My baby falls asleep every night to a Baby Praise CD that someone gave me. The CD takes a lot of popular praise songs and makes them sound a little more like a lullaby.
The first song on the CD is "Better is One Day".
As soon as he hears the song start he knows it is time to go to sleep. Tonight when he heard the first notes coming through the CD player he started rubbing his eyes.
If we aren't at home and he is taking a nap in the "Pack n Play" I will sing this song because he associates it with falling asleep.
I was thinking tonight about when I first heard that song. I was at a Passion Conference in Fort Worth Texas in January 1999. I was 18 years old and a freshman in college.
At that point I had no idea what a Passion Conference was. This was before their CDs were produced on record label.
The only reason I went was because a youth minister I knew in Greenville was taking a group of college students. I was the only one in the group from my college (North Greenville).
I didn't know who any of the speakers or worship leaders were. Today they are very familiar to me. (John Piper, Beth Moore, the late Bill Bright, Louie Giglio, Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman, Charlie Hall) The youth minister showed me video from a smaller conference "Passion" had done a year before and it captivated me. I decided to ask for the trip as my Christmas present from my parents.
That trip radically changed my life. It is amazing that a single conference could bear so much fruit in someone's heart but it did in mine and I am sure 1000s of others. I won't go into all the reasons why on this blog post. That would take a long time!
On the last night of the conference I had so many emotions. I had worshiped like I never had, been challenged like I never had, and also had a strong pull in my heart because I felt like God was asking me to do missions that summer. I literally felt like I had experienced a little piece of heaven.
Then Charlie Hall got up on stage and sang "Better is One Day"(written by Matt Redman). Maybe for the first time I could truly understand; "Better is one day in your courts than a 1000 elsewhere. I would rather be a door keeper in my Father's house than dwell in the tents of the wicked" (Ps 84:10). I thought my heart would beat out of my chest that night.
Little did I know that 10 1/2 years later my little baby would be falling asleep to that song. I hope that he will very soon understand the meaning of those words.
