Striking the Rock

I've been thinking about the old testament story of Moses striking the rock recently and i've made some connections that have never occurred to me before. It is really easy to look at this story in Numbers chapter 20 and not get it. It appears just utterly strange that God would tell Moses to go talk to a rock and then Moses gets mad and strikes the rock so then God punishes this brilliant leader Moses by not allowing him to enter into the promised land.

Certainly after all that Moses has been apart of with the Israelites doesn't he deserve to walk in the land of milk and honey? I watched a History channel documentary on Moses one time and they were asking the same questions. It went something like this "Why would this God have such an immature response to Moses simply hitting a rock? It appears petty and must be a cover up for a more serious offense of Moses"

When we look at this story with our earthly eyes certainly we would be agreeing with the History channel. I would never question God and what He chooses to do but this scenario seems unfair to Moses and raises some questions.

Now lets look at this passage within the new covenant and what we have with Christ. We know that Jesus is a solid rock, a firm foundation and the chief cornerstone. He is the living water and the well that he draws from will make a man never thirst again. So when God tells Moses to turn and speak to the rock for water God is not simply doing some random miracle. God is showing His people a picture of what is to come with the Christ. He is the solid rock from which the river of life flows.

Moses of course falters and strikes the rock. He is imparting his own selfish will and pride in to the mix and God punishes him for it. I have desperately wanted to impart my will on the rock lately. Trusting in God is tough business and lately if it's a business then i'd be filing for bankruptcy. I am just like Moses, i want to strike the rock and force things to happen. But yet God tells us simply turn to Him, speak and He will provide. - Forrest

Approaching Summer

The school semester is quickly coming to an end and we have been busy trying to promote our new song "Space Between" as well as firm up dates for the summer. We are really loving the way this summer has come together. We will be leading worship for a bunch of different summer camps etc. and we are planning on being involved with the "Extreme Tour" for part of the summer as well.

The extreme tour is an outreach type of event that has a west coast as well as an east coast tour. We would be taking part of the east coast and it should be a good opportunity for us to go out and meet new people and help out with their outreach.

We are really looking forward to the different camps that we are playing this summer. We absolutely love leading worship for summer camps. It makes everything so accessible when we have the opportunity to be with people for a full week and get to know them and where they are in their life.

This past weekend we were playing an event in Quincy, Florida called "Live Love". It was a very cool event modeled similarly to what a "Dnow" is. We led worship for them friday night and then again on saturday morning. The whole point of the weekend was to truly live a life of love in our communities and take the love of Jesus into the world. As we approach this summer we hope that this mission is exactly what Canopy Red will be about.

Hope that everyone is having a good spring and as the temperature is indicating, summer is quickly approaching!

ps: here is a video of us playing "Lead me to the Cross" broken down acoustic style this past weekend

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3njT5AWW410

Space Between- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O28j42eJ9dE

I think we all have at least one person that we would like to talk to about God but for whatever reason we have been unable to. We tend to psyche ourselves out with the fear of rejection or we fear the tension that could be created if the person is offended by us. For me this is absolutely the case. I've wanted to share my faith with my dad for so long but have always been unable to. That is the great irony of the situation is that the people that matter the most to us are often the people that are hardest for us to share a spiritual conversation with. This is why we wrote the song "Space Between" it comes out of the turmoil i feel in myself of not being able to share Christ with my dad. In essence this song is everything that i've always wanted to say.

- Forrest

Here is the link to the video that we made about the song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O28j42eJ9dE