Author: corymcglone

I'm a Christian, Father, Husband, Geek. That likes to call it as I see it. I'm not here to be an expert on anything, but I want to be a inspiration to someone.

Married Mondays – No I in We

Ecclesiastes 4:12 (NLT)

A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken.

There is no I in Team and there is no I in We.  As a married couple the last time anything you said with an I mattered is when you said “I Do.”  From that point forward You don’t matter.  All of your decisions, problems, issues, and life is shared.  You are now in a partnership.  All of your things have become our things, all of the I want should reflect a WE need.

I headlined this week with the Bible verse that my wife and I have engraved inside of our wedding rings.  We decided earlier in our relationship that our relationship and our marriage would be based on us being a team, and being equal partners.  We also held strong the fact that God would be that third strand and fully integrated into our lives and relationship.

You have to make sure that you are living your life as a team. Too many times you see marriages that start out great, but then they discover that they are both too selfish, or at least one person in the marriage is too selfish.  Marriage is a partnership, it is a true team sport.  For a marriage to work well, both husband and wife must be equal partners.  There are going to be somethings that one is better at than the other, but they will end up complimenting each other.

If you find yourself focusing only on you and the things that want, take a step back, and reset your focus. Make sure that your decisions are based on the best for both of you.  Make sure that you are communicating about decisions no matter how small they may seem.

Being a team and communicating isn’t only about making decisions and money.  It is about sharing responsibility.  It is about working together through everything.  It’s sharing the workload at home, it’s doing things together and working through even the most mundane tasks, TOGETHER.

If you have been having a rough day, you need to make sure that you are talking to your spouse.  Taking time out to talk about what is going on in your life and what was good and bad in both of your days no matter how small, are the extra things that will continually bring you closer together.

Ruth 1:16-17 (NKJV)

But Ruth said:

“Entreat me not to leave you,
Or to turn back from following after you;
For wherever you go, I will go;
And wherever you lodge, I will lodge;
Your people shall be my people,
And your God, my God.
Where you die, I will die,
And there will I be buried.
The Lord do so to me, and more also,
If anything but death parts you and me.”

This week take time to focus on each other.  Take time to realize the things that your other half does that keep life moving.  Make sure that you thank them for the things that they do.  Make sure that you show them that you appreciate all that they do.  Take on some of the things that they do and give them a break.  Make sure that they know you will always be there.

Be the shoulder that they need, be the ear that is there to listen and hear, be the hands that help.

by corymcglone

Married Mondays – Edition One

For the last few weeks I’ve been thinking through starting this series, so here it goes.

Married Mondays First Edition

Look I’m not a counselor, I’m not a specialist, I’m no expert.  I’m a married man, with a kid, and full-time job.  I have to make time for my family and life.

I wanted to take this first post and talk about marriage and being there for your wife.

Guys listen, once you get married life changes.  You are no longer a bachelor.  You are responsible for more than just you now.  I’ve talked before about one of the easiest things to do is to say you would die for someone, It’s the long time saying and heroic thing to do, but 99% of the time you’ll never have to do it.  What matters more is that you are willing to do the dishes for her.  You are willing to put her first, make her take a break, and you do the chores around the house that you hate to do.  Also face it, you’re not just you anymore.  Yes, you can go hang out with the boys, but don’t neglect her.  Make sure she is getting more attention than your buddies or your video games.

Look we all hear the stories of he/she really let themselves go after they got married.  Guys, you put in the effort while you were dating and engaged,  Why does that have to stop now that your married?  Your wife wants you to be the man she fell in love with.  I know stuff gets in the way and keeps us from doing other things, but come on at least make an effort.

Take your wife out on a date.  Date nights become a memory if you don’t keep them up after your married for a while.  You get stuck in the mundane tasks of life and get stuck in your routines.  Make it a priority to go out just the two of you.  And let me add, SET THE PHONE DOWN.  We spend too much time thinking about that next post, tweet, selfie, or whatever and don’t focus on the one that is right in front of us.

Spend quality time together.  As life goes on, it will be more about the quality of the time you get together than the quantity of time you get together.  You may only get a few hours of true time together each day, but make the most of it.  Make sure that you are communicating.  Talk, Listen, and Hear.  Talk to her, tell her about your day, tell her what is bothering you at work.  Listen to her, listen to the details of what she is sharing with you.  Hear what she is and is not saying.  Let’s face it guys, we need to all make sure that we hear what she is NOT saying.  Ladies we aren’t mind readers, we try to figure you all out, but throw us a bone here.  Some of us are doing the best that we can.  Guys in all seriousness, it is this communication that we as humans long for. Communication is what will build and strengthen your relationships.

My challenge to you this week – Take your wife on a date.  It doesn’t even have to be a night out.  Do something that you did when you were dating, grab some take out and watch a movie.  The other challenge for this week is to take 20 minutes a day and talk to your wife.  It doesn’t matter if it’s just about what was involved in each of your days, or about how much you love her and love being with her.  Talk, be genuine, be open, be the man that she fell in love with.  It doesn’t matter if you have been together for years, weeks, or months.  Work on these things and become closer to each other.

by corymcglone

Getting back to the basics…

Yesterday and today, I was blessed with the chance to be the production engineer for a training at our church.  Earlier in the week I received a mass text looking for someone to work the training on Friday night and Saturday, and I figured that someone else had already answered and was setup.  But I responded later in the evening anyway, and I was still needed, so being me, I said sign me up.  I had no clue what I was going to be sitting in on at that point.  The training was on prayer and healing…

Praying no matter what, is what we need to be looking at.  It is in God’s hands not yours.  You will at times just be overcome with the pain of someone else.  Too many times people pray in condemnation, people pray for people and air the dirty laundry that they know about them, and push disbelief out to people.  Many times people will pray for show, or will blame the person that does not have their prayer answered, or will reason with the issue – it’s a sanctified pain…

To me more than the Friday night teaching and the sessions on Saturday, was the feeling of the Spirit during worship.  I have been in church all of my life.  I have been working with church praise teams for many years now too.  While I’ve heard and felt God’s presence many times before during worship, this morning I felt something that I hadn’t felt for a while.  And I felt God really laying this message on me.  But I couldn’t get the song “Heart of Worship” out of my head.  The opening line of the song, kept repeating itself –

When the music fades
All is stripped away
And I simply come

So many times we get caught up in the entire production of “church” today, and we don’t really move forward in Worship.  We play church too much.  Now, I’m not talking about what churches to today, but more of what the attendees do.  I myself find myself just showing up.  Too many times sitting in service I find myself thinking – I would do this with the sound, that was off-key, That is off beat…  Many of us show up on Sundays or Saturdays and go through the motions.  We like the beat of the songs, we like the concert that many churches have each week.  But that brings me to the point that God was driving into me this morning; the worship session at this training that started out both days was one guy and an acoustic guitar.

You could feel as he led the room in worship that he was pressing in to God’s spirit for himself.  It is that sincerity that can be felt.  It is getting yourself away from the noise and the show, as I thought back on the other times, that I had felt God the most during worship, for me, it has been the times that it was a simple set.  Not a full band, sometimes it was just voices, at times it was an old hymn.  The only formula for getting close to God, is opening your heart.  It is knowing that no matter what, you are God’s child, and that even if His answer isn’t the one you wanted, or His “lack” of an answer, you still know that he is there with you and for you.

The belief that God is with us no matter what, and that we are His.  We are His hands and feet, in all that we do.  We don’t know His full plan, we only see the glimpses that He reveals to us.

16 Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to him, “King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. 17 If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us[c] from Your Majesty’s hand. 18 But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.” 

Daniel 3:16-18 (NLT)

To me these are the basics:

  • God is God
  • God waits on us to open our hearts to Him
  • We don’t know what he has next for us, but asking for a glimpse is fine.
  • And to steal a line from Garth Brooks – Just because he doesn’t answer, doesn’t mean he don’t care

I challenge you to put away the noise of the things around you.  Take some quite time with God, this doesn’t have to be time in silence, but take time to just wait for God.  Spend time in the Bible, we won’t always hear God in a loud booming voice, but He reveals himself to us in different ways.  But it is in our time pushing into Him and concentrating on Him, that gets us back to the basics.

by corymcglone