Categories
Blogging Christian God Ministry Music Radio

My Top 10 Hits – Week 220

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 40+ years. Here’s this week’s chart:

COUNTUP MINISTRIES FOR THE WEEK ENDING SUNDAY MAY 02ND 2021 WEEK 220
TW LW WKS SONG TITLE ARTIST / SITE
1 1 15 Fires
[2ND week @ # 1]		 Jordan St. Cyr
2 4 4 God Of Revival Brian & Jenn Johnson
3 3 6 Child Of Love We The Kingdom Ft. Bear Rinehart
4 2 11 Good God Almighty Crowder
5 7 7 God Who Listens Chris Tomlin Ft. Thomas Rhett
6 5 8 Help Is On The Way (Maybe Midnight) TobyMac
7 6 23 Every Step Of The Way Cade Thompson
8 8 4 Gospel Song Rhett Walker
9 9 4 No Hopeless Soul Stephen Stanley
10 10 2 Mean Girls Leanna Crawford

# 1 This Week In:
2020 – “Almost Home” – MercyMe
2019 – “Alive” – Big Daddy Weave
2018 – “What A Friend” – Matt Maher
2017 – “Forgiven” – Crowder

Jordan St. Cyr hangs-on at # 1 with “Fires”. It’s currently a Top 10 hit at U.S. Christian Radio from coast-to-coast. I love the overall feel of the track. It’s quite catchy. I can still hum to it and sing to it hours after last hearing it on the radio. I especially love the bridge:

♫ I can face anything
‘Cause You’re here with me
I can do all things
‘Cause You strengthen me ♫

It was actually a very close call between # 1 and # 2. I actually had Brian & Jenn Johnson’s “God Of Revival” listed as the new # 1 smash earlier in the week, but then I slipped it down to # 2. (Some “behind-the-scenes” information for you: My chart is active as a “living document” all week long. My Top 10 hits sometimes move up and down the chart during the week, but it’s where they land by Sunday evening that ultimately counts. Sometimes a song will enter my chart during the week, but by Sunday evening it’s off again.)

BUBBLING UNDER just outside my Top 10 this week is the new track from Cain. It’s their follow-up to “Rise Up (Lazarus)” which was my # 4 hit of all of 2020. I heard “Yes He Can” on the radio for the first time last Monday, and I instantly loved it. Once I looked it up to see who sang it I was delighted to find out that it was Cain. It’s already exploding at U.S. Christian Radio where it registers the “most increased plays” this week. It should enter my chart next week, and at this point I’m already thinking that it could be a # 1 smash this Summer.

This blog is # 53 worldwide on the Top 90 Christian Music Blogs, Websites, & Influencers in 2021 chart. Thank You for including us Feedspot !

This concludes another weekend of blog posts. I’ll do it again this upcoming weekend – with 4 new entries on Thursday, Friday, Sunday, and Monday. I don’t blog on Saturdays. That’s my day of rest.

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 the 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) 2021 Christopher M. Day, CountUp Ministries

Categories
Bible Blogging Christian Church God Ministry Scripture

Sunday Scripture

Greetings my friends. It is Sunday May 02ND 2021, and this is the day that our LORD has made. Let us rejoice. Let us be glad in it. Let us get closer to Christ our Savior than we were yesterday.

Last Sunday I wrote about having “writer’s block”. Soon after praying for God’s wisdom – I wrote a new sermon on two good Kings of Judah from the Old Testament. It’ll be my next sermon to preach to my church family in a few weeks.

This morning I’m preaching my sermon on Simon Peter’s denials and restoration. It’ll also serve as a wrap-up of John’s Gospel. My half-year program of reading, studying, writing, and preaching from John’s Gospel officially comes to a close with this sermon.

This will be my 40TH sermon to my church family over the past 4½ years. Today I’ll be preaching via a manner somewhat differently than I have previously. I’m a little nervous about it. Hopefully everything works out well with this modernized method. If so then it’s my way forward for future sermons (and communions).

Lately our Pastor has been delivering some amazing and powerful sermons on how great our God is. They’ve been longer-than-normal sermons too – with lots of slides via PowerPoint. I’m talking over 100 “quick-flipping” slides !

My sermon today will be of normal length – about 30 to 35 minutes – accompanied with about a dozen slides via PowerPoint.

Here’s what one of those slides will show:

Suddenly – Jesus’ words flashed through Peter’s mind: “Before the rooster crows – you will deny three times that you even know Me.” And he went away – weeping bitterly. (Matthew 26:75)

Once the rooster crowed – Peter realized what had happened. When Jesus told Peter that he will deny Him 3 times that night – before the rooster crows – Peter was astonished that Jesus would say such a terrible thing. “Why would you say something like that ?” And then it happened. And Peter realized that Jesus was really in control. And Peter left the courtyard. He went away – weeping bitterly.

I then compare Peter’s denials of Jesus with Judas’ betrayal of Jesus.

I’m looking forward to sharing with my church family what God has placed on my heart with this message.

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) 2021 Christopher M. Day, CountUp Ministries

Categories
Blogging Music Radio

My Top 5 Hits RETRO – 1971

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, 25, 30, or 35 years ago this weekend (rotating each week).

It’s the 5TH Friday of the month, so it’s a special, as I go back 50 years ago. Here it is – for the week ending Sunday May 02ND 1971:

  1. “Joy To The World” – Three Dog Night
  2. “Put Your Hand In The Hand” – Ocean
  3. “Never Can Say Goodbye” – Jackson 5
  4. “What’s Going On” – Marvin Gaye
  5. “I Am … I Said” – Neil Diamond

That’s obviously not my Top 5 chart from exactly 50 years ago. That’s the Top 5 of the Billboard Hot 100 from back then. Casey Kasem (my childhood idol) counted down the hits from coast to coast on the new “American Top 40” weekly radio show, and he counted down those hits towards the end of his broadcast on that first Sunday of May of 1971.

Casey-Kasem-American-Top-40-Print-Ad

“Joy To The World” was the greatest Three Dog Night song ever, and one of the greatest songs of all-time as far as I’m concerned. It’s in heavy rotation on my iPod Shuffles that play at my desk at my workplace. It’s garnered almost 900 plays over the past 10½ years. Some people think that it was their breakthrough smash, but it was actually their 9TH Top 40 hit.

Ocean’s “Put Your Hand In The Hand” is actually a new favorite for me. I bought the single in 2012, and it’s garnered over 725 plays since then. There’s an outdoor church that meets every Sunday morning in Cambier Park over in downtown Naples Florida. One Sunday on one of my occasional visits (while on vacation) the Praise & Worship band performed that song on stage, and I realized that it was a Christian song. I may have bought the single when I returned home from Naples.

And what can I say about one of my favorite singers of all-time – Neil Diamond ?  “I Am … I Said” is also in heavy rotation, and it’s one of his greatest songs ever. I’ve got 5 Neil Diamond songs currently in heavy or active rotation, and I’m getting ready to add to my Neil Diamond singles collection. His music playing on the car radio provides some of the earliest memories of my childhood in Greenbelt, Lanham, Seabrook, Glenn Dale, and Bowie in Prince Georges County Maryland.

Next Friday on RETRO I’ll go back 15 years ago to May 2006 – where there’s an Angel 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) 2021 Christopher M. Day, CountUp Ministries

Categories
Blogging Driving Nature Photography Travel

My Flickr Albums

Regular readers of my blog know that I don’t Instagram. I Flickr. I know that over a billion people worldwide are registered users on Instagram, and that it’s probably the 2ND most popular app / web site known to mankind (2ND to Facebook which owns Instagram). I never got into Instagram. I’ve never created an account. I don’t even know what it looks like. I ignore all Instagram links. I’m probably missing some fun stuff, but oh well. I’m a Flickr(er).

Flickr was created long before Instagram – way back in 2004. Yahoo ran it for about a dozen years. I’ve been a registered user since April 2011, and I’ve been a paying (“PRO”) member for many years now. I like Flickr. I like it a lot. It’s my favorite social media app / web site (after WordPress of course). It’s where I store all of my photos online – most of them (88%) for public viewing.

I generally average about 250 to 300 uploaded photos per year. But I don’t just upload photos. I do research on my photos and write captions for each of them. I often learn more about what I took a picture of weeks and months later. It’s like electronic photo-booking. Each photo is individually enhanced (brightened, straightened, etc.), uploaded, and captioned into one of my albums on Flickr based on location or subject matter.

This past week I finally finished uploading and captioning all of my photos from my recent Spring Break road-trip this past February. You may have seen some of them by glancing down near the bottom of this page where the last 6 added to my Flickr Photostream are displayed.

Many of my Spring Break road-trip photos can be viewed on my Tampa Bay Region album. There are 136 photos and 1 video (of a sunset) within that album from 2014 on, and it showcases my best vacation photos from the Tampa Bay region of Hillsborough, Manatee, Sarasota, and Hardee Counties. I spent a day in Hardee County on my recent road-trip, so the final 12 photos of that album are from that day.

In the future I may showcase a different Flickr album about once a month here on my blog – maybe on the last Thursday of every month.

I’ve also got another road-trip vacation planned, so one of my Flickr albums will soon be updated with all-new photos.

All rights reserved (c) 2021 Christopher M. Day, CountUp Ministries