Music To Pray By

Ron Johns
  • 4.8 (178)
  • Christianity

To Inspire Gods People to Pray!

  1. 1d ago

    Music To Pray By Podcast 83

    Thirteen weeks in, and this one lands on the Fourth of July. Podcast 83 is up. The usual gathering of live worship piano from the morning streams — five Selahs this week — and a few things on my heart for this particular weekend. In This Episode Five spontaneous pieces, drawn from three mornings — May 15, 18, and 19. The timestamps match the YouTube chapters, and each link goes back to the full morning the piece came from: 0:00 Selah in C — from the 5-15-2026 stream, Song 3 8:51 Selah in B — from the 5-18-2026 stream, Song 4 14:54 Selah in B — from the 5-18-2026 stream, Song 5 17:17 Selah in C — from the 5-19-2026 stream, Song 3 23:22 Selah in A — from the 5-19-2026 stream, Song 5 An Answered Prayer Last week I asked you to pray that God would make a way for my son Sanban to finish his senior year at San Marcos Academy. I want you to know: He made a way. It came together, and Sanban will walk across that stage with the friends he’s grown up with. I don’t take it for granted, and I’m grateful beyond words — to the Lord, and to every one of you who prayed. This is exactly why I keep doing this. Thank you. 250 Years — and the One Who Sustains Us This Independence Day is a milestone: 250 years since the birth of our nation. Two and a half centuries — it’s a lot to sit with. However you’re marking the Fourth this year, I hope it’s a good and restful one. But mostly I find myself wanting to give thanks. Not to a flag or a moment in history, but to God — for His faithfulness across two and a half centuries, for the freedom to sit down at a piano and pray out loud without fear, and for all He has done and is still doing for His Kingdom. Nations rise and fall; His Kingdom has no end. That’s the hope I’m resting in this weekend. A Night of Worship Our church family — The Connection Church in Buda, TX — gathered this week for a Night of Worship on Wednesday the 1st, a sweet time of singing and being together at the start of this celebration week. A few of you have asked lately where I play each week — that’s the place. If you’re anywhere near Buda and looking for a church home, we’d love to have you; you’d be welcomed with open arms. This Week’s Pray the Bible To close — a Pray the Bible short, and a fitting one for a weekend of looking up in gratitude. Psalm 121: I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord. If the embed isn’t loading for you, the direct link is youtu.be/lL3RZbnmEaw. Happy Independence Day. Thank you for listening, and thank you for praying. The post Music To Pray By Podcast 83 appeared first on Music To Pray By.

    30 min

  2. Jun 27

    Music To Pray By Podcast 82

    Twelve weeks in. Podcast 82 is up. Same as always: live worship piano from the morning streams, cleaned up and gathered into one continuous listen. Six Selahs this week. Not a lot of behind-the-scenes news to report — mostly it’s been a season of life happening off the bench, which I’ll share a little of below. In This Episode Six spontaneous pieces, drawn from four mornings — May 13, 14, 15, and 18. The timestamps match the YouTube chapters, and each link goes back to the full morning the piece came from: 0:00 Selah in E — from the 5-13-2026 stream, Song 1 6:09 Selah in G — from the 5-13-2026 stream, Song 6 8:56 Selah in D — from the 5-13-2026 stream, Song 7 14:04 Selah in C — from the 5-14-2026 stream, Song 2 17:54 Selah in B — from the 5-15-2026 stream, Song 2 26:47 Selah in D — from the 5-18-2026 stream, Song 3 Life Off the Bench Most of my week hasn’t been at the piano — it’s been around the kitchen table, planning the year ahead for my boys. My oldest, Sanban, is heading into his senior year of high school, and my younger son, Jake, is gearing up for another year of homeschool. If you’ve raised teenagers you know the strange weight of a “last first day” coming into view. Here’s where I’ll ask for prayer, plainly. Sanban’s heart is to finish where he started — San Marcos Academy, the Christian school he’s called home since the fifth grade. It turns out that’s what he really wants, to walk across that stage with the people he grew up with. For our family right now, that’s a real financial stretch. So I’m simply asking: would you pray that God makes a way for him to finish his senior year there? I’ve watched the Lord provide before in ways I couldn’t have engineered, and I’m trying to hold this one with open hands. A Move Toward Home We’re also praying about a move that would put us closer to our church family in Buda. So much of our week is spent driving back and forth — services, youth nights, men’s mornings — and the thought of being a few minutes away instead of an hour round-trip feels like its own quiet answer to prayer. More time with the people we’re doing life with, less time on the highway. We’ll see how the Lord works out the timing; it hinges on a few things outside our hands, which is probably right where it should be. For the Curious Nothing flashy on the tech side this week. The chapter markers (table of contents) are on every episode now — tap along the YouTube progress bar to jump between the Selahs — and behind the scenes the whole publishing process has quietly gotten more automated. Practically, that just means it runs on its own and I get to spend the saved time where it belongs: at the keys, praying. This Week’s Pray the Bible To close, a Pray the Bible short — and given everything above, there was really only one choice. The oldest prayer of provision and trust we have: Psalm 23. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. If the embed isn’t loading for you, the direct link is youtu.be/7CUKr47UBmI. Thank you for listening, and thank you for praying — this week, especially, I mean that. The post Music To Pray By Podcast 82 appeared first on Music To Pray By.

    32 min

  3. Jun 20

    Music To Pray By Podcast 81

    Eleven weeks in. Podcast 81 is up. Same idea as Podcast 80: live worship piano from the morning streams, cleaned up and stitched into one continuous listen. Six Selahs this week, and a couple of honest updates underneath them. In This Episode Six spontaneous pieces, pulled from three mornings — May 11, 12, and 13. The timestamps match the YouTube chapters, and each link goes back to the full morning the piece first showed up in: 0:00 Selah in C — from the 5-11-2026 stream, Song 2 4:57 Selah in B — from the 5-11-2026 stream, Song 5 13:46 Selah in D — from the 5-12-2026 stream, Song 4 17:34 Selah in D — from the 5-12-2026 stream, Song 5 22:35 Selah in B — from the 5-12-2026 stream, Song 6 27:03 Selah in C — from the 5-13-2026 stream, Song 5 Behind the Scenes: A Better-Sounding Pedal A quieter update, but one I can actually hear. Anthropic just released a new model — Fable 5 — and I’ve been moving the production workflow for this ministry over to it. The results have been honestly remarkable, and the place it showed up most this week was in how I clean up the piano itself. If you play, you know the sustain pedal is half the instrument. When I record live and the editing software stretches the timing to line everything up, it can quietly blow out the tiny gap where the pedal lifts and comes back down — so a chord change arrives a beat late and the new chord sounds dry, like the room went flat under it. I’d been hearing that all over this episode and fixing it by hand, one pedal lift at a time. This week that became an automatic step: it tightened up nearly four hundred of those late pedal changes across the recording — the ones I used to chase one by one — while leaving the deliberate pauses exactly as I played them. The sustain just connects now. It’s the kind of thing you don’t notice when it’s right, which is the whole point. Two Months In, and Honest About It We just passed the two-month mark since the relaunch, and I’ll be straight with you: the numbers haven’t moved much. Growth has been pretty stagnant. A few weeks ago that might have discouraged me. It doesn’t now. Relaunching Music To Pray By has completely revolutionized my own relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ — sitting down at the piano to pray every morning has changed me. So I’m going to keep going, even if I’m the only one who’s listening and praying along. If that’s you on the other end — thank you. And if it’s just the Lord and me for now, that’s enough. A Note on Timing In the spirit of being transparent about how this gets made: I actually finished this episode on June 13 and scheduled it to post a week ahead, today. I’m hoping to get another podcast finished today and recorded tomorrow — partly to see how much faster the new workflow really is now. If it works, you may notice these landing a little more reliably. That’s the goal: less time wrestling the machinery, more time at the keys. This Week’s Pray the Bible Back to the usual closer — a Pray the Bible short. Here’s the one that resonated most with you this past week, and it fits where my head’s at: a prayer of overflowing hope, from Romans 15. If the embed isn’t loading for you, the direct link is youtu.be/l6aabmHS4iQ. Thank you for listening, and thank you for praying. The post Music To Pray By Podcast 81 appeared first on Music To Pray By.

    32 min

  4. Jun 13

    Music To Pray By Podcast 80

    Ten weeks in. Podcast 80 is up. Same compile as Podcast 79: live worship piano from the morning streams, cleaned up and stitched into a single listen. A few real updates this week, including one I’ve wanted to ship for a while. In This Episode Six Selahs, pulled from three mornings of streams — May 6, May 7, and May 8. The timestamps match the YouTube chapters, and each link goes to the full morning the piece first showed up in: 0:00 Selah in B — from the 5-6-2026 stream, Song 2 4:33 Selah in C — from the 5-6-2026 stream, Song 6 8:10 Selah in F — from the 5-7-2026 stream, Song 2 12:26 Selah in D — from the 5-7-2026 stream, Song 3 17:11 Selah in G — from the 5-7-2026 stream, Song 4 21:48 Selah in D — from the 5-8-2026 stream, Song 2 New: Chapters on Everything This is the update I’m most excited about. Every video now gets a table of contents — the chapter markers you can tap along the YouTube progress bar. On the morning streams, the chapters list the worship songs by name. The spontaneous pieces — the ones that aren’t covers — get a name of their own: Selah, the Psalms’ old marker to pause and reflect, each one named for the key it lives in. And on the podcasts, every track is cross-referenced back to the exact stream it came from — “Selah in F — from 5-7-2026 Song 2” means that piece first happened live on May 7, second song of the morning. Here’s why I like it: if one of those spontaneous moments catches you during a live stream, you can always find it again — and when its cleaned-up version lands in a future podcast, the chapter label tells you exactly where it began. The rough take and the polished take, connected in both directions. We’ve rolled this out across the back catalog too, so the older podcasts and streams have their chapters already. The Split-View Clips Are Out A couple of weeks ago I mentioned the church-service clips were getting a new look — the Meta-glasses POV paired side-by-side with a steadier FaceTime camera shot, so all that head motion is easier on the eyes. Those have been posting for a bit now, so this week, instead of the usual Pray the Bible short, here’s the one you all have watched the most — from TCC’s Sunday worship on May 10: If embeds aren’t loading for you, the direct link is youtu.be/PtNWxXQ7xn0. If You Tried to Subscribe and Heard Nothing — I’m Sorry One more, and it’s a confession. While working on the site this week I discovered the email subscribe form had been quietly broken — and not for a week or two. It looks like signups haven’t actually gone through since 2024. If you ever typed your email in and wondered why nothing came, that’s why, and I’m sorry. It’s fixed now. If you’d like a short note from me when each week’s podcast goes up — no spam, just the episode — you can sign up at musictoprayby.com/subscribe. You’ll get a confirmation email first; click that and you’re in. Thank you for listening, and thank you for praying. The post Music To Pray By Podcast 80 appeared first on Music To Pray By.

    34 min

  5. Jun 6

    Music To Pray By Podcast 79

    Podcast 79 is up. Same compile as Podcast 78: live worship piano from the morning streams, stitched into a single listen. A couple of notes worth sharing this week. A Quick Note on Timing Before anything else: I actually recorded this episode last week, and I’m scheduling it to post ahead of time. So when I say “this week,” I’m really writing from a week ago — if a detail here feels a little out of step with the calendar, that’s why. I’m trying to get two or three podcasts queued up in advance. We’ve got a family trip coming in late July, and I’d rather the morning rhythm not skip a beat while we’re on the road. In This Episode Seven Selahs this week — the spontaneous worship pieces, each named for the key it lives in — pulled from four of the morning streams. The timestamps match the YouTube chapters if you want to jump around, and each link goes to the full morning stream it came from: 0:00 Selah in C — from the 4-30-2026 stream, Song 3 8:51 Selah in E — from the 4-30-2026 stream, Song 5 11:47 Selah in G — from the 5-1-2026 stream, Song 5 16:16 Selah in D — from the 5-1-2026 stream, Song 7 18:40 Selah in G — from the 5-4-2026 stream, Song 4 23:54 Selah in E — from the 5-5-2026 stream, Song 4 28:43 Selah in B — from the 5-5-2026 stream, Song 7 A Better Way to Watch the Church-Service Clips Last week I mentioned the church-service clips — the TCC Sunday and Wednesday-night worship moments — are back on the Music To Pray By channels. Since they’re staying, I changed how they’re shot. The footage used to be pure Meta-glasses POV: first-person, straight from my point of view at the keys. Immersive, but honestly all that head motion got a little dizzying to watch for more than a few seconds. So the new clips are a split view — the Meta-glasses POV on one side, paired with a steadier shot from my FaceTime camera on the other. You still get the up-close, over-the-keys perspective, but now there’s a stable frame to rest your eyes on. Same worship moment, just easier to actually watch. One more small thing from this past week: the Pray the Bible shorts and the weekly podcasts now post to Rumble as well. If that’s where you spend your time, the catalog is there now too. Closing — A Prayer as God’s Child To close, here’s one of the Pray the Bible shorts that’s been resonating most lately. It’s drawn from 1 John 3 — a reminder of who we already are before we ask Him for anything: “See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1) If embeds aren’t loading for you, the direct link is youtu.be/boWYeEKVW8Q. The Pray the Bible library keeps growing, all searchable under musictoprayby (one word, no spaces) on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X, Telegram, and now Rumble. Thank you for listening, and thank you for praying. The post Music To Pray By Podcast 79 appeared first on Music To Pray By.

    32 min

  6. May 30

    Music To Pray By Podcast 78

    Eight weeks in. Podcast 78 is up. Same compile as Podcast 77: live worship piano from the morning streams, stitched into a single listen. Quick post this week, but a couple of real updates worth sharing. An Update on the Church-Service Clips A quick course-correction worth being honest about. For a few days I experimented with moving the church-service clips — the TCC Sunday and Wednesday-night worship moments, the meta-glasses videos — off the Music To Pray By channels and onto my personal accounts. The reasoning was that the live-band, full-room sound was a different vibe from the quiet, prayerful piano MTPB is built around, and I worried it muddied the feed. After testing it for a few days, I changed my mind. Those church-service posts turned out to be helping people find Music To Pray By — and since MTPB exists, at its core, to move people toward prayer, that’s exactly the point. The worship moments and the prayer content pull in the same direction, not against each other. So everything is back on the MTPB channels. The morning streams, the Prayer Shorts, the weekly podcast, and the church-service clips all live together under musictoprayby again. A Prayer Request — For Finances I’m going to be honest with you about something that’s been weighing on me. The past few years have been financially difficult for our family. The day job pays well on paper, but between expenses, the home sale we’ve been working through, and the cost of building MTPB on the side, things have been very tight — tighter than I’ve let on in any of these posts. I’m not asking for money — please don’t read it that way. What I am asking for is prayer. Pray that God would provide for our family the way He’s always provided. Pray that I’d have the wisdom to steward what He’s entrusted to me. Pray that this ministry would be sustainable on its own terms, in His timing. If you’re willing to lift that up sometime this week, it would mean the world. Closing — A Prayer for Provision Of all the Prayer Shorts in the catalog, this one feels right for this post. It’s drawn from Philippians 4:19 — one of the most quoted promises in scripture, and one I’ve been holding onto more tightly lately: “And this same God who takes care of me will supply all your needs from his glorious riches, which have been given to us in Christ Jesus.” If embeds aren’t loading for you, the direct link is youtu.be/SYorYnVg93k. We’re past 75 prayers published at this point, all searchable under musictoprayby (one word, no spaces) on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X, and Telegram. Thank you for listening, and thank you for praying. The post Music To Pray By Podcast 78 appeared first on Music To Pray By.

    31 min

  7. May 24

    Music To Pray By Podcast 77

    Seven weeks in. Podcast 77 is up. Same compile as Podcast 76: live worship piano from the morning streams, stitched into a single listen. The weekly cadence is settled now — what I want to talk about this week is the where. There are a few new places to find MTPB content that haven’t made it into a post yet. Three Places You Might Not Know About Telegram Channel: @MusicToPrayBy We launched a Telegram channel earlier this month and I haven’t mentioned it here yet. If you’re a Telegram person, that’s the cleanest way to get a notification when each new Prayer Short drops — same content as the other socials, with no algorithm in between. Join at t.me/MusicToPrayBy. 24/7 Worship Replay on Twitch If you’d like to leave worship music playing in the background through the day, the MTPB Twitch channel now runs a 24/7 replay of past live worship sessions. It loops continuously, shuffled, with a fresh randomized order generated every day. No commentary, no breaks, no “starting soon” screens — just continuous piano. Find it at twitch.tv/musictoprayby. 24/7 Worship Replay on Rumble For folks who prefer Rumble, the same 24/7 worship piano replay is also live there: rumble.com/c/c-7892744. Same playlist, separate stream. The intent with both is simple: have continuous worship piano available on every major platform so that no one has to switch ecosystems to find it. The 6 AM Poll — Standing Pat for Now Last week I asked when most of you spend time with God in the morning, hoping to figure out whether to shift the 6 AM CT live stream earlier or later. The honest answer: nobody replied. Which is a perfectly valid signal too — if 6 AM isn’t bothering anyone, I’ll leave it where it is. We’ll stay at 6:00 AM CT, weekdays for now. The door’s still open if that changes — just drop me a line via any of the socials or comment below. Closing — A Prayer for Strength in Weakness Rather than embed the prayer as text this week, I’m going to drop in the actual Prayer Short. This one is currently the most-watched of the past week or so — a prayer drawn from 2 Corinthians 12, where Paul writes that God’s power is made perfect in our weakness. If embeds aren’t loading for you, the direct link is youtu.be/9eiHEHxHL64. We’re past 70 prayers published at this point, all searchable under musictoprayby (one word, no spaces) on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X, and now Telegram. Thank you for listening, and thank you for praying. The post Music To Pray By Podcast 77 appeared first on Music To Pray By.

    30 min

  8. May 16

    Music To Pray By Podcast 76

    Six weeks in. Podcast 76 is up, and I think we can officially call this a routine. Not a lot of new equipment news this week — the pipeline is settling into a real rhythm, which is the goal. The MTPB weekly process from recording to publish to Prayer Shorts is more refined than I’ve ever had it, and I’m starting to feel like I can think about music again instead of about workflow. That’s the dream. A Quick Apology — The Duplicated Shorts If you follow the Prayer Shorts on YouTube, Instagram, or Facebook, you may have noticed the same prayer landing twice within seconds of each other a couple of times this past week. That was on me — an interaction between my scheduler and the post-queue at Postiz that I didn’t see coming. The short version: deleting a scheduled post on the back end didn’t actually cancel its publish job, so when I rescheduled, both copies fired to each platform. I’ve since put an automated trap in place that detects and removes the duplicates within about two minutes of when they fire, so it shouldn’t happen again. Thank you for your patience — the cleanup is in place now. A Question for You — What Time Do You Pray? One thing I’ve been wondering for a while: is 6:00 AM the right time for the live stream? I picked it early on because that’s when I tend to sit down at the piano, but I have no idea whether that’s actually convenient for the people who are listening. Could be earlier, could be later — I want to know. So I’d like to take a quick poll. What time do you most often spend time with God in the morning? (All times Central.) 5:30 AM CT 6:00 AM CT (current stream time) 6:30 AM CT 7:00 AM CT Reply in the comments below, send me a DM on any of the socials (musictoprayby, one word, on YouTube / Instagram / TikTok / Facebook / X), or just email me. I’ll let the results decide where the live time lands. If the answer is “earlier than 6” or “later than 6,” I’ll make the move — and announce the new time a week before it changes so nobody’s surprised. Summer Is Coming — Heads-Up on a Travel Gap Our boys wrapped up school last week, which means our family is finally going to take the road trip we’ve been planning all year. It’s a long one — Texas to Virginia and back through the Smoky Mountains — so there will be a stretch in late July / early August where the 6 AM streams pause. I’ll announce exact dates closer to it, and the Prayer Shorts will keep rolling out the whole time so you’ll still have something to pray with each morning. Just wanted to give the heads-up early. Closing Same compile process as Podcast 75: live worship piano from the morning streams, stitched into a single listen. The Prayer Shorts are still rolling at two a day, 8 AM and 8 PM CT — we’re north of 60 prayers published at this point. If you haven’t found them yet, search musictoprayby (one word, no spaces) on any of the social platforms. And again — please drop your morning-time vote. I want this thing to actually serve the people who are listening. Thank you for listening, and thank you for praying. The post Music To Pray By Podcast 76 appeared first on Music To Pray By.

    35 min
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4.8
out of 5
178 Ratings

About

To Inspire Gods People to Pray!

Information

  • Creator
    Ron Johns
  • Years Active
    2008 - 2026
  • Episodes
    83
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2002-2026 Ron Johns
  • Show Website
    Music To Pray By

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