Taste and See

Taste and See has to be my favorite track on this album. This song tackles the goodness of God. God is good in everything that He does. He cannot not be good. I love this song just because these past few weeks, I've been repeating those same words to myself. God is good. It's a phrase that's pulled me through many stuff that has happened. God is good no matter what happens.
Shai talks about how God's goodness is seen in everything. "From rocks and minerals to toxic chemicals" the goodness of God is seen in all of this. He goes on to mention that God's goodness can be seen from the beginning of history. Even though Adam and Eve left "us in a greasy condition with slezy addictions but Jesus' afflictions free those believing He's risen". Even though Adam and Eve condemned humanity to a lifetime of suffering and pain, God demonstrated His goodness by allowing His Son to come down to earth and die for the sins of everybody.
Shai demonstrates a mastery over the lyrics in this track as he keeps a rhyme going on for about half a verse before switching over to another one. While listening to this song, I am truly reminded that God is good in all that He does.

The Glory of God (Not To Us)

The Glory of God was the first single released off of the album. It was released back in July, several months before the album came out. I love this song simply because all of it is about the glory of God. Nothing points to anybody else but God here.
The song starts off with the creation and how it all points to God's glory. Only God could pull off something so majestic as creating an entire universe out of nothing. To God alone belongs all the glory because of who He is.
Although the song doesn't mention it outright, there is another issue that came to mind as I listened to it. How humans often try to take the glory that belongs to God and redirect it at ourselves. Satan was cast out of heaven for trying to ascend to God's throne. In short, he wanted the glory that God received for himself. And out of this original sin, comes every other type of sin.
When we sin, we tell God that we believe we can do better than He can. We wish to bring the glory to ourselves so that people may be in awe of us. We love when people praise us or tell us that we're good at something. Just like Adam and Eve in the garden, a part of us wants to be like God. We want people always telling us how good we are or what an excellent job we did at something.
However, although there is nothing wrong with being praised for doing a good job on something, when that becomes the focus of our being is when it turns into something wrong. When everything we do is so that people tell us how amazing we are, we are merely seeking glory for its own sake.
Psalm 115:1 reminds us that the glory should always go to God. God alone is worthy of all glory. His presence itself should inspire us to always give glory to Him. We must remember that God is a jealous god and He shares His glory with none.

The Perfection of Beauty

So it's winter break and I decided since I have a bit more time on my hands, I'm going to go through every track on shai linne's The Attributes of God and review each track. So today I'll be starting with the first one.
The Perfection of Beauty is a spoken word piece by Shai's wife, Blair Linne. This is the only track to have a video to it since it was first released as a trailer to the whole album.
In this track, Blair talks about the beauty of God. She shows how we, as a culture, make beauty into something very shallow. We only care about what's on the outside but all beauty fades away. However, the beauty of God never fades away and when earthly views on beauty are compared to God, it all looks ugly. She goes on to tell us that beauty comes from within. It comes from a mind that is sanctified. A mind that walks with God. Although we can never hope to equal the beauty of God, we can rid ourselves of a vain view on what beauty is and aspire towards reaching the beauty of God.
I loved the concept of the spoken word piece. As a culture, we often place a lot of emphasis on external beauty. We idolize celebrities and models because of their looks. Magazines are always shouting on their covers ways to lose weight or to look sexier. The thing is though, that the standard of beauty is always changing. No matter who you are, you're never going to be that picture perfect air brushed model.
There's nothing wrong with trying to lose some weight or wanting to look better, but when that becomes the main point to your existence, then it becomes idolatry. And God warns us to turn away from all types of idolatry. True beauty will shine through when we become more like Christ. Earthly beauty fades away but the beauty that comes from Christ remains forever. We must be careful to not let our perception of what beautiful is come from what the culture tells us beauty is. When we allow that to happen, issues like low self-esteem and depression start to appear as we realize that we don't fit into what "beauty" is and try to mold our bodies to that image. God loves us the way we are because He made us the way we are.

God is all knowing

This was something I was thinking about the other day and it struck me as something so wonderful about God's love.
Humans live in the third dimension meaning that we see time as moving in one direction from past to present to future. However, God as the architect of time and space lives outside all of all known dimensions. God's omniscience allows him to see everything that has ever happened and ever will happen. This means that God can also see every action we will ever commit. This includes our sins.
Most Christians, when they sin, ask for forgiveness from God. In our human minds, we plan on never committing that sin again. This is an erred way of thinking as we will keep on sinning till the day I die. The beautiful thing is that God has seen every single sin we will every commit and chose to still love us regardless.
I found that so mind blowing. God in all His love still chooses to love us even though He knows every sin that we will ever commit. And in His love, He sent Jesus down in order to die for those sins so that whenever we commit them, we will have a Mediator up in Heaven.

The Attributes of God album review

Instant classic. That's what comes to mind when I listen to this album. This has been the only album I've listened to all week. Which is saying something, because although I love shai linne, I'm usually listening to something from Reach Records.
shai linne has created what is possibly hip hop's first worship album. All 15 tracks point to the beauty and magnificence of our triune God. There is nothing here that points toward shai linne.
The album starts off with shai's wife, Blair Linne performing a piece of spoken word on the beauty of God. She talks about how no earthly beauty compares to that of God. There's a piece of a sermon toward the end which talks about how Moses worshiped God and then a short instrumental which leads into the second song "The Glory of God" which talks about how God deserves all the glory because He is the Creator of everything.
"Taste and See" speaks about God's goodness while "Our God is in the Heavens" speaks about his sovereignty. "Mercy and Grace" deals with God's mercy and grace and features an awesome guest verse by Timothy Brindle. "Lord of Patience" and "All Consuming Fire" talk about God's patience as well as his wrath, the latter being a subject that is not often dealt with in churches.
"Perfect Love" is one of the most beautiful tracks on the album and talks about how God loves mankind even though we're all sinful and want nothing to do with God. "Faithful God" and "Judge of all the Earth" deal with God's faithfulness and justice.
shai's last track is "The Omnis" which speaks on the three omnis of God; His omniscience (all knowing), His omnipresence (everywhere) and His omnipotence (can do anything). Finally Timothy Brindle does a solo track on the self sufficiency of God while the album is finished off with a remix to "Triune Praise" which talks about the different characteristics of each part of the Trinity.
All in all, this album is probably the best I've heard all year. I would recommend picking it up and listening to it all the way through. It contains a lot of doctrine and has a lot of replay value.

The Perfection of Beauty

Trailer for shai linne's fourth album "The Attributes of God" coming out 11/1/11. Enjoy!

Man Up Album Review

Man Up. A project that was eagerly anticipated by many. Although it was disappointing to many that the final outcome was a 7 track EP, it in no way diminished what the project set out to do. Which was, teach this world what it means to be a man in Biblical terms.

This is the fourth overall album by the 116 Clique, (who get their name from Romans 1:16 which calls us to be unashamed of the Gospel), and the first since Sho Baraka's controversial departure from Reach Records as well as the addition of KB, PRo, and Any Mineo. Coupled with a DVD which contains a movie they made, this album is great for anybody who wishes to know what Biblical manhood is.

The album starts off with the Man Up Anthem which has all seven artists of Reach Records (Lecrae, Tedashii, Trip Lee, Sho Baraka, KB, PRo and Andy Mineo) rapping over a hard hitting flow. They each rap a bit about what the world thinks it means to be a man and what God says it means to be a man.

The next song, Authority, speaks about how you can't lead if you've never followed. It tells men that they must take the authority that God has given them as the heads of households, but at the same time, treat the woman as their equal. It also reminds us to submit to all types of authority as God has put them in place.

Responsibility talks about how we as men should be responsible for our actions. I also enjoyed how Lecrae talked about tithing, an action which is often ignored by people now a days. But as he says, most of the stuff we buy costs more than 10% of what we make.

Envy teaches us that we shouldn't be envious of what God has blessed others with while Courage shows that true courage comes from being in Christ.

Temptation was one of my favorites, mostly due to KB's verse where he talks about how he was saved from an early age, but as he grew older, he wondered if he was missing out on life by not going out clubbing or drinking. It's something that I've also often wondered about. But in the end, my mind always goes back to Christ and to the wonders of what He has done. I also loved Tedashii's voice at the beginning of his verse.

Finally, Repentance shows that no matter what you've done, you can always go back to God and He'll be there for you.

Overall this was a well done project highlighting what it means to be a man in Biblical terms. I recommend it for both men and women and I think everybody will find something in it to take away.

LaFe

As is obviously evident, the majority of UCSD is compromised of Asians/Asian-Americans. While Hispanic people aren't that rare, they're not everywhere either. So when I heard of LaFe, which stands for Latino Fellowship, as well as meaning The Faith in Spanish, I thought it would be interesting to check out. I went and saw Hispanic people as well as some Asian and White people. Basically the leaders told us what their outline for the year was as well as what they hoped to accomplish. One of the things they talked about was finding your identity both in Christ and in your ethnicity.
This was interesting to me as I have always had a bit of an identity crisis in terms of my ethnicity. Last year, for my creative non-fiction class, I wrote about how I have never really embraced my culture and have at times tried to ignore it. However, God throughout my life has spoken to me about who I am and why I am. One of the songs I love to listen to about this is Flame's "Where God Placed You". In it, Flame talks about how he grew up in the ghetto listening to gunshots at night and living off of welfare. He questions his role in life but then realizes that God puts everybody exactly where they need to be. God made no mistake about where He put you.
Your color, ethnicity, race, background. All of that is part of God's bigger plan. When we become ashamed of who we are culturally, we are telling God that we feel He made a mistake. That He put us in the wrong place. That He should have known better. God put us all somewhere so that we may glorify him in the midst of our situation.
If all Christians were the same, it would be hard for them to relate to people who have not yet come to Christ. However God puts us in different situations so that we may know how the world feels. He made some people Black so that they could go into the Black community and preach the Word. He put some people in the midst of the ghetto so they could spread God's word amongst people who seem to have no way out. He made some Christians scientists and others, artists, so that through those people, all kinds of communities might be reached.
So the next time you start thinking about your role in life, think about it through the eyes of God. Why would God put you in that situation, in that community, with that background, and how can you best glorify His name where you are and with what you have been given.

Between Two Worlds

So why the name Between Two Worlds?

Because that's how I feel my entire life has been. Living between two worlds. I love both literature and science. I've been raised bi-lingual which gives me access to twice as much music. I'm a Christian with mostly non-Christian friends. I'm Mexican-American, yet feel disconnected from my ethnicity. I love hip hop/rap which is an often misunderstood genre of music.
Between Two Worlds is also about how we as Christians are called to live in this world but not be of it. How should we live our lives in such a seemingly contradictory statement? We must walk a fine line between being like Christ but not being too legalistic, and living/interacting with non-believers while not compromising our values.
My aim with this blog is to just write down my thoughts. Mostly on Christianity, but also on stuff I'm listening to. I hope that you enjoy this and if you ever want to read about my opinion on something, just tell me.

Grace and Peace