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February 24, 2007

Podcasts
I subscribe to a lot of podcasts but rarely listen to any that are longer than a few minutes. Here's one I love. It's The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor. You can subscribe at iTunes.

February 21, 2007

No MySpace here
I got an e-mail asking if I have a MySpace account. I don't. I checked out the account and it looks really nice. But, it's not me. Whoever runs it should state that it is not Mark Lowry's MySpace page. Because I don't have one.

February 13, 2007

Doubt
A friend e-mailed me these four quotes this morning. I thought I'd share them with you.

"The existence of occasions of doubt does not prove that you have no confidence in God. The existence of doubt is often a call to grow (vs. fake) your confidence - to mature in your faith. Rather than run from your doubts, examine and explore your doubts in a way that will allow your faith to grow continuously."
- David Chadwell

"You cannot be a man of faith unless you know how to doubt. Faith is not blind conformity to an idea. It is a decision, a judgement that is fully and deliberately taken in light of a truth that cannot be proven. It is not merely the acceptance of a decision that has been made by somebody else and presented to you as the truth."
- Thomas Merton

"To know what faith is, I must know what doubt is, at some level. Doubt leads to faith. Genuine faith is tested in the fire by doubt and chosen at great risk. I like to tell my congregation that faith and doubt are two sides of the same coin. Doubt without faith is cynicism. Faith without doubt is called 'certainty'. We are called to faith, not certainty. I'm always suspicious of folks who say they don't doubt."
- Kevin Powell

"Because faith is a mystery, we will find ourselves from time to time experiencing doubt, and questioning the very things we have been taught are true. Some religious traditions try to keep doubt from ever reaching the surface of our lives and being spoken, because there is a concern that it will not only lead people to question the institutional faith they have been given, but will also steer them into unhealthy and dangerous belief systems - that it will actually weaken their faith. In truth, doubt is simply the other side of faith. One can't really exist without the other. They are twin movements in our understanding of God and ourselves. There is no need to fear doubt, because doubt actually helps you make sense of what you believe. It causes you to question, search and look for deeper answers. In fearlessly asking the questions and searching for truth (both about yourself and about the traditions that have been handed down to you), you actually grow up in your faith - you come to a new level of spiritual maturity. Any faith that is not questioned in the fire of life's more challenging moments is a weak faith, because it has no individual understanding and responsibility. True faith comes from doing what it takes to make sense of who God is in our lives when our lives make no sense, and from wrestling with what God is calling us to do and to be in this world, right to the last moment of our lives. When you feel doubtful, or find yourself questioning the truth of what you have been told, be gentle with yourself. Don't try to force yourself to believe what seems to be unreal to you. Try to keep your eyes open to see God (vs. your mind's machinations and presentations) in the moments and activities of each day, in the people you encounter, especially those you love, and in the silence of your own soul. Tell God and your loved ones about your struggles and ask for clarity, compassion, guidance and wisdom. This is a great gift of your humanity - the ongoing journey that continually deepens faith (through doubts transcended) until we are home again."
- Renee Miller

February 10, 2007

Mark Lowry Show, #104
Watch it here. I'm talking on today's show about the latest Gaither tapings in Nashville, TN. We recorded b-roll (testimonies and interviews that will be inserted into the final video) on Monday and then started recording the singing on Tuesday and Wednesday. The first day was a regular video and the second day was a hymns video.

Here's a picture of me and Jimmy Dean at the Nashville Homecoming taping.
Photo courtesy of Gospel Music Update.

February 9, 2007

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
I googled Dr. Martin Luther King's letter from the Birmingham jail. My Web browser, Safari, has a program that allows you to summarize text. I had it summarize Dr. Martin Luther King's entire letter down to one sentence. It's a long sentence. Some would call it a run-on sentence. But, oh how gloriously it runs on.

But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" - then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.

- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Read the entire letter. Everybody should.

February 8, 2007

'I Love To Tell The Story - a Hymns Collection'
I finally finished my new hymns project but I don't know when it will be released.