I hope that you can check out my new album “A Wineskin in the Smoke” if you don’t have it already. It's now available at CD Baby and on itunes amongst other digital sites. My previous album, “The Wind and the Flame” can also be bought or downloaded through these sites right now. If you haven't downloaded and installed itunes yet you can download it there : www.apple.com/itunes/overview/. On itunes you can here music samples, purchase individual songs or complete albums.

 Throughout my time in the music side of my ministry, I have always tried to produce lyrics that are carefully thought out, that really do rhyme and hopefully say something significant to the listener. I love writing songs and I love the whole world of songwriting. To read about great songwriters and discover how great songs were composed, is something I have enjoyed doing over the years. The art, the history, the legendary composers, have all fascinated me. I admire good songwriters enormously and particularly lyricists. The greatest songwriters of all though, have to be King David and the other Psalmists. No one has, or ever will come close to matching the beauty, artistry and of course spiritual content of these masterpieces. They speak to life. They talk about all of the experiences life is made up of…fears, quiet times, danger, sustenance, assurance, comfort, consolation, rebuke, forgiveness and repentance amongst so many other things.

It was while I was reading Psalm 119 that I came across the verse that the title of my new album is taken from. Verse 83…. “Though I am like a wineskin in the smoke I do not forget your decrees [NIV]“. The verse intrigued me and I tried to get to the bottom of what the writer was referring to. I discovered that the wineskins that were used in the home were hung up when not in use. Oftentimes, a fire would be burning in the tent or room where the wineskin hung. The smoke from the fire would over time, effect the wineskin until it became polluted, hard and in need of repair. It had to be soaked in oil until it was restored to its new and usable condition.

The section of Psalm 119 in which this verse appears is one where the psalmist laments the wickedness surrounding him and the persecution that he is experiencing without cause. He sees himself like one of those wineskins in the smoke. Becoming tainted by the grime and spiritual pollution all around him and realizing his need for release to become a renewed wineskin, usable to the Lord and a pure witness in an evil day. Yet for all his discouragement he does not forget the LORD’S decrees.