I am officially in class again. This means more studying, but actually more refreshing as well. Therefore, the blog posts will pick up tremendously mainly due to the amount of information that I will be taking in to myself. More than likely, there will be more on the topics of theology, doctrine, and their relevance to everyday life that stem from this post and we led to write it. I will add more tomorrow about the article where I found this but for tonight I would like to share this thought with you all.

The people that know me know that I love music. Students often say that they can tell what kind of mood I am in by what type of music is playing on my iNeighborhood in my office at FBC Sylacauga. (It is an iNeighborhood because it is way too big to be an iHome.) Anyway, I obviously love hymns and songs of praise and worship. But more than this I love to acquire understanding of what the writer experienced to write the song. One of the more popular contemporary worship songs currently is God of this City by Chris Tomlin. Here is the story of this song:

"Nov 2007, Bluetree are heading out to Pattaya Thailand to participate in an event arranged by Belfast missionaries living in Pattaya, Thailand called Pattaya Praise. We've no expectation of the event; we were just looking for an opportunity to serve somehow.

We didn't know much about it before we left, but Pattaya is a dark place. It's a small seaside town notorious for it's sex trade. Throughout our time there we heard countless stories of girls who are bought from their parents for a price, sold to the sex industry at ages as young as 5 years old. Arriving in Pattaya the spiritual climate seems to change, it's hard to define, but there is a very tangible change. On the bus journey in we'd been our usual cheery selves, but entering Pattaya at 10am and turning on to a street lined by girls ready for business, the bus became very quiet. We're in total shock. It's a sunny day but it's incredible how dark it feels.

'Walking street' we learn is the epicentre of the sex trade in Pattaya, it's about a mile long and at night springs to life with neon signs. Thai people are generally conservative in their dress sense – it's generally considered provocative to bare your shoulders. But on their street the girls are wearing very little, and offering anything you can imagine for a price. It's easy to look around with human eyes, see the depravity and get angry. You see older men walking hand-in-hand with young girls – as a daddy, that's hard to take in. It's easy to get angry, it's easy to judge – but that's not our job, so we grit our teeth.

We were in Pattaya to be part of a praise event not far from this street, the soul purpose of which was to worship and show God's light in a dark place. We wanted to play more than the scheduled slots while we were there, so we found out that one of the bar owners would let us play a worship set in her bar on the proviso that we brought as many from the missions team who would buy coke-a-cola all night. We walk in to the bar which is about the middle of walking street, girls are lined up on the stairs waiting for business. We get set up, we're really nervous and quite uncomfortable but we kick in to a familiar beat of worship and soon it's ok. God starts to speak and we started to move in to this spontaneous song. The truth is when you worship in a place, you start to see God's heart for that place. What would God say to a place like this?

Amidst the depravity God say's, I'm the God of this City, I'm the King of these people and Greater Thing are Yet to Come, Greater Things are Still to be Done HERE. The song wasn't written before that night, but we came out of the bar having worshipped with the song that is now the title track of our album – God of this City (Greater things). The song isn't just for Pattaya – it's for your city, and it's true. By faith we must expect that greater things are still to be done."

Many that will read this post have been afforded the opportunity to walk on foreign soil and be totally immersed in another culture for the purpose of proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the nations. Even now you can see the faces of the children that you made crafts with and prayed with in their humble homes. You can smell the air even though you are not there. We leave with the intent that we will never forget and there is a new flame in our heart to proclaim the message of Jesus Christ with all that we meet. Whatever city you find yourself living in or traveling through as you read this please do not forget that God is the God of that city. He is the King of those people and greater things ARE yet to come. If we do not see God doing great things there for His glory then we need to change our location. Either we are going to change the community around us, or we need to change the community around us.