Month: February 2023

Categories
Blogging Christian God Ministry Music Radio

My Top 10 Hits – Week 313

Every Monday I post my all-new Top 10 Christian hit music chart based on personal preference and influenced by radio airplay from the previous week. It’s the continuation of a weekly hobby that goes back nearly 45 years. Here’s this week’s chart – for the week ending Sunday February 12TH 2023 – the 313TH week of this current era that began on Presidents’ Day Weekend of 2017:

TW LW WKS SONG TITLE ARTIST / SITE
1 3 9 My Story Your Glory
[1ST week @ # 1]		 Matthew West
2 4 11 I See Grace Micah Tyler
3 5 4 The Lord’s Prayer (It’s Yours) Matt Maher
4 1 17 Who I Am Ben Fuller
5 2 9 First Things First Consumed By Fire
6 6 20 Love Me Like I Am for King & Country Ft. Jordin Sparks
7 7 26 New Creation Mac Powell
8 8 6 Gratitude Brandon Lake
9 9 2 I Believe It (The Life Of Jesus) Jon Reddick
10 – 1 I’m So Blessed Cain

# 1 This Week In:
2022 – “Weary Traveler” – Jordan St. Cyr
2021 – “Every Step Of The Way” – Cade Thompson
2020 – “The God Who Stays” – Matthew West
2019 – “Maybe It’s OK” – We Are Messengers
2018 – “Gracefully Broken” – Matt Redman Ft. Tasha Cobbs Leonard

MATTHEW WEST – The man who I call “my favorite singer” scores his 6TH # 1 smash over the past 6 years – more than any other artist (surpassing MercyMe). “My Story Your Glory” ascends to the top in its 9TH week on my chart. It’s Matthew’s 22ND week at # 1, and 152ND week on my chart since this current era began exactly 6 years ago next weekend. This past Friday night TBN aired a portion of Matthew’s Sunday August 21ST 2022 concert at the historic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville Tennessee. The 90-minute special kicked-off with “My Story Your Glory”, and it sounded great. It was also awesome to see him perform “The God Who Stays” – which was my # 1 smash exactly 3 years ago. He told a funny story about how he and his Uber driver sang the song together one night as it played on the radio. (The Uber driver had no idea it was him.) Over the past 5 editions of #SundayScripture I’ve been featuring my sermon that was based on that song.

COCHREN & CO. – Michael Cochren and his band are not on my chart this week, but they are getting ready to return next weekend. His rockin’ new single “Running Home” is sitting just outside of my Top 10 this week. It sounded spectacular LIVE at the TobyMac concert earlier this month. It’s got that mid-1980s big American anthemic rock sound to it. I have a feeling that it will be a long-running track on the radio and on my chart into this Summer. Oh – and no wonder I love this new song. Matthew West cowrote it.

This concludes another weekend of blog posts. I’ll do it again with the new weekend – and 4 new entries – known as #TravelThursday, #RetroFriday, #SundayScripture, and #Top10Monday.

Your likes, follows, and comments are always appreciated. Thank You for being part of my online ministry to share God’s Good News and win souls for Christ through His music. I’m also on Twitter and Flickr.

Be blessed my friends !  May our God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

All rights reserved (c) 2023 Christopher M. Day, CountUp

Categories
Bible Blogging Christian Church God Ministry Scripture

Sunday Scripture

Greetings my friends. It is Sunday February 12TH 2023, and this is the day that our LORD has made. Let us rejoice. Let us be glad in it. Let us celebrate this great new day of believing, following, trusting, loving, and being more like our Lord & Savior Jesus Christ. Let us love our neighbor as ourself.

Today is Super Bowl Sunday all across the U.S.A. – an unofficial national holiday. Actually – there are some lawmakers who would like to get rid of Columbus Day in October, and replace it with Super Bowl Monday – a new Federal holiday. That would give us 2 Federal holidays on consecutive Mondays in February in most years. (The exception being when Presidents’ Day falls on Monday February 15TH – the same day as the day after the Super Bowl.)

As soon as I return home from church service and fellowship today – I’ll turn on my TV to FOX (airing the Super Bowl), and I won’t touch the dial (remote) again until I turn it off after the big game.

I now continue presenting my New Year’s Day sermon in its original written form. It’s based on the Matthew West song of late-2019 / early-2020 – “The God Who Stays”. Here’s Part 5 (the conclusion):

‘Cause you’re the God who stays
You’re the God who stays
You’re the One who runs in my direction
When the whole world walks away

You’re the God who stands
With wide open arms
And You tell me nothing I have ever done
Can separate my heart
From the God who stays

You’re the God who stays
You’re the One who runs in my direction
When the whole world walks away

You’re the God who stands
With wide open arms
And You tell me nothing I have ever done
Can separate my heart
From the God who stays

BEHIND THE SERMON – So that part up there in dark green – I actually sang that to my church family a cappella. Up until that point in my sermon – I merely read the lyrics of Matthew West’s song. You know I used to sing more often while preaching. I kind of got away from doing that over the past few years (since COVID). I’m going to try to get back to singing small portions of my sermons in the future. Our God loves to hear us sing to Him. Every voice is beautiful to Him.

Right after I sang – I explained to my church family how it would’ve been great to actually watch Matthew West’s official music video for his song “The God Who Stays”. But what worked fine in my PowerPoint Presentation at home did not work at all in that same PowerPoint Presentation on the church’s laptop. (It was a video compression issue.) So our Praise & Worship Pastor (who was sitting in our sound room) did some quick work, found the music video on YouTube, and he played it for us.

What a beautiful song that is. What a powerful song that is. Matthew West is not singing to us. He’s singing to the God who stays.

You know when that song played on the radio every few hours every day during the COVID lockdowns – I thought to myself – that song – that song plays out like a sermon. I could write a sermon based on that powerful song – that hymn to our God. And so I did – almost 3 years later.

If you wish to learn more about the God I know then stay tuned to #SundayScripture. The best is yet to come !

Thank you for reading my blog for this day, and may:

The LORD bless you, and keep you.
The LORD make His face shine upon you, and be gracious to you.
The LORD lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. AMEN.

All rights reserved (c) 2023 Christopher M. Day, CountUp

Categories
2000s Blogging Music Radio

My Top 5 Hits RETRO – 2003

Hello again retro music fans. Every Friday I post the Top 5 of one of my classic hit music charts based on personal preference and influenced by radio airplay from either 15, 20, 25, or 35 years ago this weekend (rotating each week).

It’s the 2ND Friday of the month, so I go back 20 years ago. Here it is – for the week ending Sunday February 09TH 2003:

And here’s an actual snapshot of my Top 5 exactly the way it appeared on my web site at the time:

That’s from the 746TH overall edition and 387TH online edition of my weekly hit music chart – known at the time as my “Pure Dance Chart”. It was right in the middle of the 2ND era of my chart that lasted a little over 14 years from October 1995 to January 2010. For a little over 2 years from 2002 to 2004 I was immersed in the #EDM culture, and my chart reflected that short era of my life.

Last #RetroFriday I teased DJ Ray Roc joining forces with Tina Arena to score my biggest smash of 2003. That was Roc Project and Australian singer Filippina Lydia “Tina” Arena. She’s had a long and successful career going back over 45 years. In 1994 she scored with a regional Top 40 hit here stateside – “Chains”. And then she scored with a Top 5 club dance smash 9 years later, and that was “Never (Past Tense)”. It spent – get this – 54 weeks on my chart – from October 2002 through November 2003. Back during my #EDM era songs regularly spent 30 and 40 or more weeks on my chart. 54 weeks was quite the accomplishment – even for those times.

Next #RetroFriday I’ll go back 25 years ago to February 1998. It’s when I danced like a maniac to a 128 BPM early trance track that stormed straight-in to my mainstream pop chart at # 1.

It’s halftime my friends. I’ll be back on Sunday and Monday with 2 more blog posts for this weekend. Enjoy your Saturday. Thanks for going retro with me !

All rights reserved (c) 2023 Christopher M. Day, CountUp

Categories
Blogging Driving Geography Military Photography Travel

My Carnival Celebration Vacation 2023

Welcome back to #TravelThursday. Last week I wrote about Amber Cove, Puerto Plata, and the surrounding area up to 2,600 feet above sea level along the north-central coast of the Dominican Republic. That was Day 3 of my 7-day cruise aboard the Carnival Celebration from Sunday January 08TH 2023 to Sunday January 15TH 2023.

This week we jump to Day 4 of my 7-day cruise – and the 2ND port-of-call in San Juan Puerto Rico.

But First: It’s always good to return back to the U.S.A. – whether it’s stateside or a territory at sea – if only to get full-use of my cell phone (iPhone) back again without any extra International “roaming” charges. Those LTE signal bars look so beautiful after not having any since a few miles offshore Miami Beach.

I pre-purchased a shore excursion for Old San Juan – visiting fortresses. Shortly after arrival and U.S. Customs clearance on the island, I met my group and we hopped on our bus. Our tour guide / driver narrated during our short drive up to the first fortress. She also exhibited a little bit of Puerto Rican road-rage along the way, as traffic was thick and slow due to several cruise ships in port. Cops were blocking roads in an effort to make traffic run more smoothly, but it seemed to be causing more problems than not.

We made it to Castillo San Cristóbal, and our tour guide /driver handed-off to another tour guide who told us a little bit about the fortress. Then she told us to go check it out for ourselves and return back to the bus about 40 minutes later. (This was very unlike the shore excursion that I enjoyed on the previous day in the Dominican Republic as described last #TravelThursday.)

Our next fortress was Castillo San Felipe del Morro, and it was essentially the same situation. Our tour guide told us a little bit about it, and then we went to check it out on our own. After we were done – we walked back on our own to the bus to be there at a certain time.

After the two fortresses our tour guide / driver drove us to the city center of Viejo San Juan, and that was pretty much the end of the tour. She recommended that we walk back to the ship from there (a short walk), as traffic was muy malo. (She essentially gave up for the day.)

While the shore excursion for the Dominican Republic was a perfect 5 stars because of our tour guide and what we saw – this shore excursion was more like 3 stars. It wasn’t really a waste of time or money, but we could’ve had better, more knowledgeable, and more patient tour guides with less attitude. We could’ve also had cold air coming out of the bus vents instead of air.

I took some good pictures from the fortresses. They will appear on my Flickr Photostream in the weeks to come. Here’s one of the 3 cruise ships in port at the time from atop Castillo San Cristóbal. (The Carnival Celebration is in the middle.)

Fun Fact: This was my 2ND-ever visit to San Juan Puerto Rico. My 1ST visit was a little over 12 years ago on January 20TH 2011 as part of a 7-day cruise on the Carnival Glory.

Next #TravelThursday we’ll head over to Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands to enjoy a fun day on a nearly empty ship, or – perhaps – it didn’t quite turn out that way. Let’s keep traveling together.

All rights reserved (c) 2023 Christopher M. Day, CountUp