Tim Murphy Returns! Living Stones Unearthed, how to write a song, & the revival of art for Christ

Dead Men Walking

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Exploring theology, doctrine, and all of the fascinating subjects in between, broadcasting from an undisclosed location,

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Dead Men Walking starts now. Well, hello, everyone.

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Welcome back to another episode of Dead Men Walking podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Come along on the ride.

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You can find us at dmwpodcast .com. Find out a little more about us. You can support the show, too.

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We got a nice little merch cave there. Some snarky t -shirts, other things. But as always, enough of the shameless self -promotion.

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We're up in studio right now with my very good friend I've known for what seems like a lifetime.

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I absolutely respect him, love him as a brother in the Lord, Tim Murphy. How you doing, Tim? I'm doing great, man. Thank you for that. That's awesome.

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You still have the best bumper ever. You still have the best. I just want to go out and like just take over worlds and do, you know,

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I just want to jump over fences that are too high for me. Hey, you know, we just had a gentleman on, which the people will be hearing it shortly when

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I get it edited down at Fight Left Feast, and it's Westminster Effects, and he makes guitar effects and pedals, and he puts little quotes on them, right, from Protestantism and the

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Bible and stuff like that, and he said, look it, man, the Lord made the electric guitar, too. That's right, man. I love you, brother.

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That's right. That's right. Man after my own heart. What's his name again? Send me his email address. Right, right.

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I might have to get you one because you're a pretty prolific guitar player yourself. Are you still doing that? Yes, I am.

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You're still playing, right? Still play. Yeah? Yeah. Do you do anything? So I know you do stuff on Sundays and worship and stuff like that, but are you doing anything privately?

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Do you just like to sit down with the guitar and play to the Lord, or what are you doing? Yeah, I do. So, I mean, we support the worship team at Compelled, Cindy and I, and it's great to be able to worship with her and play with her because all the years that I played professionally and we never did that, so I'd shared that the first time

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I was on the cast, so that's really cool. And I love worship and I love worship leading and being a part of that and supporting others.

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But yeah, I have my time in the basement where I still kind of do some of the songs that I've written and I haven't had anything,

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I've had a lot of ideas recently, not really finished a lot of things, but I still have some things I haven't put down yet over the last couple three years.

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So I think that's something that you stay tuned. Sure. So let me ask you before we get into the project that I want to touch on because it's super exciting.

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Cool. So I love talking to creatives and see what their process is. So when writing a song, melody or lyric, is that something that just kind of hits you?

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Is it something you read and you dwell on it? Is it something that maybe you read and then you refer back to and go, oh,

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I remember that or I saw that or this idea came to me? Because this is going to tie into what we're talking about with your project,

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Living Stones on Earth. But what's that creative process for you usually? So usually

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I know it sounds cliche and I've heard artists talk about this, especially musicians of how they write songs and how songs just come to them and it's an inspiration and things.

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That really is true for me. Some of the better songs that I've written and completed pretty much

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I hear from beginning to end. I might go back and, you know, tweak a word here or make something a little bit better.

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We can always do that, right? We should be fine. But from an inspirational standpoint, yeah, they pretty much, most of the songs that I complete,

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I kind of have the idea, I even hear a lot of the production in the music. Now recently, it's become a little bit more work, so I'll get an idea, jot it down or maybe sing it into my phone and then if I don't really push it, if I can't hear the rest of it,

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I kind of put it away and maybe I'll bring it out at a later time. So there's a discipline aspect to it too, right? Yeah. But for me,

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I'm grateful, since I've been a Christian at least, it's kind of more of a flow thing.

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Yeah. It really is. No, that's good. I would probably say I'm a little different in,

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I usually dwell on it probably far too long like I do on some things that are very important to me.

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Usually when I jump the gun on something, it's because I'm just, it's usually emotional excitement about a project to where when writing songs, especially reading through scripture,

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I still have stuff in my Bible, I just saw yesterday, I just transferred over to a new Bible, so I go back through and I look at my side notes and I have something from 2002 in a

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Psalm and it just goes, write a song on this, this is perfect. And then my notes that I think

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I'll understand, I write down and then I reread it and I go, what was I? So I got to think, 2002 or four, whatever it was.

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So I think I'm going to bring that back out. That's a 15 year old thought that needs to be put to music, but very interesting.

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So tell us a little bit about this project because I think, had you started it when you came out? Because it's been at least a year.

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No, no. You were on the podcast, what, a year ago or so? Yeah, I think it was February 2021. Okay. So over a year.

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Wow, man, time flies. So yeah, because you were one of our, kind of one within that first year of the podcast, you came on and was gracious with your time and the project that we're going to talk about hadn't been started yet.

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Correct. Correct. So when I was back here in February of 2021, and I believe that was the month,

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I didn't look it up. I was just thinking about on my way over here because really this has been a perpetual and ongoing thing.

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I mean, God had been stirring before that, but coming on this cast, you know, you just look back through things, like you said, looking through your

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Bible and looking about the notes that you wrote about the song. And it's just kind of cool to see how you look back and you see just how things are built line upon line.

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So I just really had a stirring, especially in the midst of all of the, what do we want to call it,

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Greg? Right. Do we want to, do we want, do we want to call it something? Do we want to call it a word? I like to call it the refining of the

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American church is what it was. Okay. We'll take that. Because we talked about that a little bit on the last time you were here.

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I'm going to stand on that rock. So yeah, as part of that, God just began to stir that he was calling his church and his body and me in particular, that it was time to, to not walk down the, you know, the middle anymore.

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I needed to get a little bit more intentional or a lot more intentional and purposeful about getting engaged and living.

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And so first Peter two, four and five back then is when I shared it on the podcast has always been a favorite scripture, living stones.

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Yeah. Keep coming to him, the living stone, which is Jesus Christ. So we break that scripture down.

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We have to keep coming, right? Yeah. So we have to be intentional and purposeful about that. And again, I know, I know those have become like Christian buzzwords, but they're true.

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Yeah. You have to put feet to it. So and so what's that look like?

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So I, you know, I, I, I'm always better at thinking about what that looks like for other people instead of for me.

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So right. Yeah. Me too. Right. And then halfway through God goes, Oh no, this is for you too. You can partake.

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You got it. You got to come along. So after I'd figured it out for everybody else in the church, you know,

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I started to look inward, obviously. And so as part of that, um, if first Peter one also talks about energetic and living hope.

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Yeah. That's what God called us to. That's good. And, and I had not in my own life, I'd experienced just a, it was just a period of, there just wasn't a lot of creativity.

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Obviously there was a lot of worry. There was things going on, things creeping in. Sure. Uh, from the world. So from that, uh,

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I'd always had on my heart to start a website or to do some type of, you know, develop some platform where I could reconnect and connect with brothers and sisters and people that, you know, had that creative fire or started to engage the culture or, you know, what

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I call is, you know, we're translators. So first of all, I want to make very clear to everybody, the main tool that God uses to speak to us is the word.

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Yeah. Okay. Absolutely. So let's get that out there. I mean, that's, that's where he reveals himself. A lot of God's will has already been revealed.

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So that's where it all starts. There's a, but here, and it's a beautiful, but though, and it's found in the Psalm so many times, but I'm go ahead.

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I'm loving where you're going because I'm on the same page with you. But along with that, but along with that,

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I feel like over the past two or three years, God has just turned up the volume on, on, on his creativity and on those glimpses that we get day to day.

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I mean, he's doing things. We talked about this when we met after when was a couple months ago at Tim Hortons.

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You know, I just feel like it's just, God's moving all the time and it's just hard to keep up with him. And he's given us glimpses of his creativity and his power, and he's showing us what to do.

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He's given us, he's given us discernment. And so again,

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I just felt like more and more that, you know, we're translators of that. Yeah. And so whether we do it through art or whether we do it through music or whether we do it through writing or it, it, it's not really confined to the artists.

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Yeah. It, you know, a plumber, a lawyer, a mother, a father, you know, repairing something, repairing broken walls.

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Right. God, God works in those things. So the other part of this was, which, which very quickly repair of broken walls is a name of God.

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He, God is a blue collar worker. Like that's one of his names. And that, that is,

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I, I put building something, fixing, repairing something in the arts as well. Just like you said. Yeah. So, so we're tracking, you know, if a plumber is listening right now and go, well, how in the heck am

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I glorifying God by putting together? It's like, no, he is the repair of broken walls and broken things.

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And that's what you're doing. And that's available. Yeah. So the key here is, you know, through the word, through time with God, through being intentional and purposeful is to train ourselves to catch those glimpses and to see them.

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God pours them out because they're going on all the time. Like I said, I feel like he just turned the volume up to 11.

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Yeah. So the site came about maybe fall of 2021, at least just starting to really put some legs to it.

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The other thing, well, the other part of it was for me is, what's it called and where can people find it? I'll link it up when this goes live, but throw it out there real quick.

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So it's Living Stones Unearthed. Yeah. Living Stones Unearthed, obviously based on the scripture passage that I talked about. The unearthed part is, again, those things, sometimes those gems are hidden, you know, and obviously they're not of this world.

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Right. I mean, God inserts himself into this world, into the natural world. I love the way you put that, you know, when you're doing the advertisement for me coming on.

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And so it's Living Stones Unearthed, www .livingstonesunearthed .com.

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All right. There we go. Yeah, look out. Facebook, we have a Facebook page. Yeah. And Instagram is just Living Stones Unearthed.

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Yeah. So we try to make it pretty. So what are people going to find at the site when they get there? So I wanted to make it, obviously with it having more of a feel of, you know, just really seeing

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God's glory and his creativity. I really wanted to be purposeful about the artwork and about the photos.

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So you're going to see a lot of photos, a lot of art. Everything is, either the photos were taken, everything's organic.

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Yeah. So we don't really have any stock photos in there. We either took them with a camera or it's artwork that people that we know have prepared.

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So what they're going to see is every two weeks we release, we do a post, and it's either a writing that I did as far as, you know, seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary.

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Something that God spoke to me. We try to, again, incorporate either the image that I saw that prompted this, and then maybe another image.

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So there's three sections. There's between the rock and a hard place.

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So that's where I do my posting. The second section is no stone unturned.

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So that's for guests and for contributors, guest contributors. And then the third one is called a stone's throw.

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My son, Christian, who I talked about on the last podcast. I like the brand consistency. I really like stone, stone, stone.

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I don't know. I love that. Well, the stone motif. The stone motif. The stone motif. So yeah, it really is consistent through a lot of the photos, right?

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And the solid rock. And so let's just let our minds wander and run. But I'm sorry. Third section. Your son's running that section, you said?

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Well, he's not necessarily running this section, but he's been in Bournemouth, England for the last two years. Okay. And we were able to fly over this past summer and see him graduate with a master's in architecture.

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So we're very proud of that. Wow. Proud of our other two sons. Little Christian. Yeah, little Christian. Come over to your house.

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He was a year old when your wife taught me piano. That's crazy. Yeah, so. Master's in architecture.

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Good for him. I have to reach out to him. So anything that we saw over there, anybody that wanted to contribute, or even his artwork, you know, there's a lot of things on the site that's part of his artwork and things that he's seen and done, writings that he's done.

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So that's for anything that we get from Bournemouth, England or England or anything from outside the U .S.

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That's cool. So international input on the website, too, then. We're trying. We're trying. So when you first go, we're getting most of our traffic on a phone, which makes,

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I think, a lot of websites are like that. Sure. So when you see it, you'll see the main photo, Living Stones Unearthed.

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And then the first picture you'll see or post you'll see is the most recent one. They'll just scroll down from there.

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And then after that, you'll see the three categories, and that's where they're all going to be archived. Oh, man, that's so cool.

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So are there people contributing? Do you have a section where people just contribute like randomly or are they or do you kind of what's what

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I'm looking for? Do you kind of go over it and look at it first and then decide what to put up there? Like how does that work? So we've

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I've kept it local right now, just within just within the circle of people that are in my purview, not only close local like this, but people

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I've known from the past and things like that. We've reached out to them. We've asked them to contribute. But really, you know, again, just part of what

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God's doing here coming on your show. Yeah, this this is going to be the official send it out to everybody else.

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OK, cool. So if somebody wants to contribute a song, if they want to contribute a photo, if they want to contribute art,

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I mean, Greg, really, for me, it can be, you know, a six hundred word essay.

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It can be, hey, man, I took this picture the other day of my son. And even though it's my son,

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God spoke to me and I saw something different in it. It can be one sentence. Yeah. You know, again, it's just it's just giving people a platform and the opportunity to talk about, you know, dialing it in and seeing where God's speaking to them in different things.

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It's it's sometimes it's not about, you know, it's not about seeing what's, you know, what's in front of you.

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It's it's about understanding through the spirit what you're really seeing and what's really there. Yeah. Does that make sense?

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Oh, one hundred percent. Yeah. So you can you can send if you go to the contact page, you can submit something to T .A.

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Murphy at Livingstones on Earth dot com for consideration. Whoever wants to do that, definitely reach out to us and tell us what you think of the site and leave some feedback.

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So, yeah, we started this past, you know, we launched on June 14th of this year.

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OK, so again, we've just kept it kind of within our circle. But I think I think we're ready to kind of start getting some other input for some other people.

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Yeah, no, I love it because this is something that's kind of near and dear to my heart. I know we've talked about it before offline, but just the fact of how how nature and art reflect the glory of God.

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Right. And and people go, oh, well, the arts, you know, I don't know if it's that important for believers.

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And it's like, well, we see a very secular culture trying to take the arts, control it and use it for their for their own glory.

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Why do you think that is, if the arts aren't important? Right. And then you see hundreds of verses about nature and workmanship and all these things that reflect

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God's glory and a common grace to us, as someone called in theological terms to the fact of, you know,

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I'll sit out in my this happened last year. I was sitting in my deer blind up on my property in northern Michigan.

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And it's there's a low level area. Whoa, not good stuff over here. There's a low level area. We're getting fired up.

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We're getting fired up. There's a low level area where there's a lot of water. So the root systems don't really go that deep. And if you get a big wind on Lake Huron, the trees will fall over.

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So I'm sitting and I'm looking at this tree and you could almost divide it in two. So you have a dead tree with no leaves on it.

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And then you see the root system and I'm staring at it. I mean, I'm in this little blind for hours and I'm staring at it and I go, it almost looks perfectly symmetrical.

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I mean, you could almost divide it in half and go here. The branch is going out, stretching towards the sun here, the branches, you know, the roots as we call them going down.

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And I really just I got this realization that even when I can't see it, the order of God, there's no chaos in God.

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The order of God is even in nature. He's going, look, you can only see from the trunk up. He goes, but when that thing, if that were that tree to be uprooted, he goes,

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I have a perfectly symmetrical system of how this tree works. One's reaching towards the sun, one reaching into the soil.

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But both of those working in conjunction in perfect order of how a tree grows. And I just went, well, what the heck does that mean?

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But even in that, you know what I mean? That's how I talk to God when I'm in my nearby. What are you trying to tell me? I don't know.

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I'm a dummy. You got to break it down. Even he's like, I'm giving you a tree. Can't you? You know, I'm showing you a tree.

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Come on, Greg. But, um, those type of moments where you see God in nature or an art, and then you link that to the secular world, wanting those things.

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I know we've talked about this before. General Simpson has a quote that says if the court and the seventh and the diminished and the minor belong to Satan, we'll go down to hell and plunder them and bring them back because every one of those belong to the

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Lord. Right. And, and for our enjoyment, uh, even the Bible says that we're to enjoy those things.

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So to have a website where you're bringing all those things together, I think, first of all,

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I've never really heard of that or seen that right. Like I've seen it in separate areas, maybe, or you'll hear a sermon on it, or you'll have a

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Christian artist that does something, or, uh, I don't even like saying Christian artist, an artist who is a believer that does something very well, you know, leather work or, or, or paintings or something, but to bring it together and then open it up to people who go,

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Oh no, I'm a creative. And I see, I see the glory of God in this or that. And then have that in one place and be across multiple platforms of art.

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Yes. Sometimes when we use the word art, we think of a painting sometimes, right. Or we think of a sculpture. Those are all good things, but I think like we were talking before, like the, like blue collar, like it, it is like workmanship and craftsmanship and art and music and sculpture and painting.

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Those are all things that we can do in the glory of God. And he's reflected in it. And God, and God works through them all.

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Right. Oh, absolutely. And he wants to, he wants to pour himself out into all of those things. And again, I think, I think the goal here is, is to encourage people, right.

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Yeah. And, and to, to encourage, we encourage each other to walk in fullness in his fullness.

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Um, and, and he wants to do that. He wants to give people creativity, creative ways of doing things, maybe new ways of doing things.

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And again, you're right in those traditional things where they would normally not think, well, I'm not really creative. Yes, you are.

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Yeah. Especially if you're following, if you're in the stream and the Holy Spirit's working in your life. Yeah. And we were talking offline too.

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I said, I had this realization probably five or six months ago, maybe more of the very first time we ever see the

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Holy Spirit poured out on someone who was filled with the Holy Spirit is in Exodus 35.

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And he was a craftsman. He was, he was in the arts and Moses says he's been filled with the spirit. I think it was bells,

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Bella Bell's a little, correct me if I'm wrong on that name. Old Testament. Well, I'm not going to correct you.

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Okay. I do know it's the son of Uri though. Cause Uri is an easy one to remember. Uh, but he says he works in iron and gold and leather and tapestry and art.

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And he's been filled with the spirit so he can then provide those things to the, to the, uh,

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Israelites. And you just go, okay, first doesn't necessarily mean more important, but it is distinct that the very first time we see it, we see someone being filled with the

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Holy Spirit, not to prophesy. Yes. Right. Not to, uh, give an encouraging word, uh, not to baptize, not to preach at, but to fulfill the arts and to, and to glorify

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God through blessing the Israelites. And you go, oh, that's what that, the arts are extremely important to God.

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Well, and tell me at a time right now, you know, that it's, it's not been needed more. Oh, absolutely.

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Right. Yeah. Right. So, so as part of, you know, preparing for this site and continuing on with it and, you know, we talked about this too, anytime you do something like this, we joked about it earlier, but God's probably got more to say to me than he does to other people.

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And, and, and there's been, you know, my heart was broken. My heart was revealed in ways that I didn't like to, okay, which is, you know,

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I'm, I'm glad God doesn't leave me where I am. He knows what I need. I know what I want, but he knows what I need. Yeah.

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And I, when I was spending a lot of time studying about the time period when this book was written, when first Peter, when, when he wrote the book, uh, you know, it parallels our time so much, so much political upheaval, so much social upheaval.

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I mean, Christians were being persecuted and not in the way that we think about persecution. Right. And so what was his response?

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His response was, Hey, don't be passive. Yeah. We'll just sit back. Yeah. Okay.

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Go, you know, engage, go in, go into the culture, come, come to the living stone and then go out into your community, go out into your world.

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And I think we've, I think God's calling us to do that. Yeah. I really do more than any other time.

22:10

I know that. Yeah. Throughout history. Yes. But again, I just think the volume has been turned up Greg.

22:16

Well, we've been, I mean, we've been, uh, deadened by the, by, by Satan for lack of a better term, by, by Satan's imitation of the arts.

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Right. That's what he does. He always does a bad imitation of God. Right. I mean, it really is. It's a cheap, it's the carbohydrates, right.

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Yes. Of, uh, of life. It's like carbs. They taste so good when they, when you first, uh, when you first eat them and you get a good head off of it, your body gets energized, you got some energy, right?

22:44

Right. You eat carbohydrates your whole life. You start looking like this, right? Like I'm being convicted right now. Like way too many carbohydrates.

22:49

I'm not going to say anything. Okay. It's, it's on video. They can see, they can see. But my point is, and that's a whole nother episode of lack of self -control and discipline and things like that.

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What we put into our bodies. Right. But my, my point is, is Satan is always a cheap knockoff.

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That's why I think he goes after entertainment so hard. Get that phone in front of you, get that a certain type of music that doesn't glorify

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God in your ears. Get that art in front of your eyes that distract you from the glory of God and who he is and what art was really made for.

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And I, and I see, which I love in this, you're included in this across denominations, across, uh, different churches.

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I'm seeing this move to like this wake up of, Oh, the, the arts are important. They, they are something that belonged to us.

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Like I see it, I see it in, uh, like I said, cross denomination to where it's like, you have people who you never thought would come together on something.

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Maybe abortion, maybe, uh, trans rights, right. These big social issues. But now

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I see brothers and sisters in the Lord that might not have the same confession, might not, uh, go to the same type of church.

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They all believe in the orthodoxy of, of Christ and orthodox Christianity, but they're coming together on art and they're going, wait a minute, we need an infrastructure of Christian art.

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We need streaming platforms that, that are, uh, that are glorifying to God. We need music.

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We need sculpture. We need a workmanship. We need all these things. And you go, and for me, it's exciting because this is something 20 years ago, even as a very young Christian going, why aren't we more involved in coming together on these beautiful things that the

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Lord has graciously given us that bless us daily in the arts. And I'm saying it as a talking music or Scott, like we said, arts as a whole.

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And why aren't we banding together and saying, yeah, these do belong to us. We are going to glorify God with them.

24:39

Uh, and you're doing that in that website. And I feel like if I know you, this is just a jumping off point.

24:45

I feel like there's going to be something next year. You're gonna be like, Oh, Hey, we're doing this conference or we got this live show. We got,

24:50

I don't know. I just feel like knowing you and this idea. So funny you say that because, you know, and again, to back up again, uh,

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I just want to, I just want to say, uh, you know, what a great job you've done.

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I look, man, I know you're, I know you're humble. I don't like, I know, I know you don't, and I know your first thing is going to be the first thing is going to be,

25:14

I give all the glory to God and yes, we know that, but I remember when I was here the first time and the funniest thing that stuck with me was back when, you know,

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I was, I was out, uh, playing some of the songs that I'd written with, with Christian and maybe a few other people.

25:29

When I first moved up here, uh, outside of church, um, You had said,

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Hey man, there was a time when, you know, you couldn't swing a cat and not hit the Tim Murphy, man, I gotta,

25:40

I gotta tell you, man, there's right now, you cannot swing a cat and not hit dead men walking. And you know what?

25:46

And God gets the glory for that. Greg, that's why, that's why I know that's where your heart is, man. So that's why I don't mind saying that, but, you know, again, part of me taking that step and getting this website across the finish line, uh, finish line against.

26:01

Yeah. Finish lands. Okay. We'll take that. Yeah. We'll take it. Um, against my, you know, well, all the doubts and well, what do

26:09

I know about this and I've never done this before and I've always wanted to do it, but you know, and, and all the things that come into your mind, you know, or, or people like you and other, just all of a sudden out of nowhere.

26:20

All of these brothers and sisters were coming up to me and saying, you know, I, I've been thinking about doing this for a really, doing something for a really long time.

26:28

God's been speaking to me and I'm going to take that step. Yeah. And I just saw people starting to step into their destiny and stepping into things that God was calling them to do that before they either never had the courage or they never had the, the resources or the time or whatever the case may be.

26:44

So yeah, that was part of this process too, is just seeing a lot of people take that step. Yeah.

26:49

Cause you know, you, you got to take that step out into what possibly could be the unknown and you never really know how something's going to turn out.

26:56

That's where the trust things at. And that's kind of cool part of the journey too. And one last thing about getting it started and getting put together,

27:04

God had spoken to me that, um, you know, this is something that I can do with my youngest son,

27:11

Kelly. Yeah. So, so growing up, Christian and Wesley, we probably had a little more in common because of all the sports stuff's not saying that Kelly's not athletic, but, you know, he seemed more inward.

27:22

He seemed more, you know, his, his, you know, what he thought was important were just other things that I wasn't necessarily aligned with right away or didn't have aptitude for.

27:32

So whose fault is that? Right. His or mine, right? So God just really spoke that to me that,

27:39

Hey man, this is something that we can get together and share. So it's been a lot of fun, man. That's cool. Cause he's like, he's like a computer boss.

27:45

Right. And, and, and so that definitely helps me. I'm gonna need to give him a call. I might, I might steal him away from you.

27:51

I need some, I need a tech guy on my team. Yeah. So we have a, we have a section on the site called precious stones.

27:57

Okay. So it's one of the pages on the site. So once you get away from what right now is kind of like more of a blog art site, there's one called precious stones that's on the site.

28:08

And that's where we put photos and captions of all the people that have either contributed to the site or, you know, have been inspirations.

28:16

It's called the wall of inspiration. So yeah, he's developed all of that. Uh, he wrote that there's a little bit of a surprise.

28:22

If you click on each picture, I'm not going to say what it is, but you got to go to the site, a little bit of a surprise. Okay. So that's kind of a cool thing too, that I don't think anybody's really kind of caught on to yet.

28:31

Yeah. Um, so that's been a joy, Greg, but really part of, part of what God used to get me to a position to open my eyes to this and say, look,

28:40

Tim, just do it. There's people like you and just other people that have just stepped out and said, you know what? God's calling me to do this.

28:46

And yeah, I do it. So that's so interesting that you say that too, because, um, I had a realization, geez, probably much later in life than I should have probably five to seven years ago.

28:58

Uh, to where I was, um, I was studying, I was praying and always had this thing to where it's like,

29:04

I would love to be the catalyst for something, right. Or the, you know what

29:09

I mean? And, and I really, I was impressed upon me that God was just like,

29:17

I, you need to be content with being the thing that I might use to start the thing. Like you don't need to be the thing.

29:25

Uh, you may never get any accolades or okays or thumbs up, but you don't know who, who is going to be affected by what it is you say or do, because I need you to, or want you to say or do that thing.

29:37

So it's this weird thing to where when you do something in your professing Christ publicly, uh, we, we don't get to say how

29:45

God uses that. Sometimes we don't even get to see it, right. Uh, including, and I'm not saying that your thing is the thing that's starting a thing or not starting a thing.

29:54

I'm saying I was, uh, it was just such a, just a beautiful reassurance to me of going.

30:02

It doesn't matter about numbers. It doesn't matter about response. It doesn't matter about who

30:08

I think is being attracted to this or not. It doesn't matter about the response, the response and the comments or the constructive criticism.

30:14

It's like you do, I just want obedience. Yes. You do what I've called you to do and whether you're the thing, the thing that starts a thing or doesn't start the thing.

30:23

I, God knows why he's called me to do what it is I'm doing. Right. Which is such like a weight off your shoulders too.

30:31

Like people think of obedience in this culture now as authoritarian. Right. To obey is better than sacrifice.

30:37

Oh, God just wants to boss us around. And here's the other thing, Greg, it's like, we, I just said, obedience is freeing.

30:42

And I just said this, or Cindy and I just said this in our, in our rooted group, because it was part of, part of the study for the last couple of weeks.

30:49

Who even uses that word anymore? Do you even hear that anymore? We use it in our house. No, no, no, no, no.

30:55

I'm saying, no, I get it. I'm just saying that's almost something. Right. You just don't culture. It's like, huh?

31:01

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it's, it's crazy when you go, Oh, obedience is, is, is freeing is liberating within, within obedience to Christ is right.

31:11

Uh, we, we always say there's freedom in Christ. And even that word has been kind of bastardized by,

31:18

I would even say the right, like freedom, liberty, everything's personal liberty and freedom. And I'm all for those things, but we, but, but then we have this mindset, even within Christianity, where that means we can do whatever we want.

31:28

Freedom means I get to choose to do whatever I want, which, you know, Paul says a lot about that. There's a lot of things that are well, but not beneficial.

31:36

Right. Thank you. Thank you, Tim. One, another one of Tim's favorite scriptures because God is,

31:41

God is. Imminently. Okay. He's powerful. He's all knowing. Can we just say all the things he is one thing?

31:49

One thing he, he is imminently practical. Yeah. Okay. So he's saying, look, yeah, free will do your thing, but keep in mind.

31:57

Yeah. Not, not all of it's beneficial. Right. Some comments, there's a common sense aspect here.

32:02

Okay. Use your brain. There's well, I, I had a, a pastor tell me once there's a lot of good things that aren't righteous and you just go, huh?

32:10

So there is a distinction. There's a lot of good things, a lot of middle of the road, kind of neither or sin or glorifying that just aren't necessarily righteous, set apart, holy and unique.

32:19

Yes. So should we be chasing good things or should we be chasing righteous things? Right. And that freedom in Christ means there's a freedom in the fact that if I have a loyalty and a covenant to my wife, or I have a loyalty and covenant to self -control and discipline, there's certain things

32:37

I don't need to worry about in my life, right? No, no one's ever gonna, uh, uh, come up to my house and say, oh, hey, there was this crime committed down the road.

32:46

And we think you're a suspect. Sorry. I have loyalty to, to self -control and discipline.

32:52

Right. And so, so the, the freedom is that I'm not bounded by sin anymore. Amen. Right. I'm not a slave to that sin anymore.

32:59

So that's the creation. I'm a new creation. That's the freedom. When, in fact, when you get into like a really legalistic view of Christianity or even a secular view from the outside, they just look at it as authoritarian, following rules, a religion.

33:11

How can you be free? No, it's following best. It's following best. Yeah. Right. Absolutely.

33:17

I mean, that's the key. It's, it's, it's the, it, you know, there's good things and then there's the best things, right.

33:23

And, and, and what I, and it's the, it's the God of this age is going to the mind of unbelievers so they cannot see the light of the gospel.

33:30

Right. So the, the biggest truth there is that, that God is a limiter. He, he's not a limiter.

33:36

God is a fulfiller. Yeah. He is a fulfiller. And, and I can tell you again, I am benefiting from doing this site selfishly, probably more than anybody.

33:46

Uh, I just, the, the newest posts had just went up a couple of days ago or yesterday, I think, uh, some friends of ours from 30 years,

33:54

Larry and Linda poor. Yeah. No, the poor. Sure. Yeah. So Larry, all of a sudden discovers that he can carve like a boss at 72 years old.

34:06

I love it. So he's been carving three years. And, and, and one of those three years he was in the hospital battling back injury.

34:13

Yeah. And it was just, I left their house. Like, even though we've known them and he, in that 30 year time,

34:19

Greg, he never exhibited any type of, he said he couldn't sing his way out of a paper bag.

34:25

He couldn't do anything like that. Right. Just a solid guy. Yeah. But then all of a sudden, you know, so this was in him, right.

34:31

Right. So what brought it to the surface? You know, so it's, and he's just blessing so many people in it. And it's just, it's just what's best.

34:39

Right. It's just what's best and it's what's needed. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's been a lot of fun, man.

34:45

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