get on twitter… twitter.com/gazsimmonds and sign up to my mailing list by emailing gaz@gazsimmonds.com

After spending most of the afternoon picking songs for tonights maundy thursday service, and 2 good friday services tomorrow. I somewhere got inspiration to write a celebration song about the resurrection! It’s funny because it’s a song i have wanted to write for a very long time, almost like it has been on the tip of my tongue for months. And it all seemed to just go together, i then included part of a song that me and Andy Baker have been working on, which again fitted perfectly. But i have a feeling it may be a little too late to use it on Sunday, i’ll have another look over it tomorrow and see! I always seem to get inspiration when it’s a nearly too late!!

I really wanted to share this Youtube clip with You, The song is ‘Jesus Paid it all’ I find that it just speaks so much truth, so wanted to point you towards it, in preparation for tomorrow!

At first I didn’t really get why God would be Jealous. We are singing another song in church tomorrow, which also includes this word, as it says ‘See the Jealous Son of man, turn the tables upside down in Jerusalem…’ (Part of a kid’s song we are doing for Palm Sunday.) So in the practice today we were talking a little about God being a Jealous God.

Which inspired me to do a little more research… First of all, it is biblical! The idea of God being a Jealous God pops up numerous times in the Old Testament. Exodus 34:14 reads ‘Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.’

And Exodus 20:5 says ‘You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God’

I actually think that this is a really amazing thing, that God is Jealous for us. Jealousy is something that only really comes about from love, relationship. A man gets Jealous if the woman he loves goes off with another man. A mother gets Jealous if her Son tells her he loves his mother in law more (Though I am told this is not often the case… I wouldn’t know yet!!)

The point is I think there is a form of Jealousy that can be helpful. If a man wasn’t jealous that the woman he loves goes off with someone else, then I wonder if he really loves her? If a mother doesn’t get jealous if she finds her relationship with her son being lost, then there may be a slight worry?

Don’t misunderstand me there is definitely a lot of jealousy that is very unhealthy, again we read in the bible, this time in the 10 commandments: ‘You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour.’

But Nearly all of the 10 commandments rely on God being a Jealous God, or they don’t really work, ‘Do not have other Gods before me’ Don’t make idols’ ‘Do not worship idols’ ‘Remember the Sabbath, keep it holy’ etc… If God is not Jealous then these wouldn’t work. He doesn’t give us these commandments because he wants to box us in, but he gives us these commandments because he loves us. He is not annoyed when we break them just because we are not meant to. He is annoyed because it ruins our relationship with Him. His Jealousy shows his love for us.

So going back to Jesus in the temple, was he Jealous at this moment? Yes I believe he was. I think he was more than Jealous, angry, furious, annoyed, but all of these spring from that Jealousy, if he wasn’t Jealous then he wouldn’t have a reason to be annoyed.

Its pretty late, these thoughts may all be very jumbled, but I wanted to share that with you anyway. I believe it is a real part of God that we don’t think about enough. Knowing he is all loving, Jealous for us. Knowing that when I give my worship to money, or the latest material thing, God doesn’t just think ‘Oh no, he’s done it again!’ But actually, He hates it. To me that makes me just want to give so much more of my self in worship, knowing that He really does care what I give my worship too.

Over the past month or so i have been working on songwriting and arranging songs. This has been a really good experience for me, taking my songs to other people and seeing what they reckon.

If anything sometimes it is good to just say goodbye to a song! For any of you who write songs, poems, or paint or whatever, sometimes you are really unsure about something you have made, and actually just need someone to say ‘no’ to put you out of your misery! So this has been great.

But also i have really enjoyed seeing songs develop and come from being rough ideas, being moulded into ‘proper’ songs! Over the past couple of days i have had the privelidge of doing some songwriting with Philippa Hanna (www.philippahanna.co.uk). It has been so good to have a fresh pair of ears and eyes working on these songs, we have worked on 2 songs together, of which i had the initial structure, but was really just very stuck with it! Today, one song went from being in 4/4 to being in 6/8, and then out of nowhere it seemed to just find life.

So yeh, really great process, enjoying every minute of it. I will try and fill you in as things progress. Can’t wait to share the finished thing with you!

So I have been meaning my latest exciting news. As you may or may not know one of my favourite things to do is to write songs. And over the past few of years i have been working on a number of songs. But never really done much with them.

But the plan is that this will soon change! I have recently teamed up with Andy Baker and Resound Media in Sheffield, www.resoundmedia.co.uk. So basically I will be bringing out a new EP in the coming months, as well as hopefully investing some time into doing some concerts etc. My main hope is really to take worship in the form of music outside the church walls a little. We really do box ourselves in a lot at church, and we allow ourselves to believe enough that God can really speak through our music to people outside the 4 walls of Church. I have been really challenged to have a go at this, with nothing in mind other than to glorify God and take the emphasis on church from being about 4 big old walls and religion, to it being about community, fun, and God!

Over the past couple of weeks we have started the arrangement process of a few songs, in the hope to record in a month or so. I will keep you updated with everything…

Sometimes i wonder what the point of lent is. I hear things like this, and a lot of them make me think, have we completely lost the true meaning of what lent is about?

Lent obviously originates from the 40 days and nights that Jesus spent in the desert, in the wilderness being tempted by the Devil. 40 days of hell really.

Yet lent for us seems to have become a ‘Holy new years resolution’ often self righteous attempts to impress ourselves or others. We give up chocolate, because we need to lose weight, hang on a minute I don’t read anywhere in the Bible… ‘Jesus went into the desert to be tested by the devil, and to concentrate on his weight watchers programme’ Or we give up alcohol or Cigarettes because we want to save money! Wait i think i’ve found this on Bible gateway… ‘Jesus went into the wilderness to save some money, so then he can keep it and spend it on other idols like food or clothes.’

Now obviously these are sweeping statements and God can really move through our sacrifice of these things over lent. But too often our motives are wrong. We do things for our own good, or because we think it will be worth it. But in actual fact lent should be the time we really suffer for God. If chocolate is our problem, then maybe we shouldn’t give it up for 40 days, but maybe we should challenge ourselves to eat 20 chocolate bars a day for 40 days, that is more like suffering! But we don’t do that, because we might get ill, or we might put on weight, and we don’t fancy that.

Lent isn’t about creating rules for yourself and sticking to them, for example ‘I will not watch TV’… ‘Apart from 7-9pm on Monday, 6-8pm Wednesday, 7-10pm Saturday and 1-3pm Sunday.’ Because already there we have given into the temptation without even starting! If we really want to give something up for lent, then we need to give something up that we really cannot live without right now. Give up your computer, or your phone. Give up Coffee. If you try to think of reasons why you shouldn’t give that up because you need it or don’t think you can manage without it, then you have probably found what you need to give up.

There was a really excellent atmosphere to the place, everyone was up for everything we did, and I was especially inspired by how willing people were to learn, and grow in their walk with God.

On Saturday night I had quite the traumatic experience however, when I got dressed up as a hoola girl, (Still with my original clothes on, don’t worry!) And was made to do various tasks, against my will. Including the dreaded food game, I hate all games food related! And then was asked to make up a dance routine with my team, for the song ‘Stacey’s mom’, not one I will be introducing at church any time soon. The video of which will probably never be shown anywhere, ever!

Today I lead a session on Worship, with just the Lads. One of my greatest prayers for the church is that we really try a little harder to grasp just how great our God is. Church, in my opinion is far too casual. We don’t get excited; we often offer lame, heartless, small worship just because ‘that’s what we’re supposed to do’. And this just doesn’t seem to match whom our God actually is. Our God is huge, amazing, and has such a heart for us, when I’m pretty sure it should be the other way round!

The God who made the universe, the world, the God who breathes out the stars, the God who speaks and light appears. This is a God we need to get excited about. A God that deserves more than a half raised hand once a week. A God that deserves more than our too often, lame worship.

Yet the most amazing thing is this is a God who makes Himself relevant to us as well. The God who came down, to give sight to the blind, bring life to the dead, and bring the lame to their feet.

One of the guys asked the question, God created everything, even the sun, and there is even stars bigger than the sun. Then he must be bigger than everything he has created, so how does he speak to us?

This kind of baffled me, because I always go straight to Jesus for the answer to a question like this. But so often we dumb down the sacrifice that Jesus made. This is not about a great man coming to earth to help us out. This is about God, who created matter, time and space. Who holds the universe in the palm of his hand, giving everything for us, forfeiting all glory for us, becoming so small, for us.

In the scheme of thing’s a miracle like making a blind man see, is only the start of things, but a God so big we cannot even imagine, becoming a fetus so we could understand, now that is amazing.

One of Jesus’ Characteristics, or titles was that He is the ‘Prince of Peace’. I know for me I have used this name for Him many times, in Church, in worship songs, and read it in the Bible, but never really thought about what it truly means. It may be easy to think of Jesus being the Prince of Peace when we see the nice, fluffy pictures of our Lord sat on a cloud. But when we see the Scenes in the Gospel message, as Jesus is being flogged, beaten, and ridiculed as the soldiers mocked Him, still at that moment, He was the Prince of Peace.

When I think of the word peace, the first word that comes to mind is ‘Rest’. So often we match these words together, and give them the same meaning. But I think this is far from right. We can have rest, without being at peace. And at the same time, we can be not resting, but be at peace. So often I find myself with an evening off and I think great, I can rest. But then I will go to bed at the end of the night often more stressed and tired than I was at the start, because I wasn’t truly at peace. Yet I can be at peace, and get loads of stuff done, even work! I believe that our main priority should be to always be at peace, and when we are fully at peace, only then can we fully rest.

So there are some of my current musings, maybe i will post more on the matter as i look into it.

Sorry i haven’t posted much lately. Not found much time to do so, but i will start trying to post more.

Had a really good couple of weeks, though quite busy. I’m leading at Reality this evening from keys. Which is a bit scary! Just thought i would give it a go really, it may well be the last time i do so! or maybe not! ha!!

On Monday i am leading a session at our Worship leaders workshop on ‘Band Dynamics’, so i have been writing that over the past few days, really looking forward to it. I have loved writing it, i really enjoy writing, but barely do it (Other than songwriting) So it was really good to do that. Maybe i should start doing more of it!

I wanted to share this video with you anyway, just opened up my Youtube and it was just there so i don’t know how, but i found it amazing. It’s a modern day monologue on what the woman at the well will have probably been thinking, and its quite powerful.