Hobbies

I have never had a real hobby. Frankly, because I haven't had the time and couldn't afford them. I love music, that's all I think about. I even lay in bed at night unable to sleep because I'm usually thinking about the project I'm currently working on. But when I'm doing some type of music every waking minute of the day I would like to have something different to do on occasion.

If you know me at all then you know I don't like sports. And when I say I don't like sports I mean I would rather watch mold grow than watch any kind of sports on TV. Yes, I realize that I live in a huge baseball town with one of the best baseball teams in the country, but I could care less about the Cardinals, Rams, Blues, or anyone else.

Now, however, I have two things that I have just fallen in love with. I look forward to do these things every chance I get. Again, if you know me at all, then you know these two things are completely out of my character.

The first thing I love doing is lifting weights at the gym. I LOVE going to the gym. And I don't just play around on the machines. I like playing with the big boys. I've almost become addicted to the bench press. The most fun thing about working out for me is the challenge. I'm constantly challenging myself to see if I can do better than I did last time. If you read my last post about having confidence, this is something that I have found that is giving me confidence in myself. The gym has provided me with something to say "Look where I was a year ago, and look where I am now." I truly love it.

My other new love is shooting hand guns. Again, if you know me, this is completely out of my character. As a kid I hated hunting. I didn't even like playing with my dad's shot guns. They were just too frightening for me. So you might be wondering how I got into this hobby.

Well, we live in an area of St. Louis that is going downhill and fast. Our community is on the news quite often about a shooting, or carjacking, or some sort of crime. That coupled with a couple of other issues, my wife an I decided to purchase a couple of hand guns. Now, we can't wait to get out to the shooting range and blow off some steam. I have found that it is a huge stress reliever for me, and I love the challenge of the target practice.

I don't have much of a collection at the moment. I have a 9mm and my wife has a 38 special. My wife, being all girl, had to get pink grips for hers. We get some funny stares from the men when they see her gun, but her answer is always the same, "It may be pink, but it still shoots the same."

I had to laugh. We were at the range the other day and we were shooting at one end. Deanna noticed a couple of ladies clear on the other side of the lane, and it appeared they were beginners at shooting, so during a cease fire she decided to go and talk with them. One of the ladies said, "Are you the one down there with the pink gun?" I thought it was funny that word had traveled all the way down the line about the pink gun.

So the bottom line is, don't mess with me. Just kidding.

So now you know a little bit about how a worship pastor blows off steam. Yes, I love my music but now I'm a body building, gun shooting, piano playing fool.

"New Year" Resolution

I've never been one for New Years resolutions. It's not that I have trouble keeping them it's more that I can't figure out what's most important. This birthday has been different for me. I've been thinking a lot about my weaknesses and the things in my life that I am not satisfied with.

For the past few weeks, it seems every conversation I've had and everything I've read keeps taking me back to one thing...Confidence. Confidence is something that I am seriously lacking. I lack confidence as a musician, a minister, a husband, and a father. I've always been insecure in just about every area of my life. Several things recently, however, have contributed to these insecurities. I struggle to provide for my family the way I want, we don't have a place of our own to call home, and this year we were not able to take a family vacation. I know these things are all trivial in the grand scheme of things, but they are all ways that I want to make my family happy and provide a good life for them. When I can't do that my confidence level plummets.

I also struggle as a musician. I don't know how it is in other professions, but in the music profession there is constant comparison, mainly because we are constantly bombarded with music, and the music is just getting better and better while I feel like I'm stuck in the same style and not growing in my skills.

Confidence, or the lack of, has always been a serious issue for me, and it's one that I'm not really sure how to overcome. So what does this have to do with a New Year resolution? Well, in short, my resolution for year 34 is to figure out how to have confidence in a constantly improving world, and more than that, how to have confidence when my life goals go unattained.

My theme verse, coincidentally, comes from Psalm 34. I felt the Lord leading me to this chapter in prayer the other day. Allow me to share some verses from this chapter.

Verse 1: I will bless the Lord at all times, His praise shall continually be in my mouth.
Verse 2: My soul shall make it's boast in the Lord.
Verse 4: I sought the Lord, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears (insecurities).
Verse 10b: But those who fear the Lord shall not lack any good thing.

As the Lord was directing me to this passage in prayer it seems that He was telling me some crucial things to help me have confidence.
1. I need to have praise on my lips at all times. When I am praising, He becomes greater while all the trivial things in life become smaller and smaller.
2. If I can't boast in anything of myself, I can surely boast and be confident in the Lord
3. When I seek the Lord, he will surely hear me and deliver me from all my fears, anxieties, insecurities, etc.
4. When I do seek the Lord, I will not lack any good thing.

Honestly, I don't know what lies ahead for this new year in my life, but I have a word from the Lord to hold on to, and sometimes that's all it takes. He has promised that His word will never fail, so I have to trust in that word.

So when you think of me, please say a prayer. But I also anticipate to end 34 more confidently than I started.

New Year, New Blog

So today is my 34th birthday. Nothing special about that. I still have a regular work day and we won’t do any kind of special celebration until the weekend. However, today, I am going to try something that I’ve been wanting to do for a while. I am going to start a blog. I don’t even know if I have enough to say on a regular basis but I’m going to give it a go.

I’ve been motivated by a couple of friends. My fried, Robin started one a few weeks ago, and it is so much fun to read. My friend/nephew (in-law), Dave Cummings, started one about life as a 2nd grade teacher, and it is so interesting to read his perspective on things. I’m not trying to be a copycat here, but I’ve been wanting to blog about my life as a worship leader/pastor/teacher/husband/dad. Will anyone read it? I don’t know, but it’s a way to get some things off my chest.

I’ve blogged a few devotionals in the past, but this time I want it to be more about dealing with life and ministry and everything else that goes along with that.

For the past few months I’ve been going through a lot of changes. I don’t know if it’s the working of God or just my own quirks, but I’ve been taking a step back and examining why I do what I do. Why am I a worship pastor? Why do I do the things I do as a worship pastor? Are the things I’m doing as a worship pastor pleasing to God? I guess you could sum it all up by saying that I’m tired of “church” as usual.

If all I’m doing as a worship pastor is singing songs just because that’s the way we’ve always done things in church then there are many other venues I could find to sing and to be a musician. As a worship pastor (and as a worshiper for that matter) I was never called to sing songs. I was never called to be a professional musician. I was called to love God and bring others to a place of loving God. I’ve been called to take people up the mountain of God, not to stay the same. I’ve been doing this long enough that I could pick songs to get people excited. I could pull out just the right song to tug on the heart strings. But what good would that be. That’s not leadership, that’s manipulation.

I want people to love God because they want to love God. I want people to realize that they have been redeemed from the curse of sin. I want the broken to experience the healing power of Jesus Christ, and I want those that are seeking for answers to realize that those answers can be found in Jesus. That’s why I want to lead worship. That’s why I want to be in ministry.

So my goal is to be different than I was at 33. Above anything else I want people to say that Russell Henderson is a worshiper and a lover of Jesus Christ. I want 34 to be a time of new beginnings. I’ve been praying for a home for 4 years. I don’t know if that will happen this year, but I’m going to love God anyway. There’s a lot of things that I’ve been hoping to be different for a long time. Whether those things change this year or not is for God to decide. But I will trust that His ways are perfect, and I will worship Him anyway.

So stay tuned. It’s still early in the morning, so who knows what will happen today. TTYL.