Voices In My Head Episode #255_Lent with Walter Brueggemann

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Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer-songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is your source for discussions on music, literature, movies, pop culture, theology, and more. Now sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of the Voices in My Head podcast. And don't forget to let the voices in your head be heard by following me on Twitter @RickLeeJames and sharing your thoughts about today's show.

Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I am your host, Rick Lee James. Just before we begin with today's episode, I need to remind you that today's podcast is brought to you by Audible. You can get a free audiobook download and a 30-day free trial at audibletrial.com/voicesinmyhead. There's over 180,000 titles to choose from for your iPhone, Android, Kindle, or your MP3 player. Now I find that when I go to Audible and I have a credit available waiting for a book, because there are so many books to choose from, it takes me a while to make that selection. And I wait for people to make recommendations to me, so I'm just going to make the same recommendation that I made last week. I would recommend any book by Andrew Peterson. Anything from the Wingfeather Saga, always very good. There are several good, uh, Let me throw a few other ones on there too, just off top of my head, that I've heard from audible.com that are very good. There are things like Eugene Peterson has several books available on audible.com. Excellent, excellent, especially if you're in pastoral ministry. Any of his books are well worth your time, and I recommend them to you. If you're into like J.R.R. Tolkien and you like The Hobbit, I mean, all of those are on there. If you've never had a chance to read the Lord of the Rings books, Maybe because they're so big and it's such a daunting task. Why not let Audible read to you? So you can get a free Audible audiobook today for you, the listeners of Voices in My Head podcast. Audible is offering it to you, a free audiobook. So what are you waiting for? Go to audibletrial.com/voicesinmyhead. And that's all I have to say about that right now. Welcome back to Voices in My Head. It's really a great pleasure to have you here listening every week. Our numbers have been so good lately, it seems like we're getting around 100 listeners a day at times depending on the week. Maybe that's because of the excellent guest we had last week with Andrew Peterson, and before that we had Jeremy Casella, and we've had Andrew Osenga. We've just had some really bang-up guests here on the show lately. It's been wonderful. Unfortunately, this week no guest. I'm actually about to head out the door in just a few minutes to head to play a concert at a LifeWay store in Columbus, Ohio. They were gracious enough to invite me in today because there is a new release in their store called Resurrection Hymns. And that is a Lifeway Worship exclusive. It is available only through Lifeway Christian Stores. And some of my songs are on that album, including Christ is Lord, Christ Before Me, which is the song you hear in the intro on my show. So they were gracious enough to invite me to the Reynoldsburg store, which is near Columbus in Ohio, to the Lifeway store to do a concert today. So I am about to hit the road and head that way. So I do not have a guest today, but I did have a couple thoughts I wanted to share with you really quick today. Um, even though I don't have a guest with me today, I do have something that Walter Brueggemann wrote, and it's from a devotion that I'm reading from him for Lent called Devotions for Lent: A Way Other Than Our Own. And there's just been daily wonderfully challenging things in that book. And as always, as you know from the times that we've had Walter on the show, always incredibly insightful. There is probably not a more respected theologian of the Old Testament than Walter Brueggemann. So, I wanted to share a little bit from the writings of Walter Brueggemann that pertain to the season of Lent today. Now, just before I do that, I do want to let you know that the last time we had the podcast on here, my fundraiser for the album was just about to get done, and we did not have enough at that point to complete the album. Well, guess what? The fundraiser ended on Indiegogo. And we still don't have enough to make the album. So we're trying some different things. Although I have to tell you, the donations that came in the last 2 days, if we would have had donations like that come in during the whole 30 days of the campaign, we would have had the album made in about 3 days. I mean, we would have had that much because people were so good about giving. And there was some beautiful stories, and I don't want to share them right now, but there were some stories that I actually kind of need to ask some permission from some people before I share too much about some of the beautiful stories and some of the reasons behind why people gave. But I do want to say, for those of you that listen and those of you that have given to make this new album, thank you so much. Even though we didn't make our goal, I've been calling it a magnificent defeat because there's been some very encouraging things that have happened even in the midst of not making the goal. And the good news is we get to keep that money. So our new goal now is around $6,000. I'm going into the studio anyway regardless, so I'm just hoping and praying that God will provide and that I won't have to take out a huge loan to have to pay that back. But I do want to let you know there are a couple ways if you're still interested in giving even though you missed out on the Indiegogo fundraiser that we did, which had a lot of really cool perks. We don't have those perks anymore available to you, but we do have one specific perk that you can find if you go to Patreon and .com/RickLeeJames, you'll be able to find that you can still preorder the album there, and you can still get music to download today. Like, so if you gave today, I'll send you the 2 songs that we've already recorded for the album today. Plus you get your name on the website for Thunder, and you can go to RickLeeJames.com/Thunder to find out more about that. But there's Rick— Patreon.com/RickLeeJames is the one you can go to specifically give to our Patreon account. But I did want to let you know just of one other way that you can give Maybe you said, "You know, I don't have a ton of money to give, but maybe I can spare $2 or $3 or a dollar here and there or $5 or whatever you want, $20, $30, and you want to help make this album." I'm still going into the studio in March and I have to have an initial down payment of $5,000. We brought in $4,000, so that means in less than a month I need still $1,000 to pay for half of the recording cost. So if you would like to give, here's a simple way you can give.