Christ – Ramblings of a Christian Father

Target Focused Dads and Husbands – Living on Target Part 1 – Relationships

Target from a recent range trip used to sight-in a couple of different rifles

We have reached the point where you know where your shots are going, and most of your shots are in the same spot. Now, you are working to hit your target. Do you know what your target even is, though? Maybe you are looking down range at a paper with 4, 5, 6, or 8 different smaller targets, maybe you have just one big target down range, or maybe you are aiming at flying clays coming from many different directions. No matter what or where your target is, you have to pay attention and be focused on where it is or where it will be.

Over the next few posts I want to focus on the targets of relationships, love, family, careers, and yourself. I want to spend time looking at these ideas, how these targets intersect, and how to adjust the target, when it wasn’t really the one you should have been aiming for.

Relationships

When you sit down and look at your relationships, how many of them are superficial, and how many are meaningful? What relationships drive you in your daily life? I’m not only talking about relationships with people but relationships with things. Many of us are known by our titles, our things, our hobbies, our friends, or our families.

How do you describe yourself when you meet someone? Does it sound like, “Hi, I’m Cory, and I’m the CIO of… “ or “Hi, I’m Cory. I’m a Christian husband and father who does IT.” What are you known for or as? What have you worked towards? Do you need to adjust how you’re known? How you introduce yourself may point to where you place your value in yourself. Do you want to be known as the Jeep guy or the guy with that awesome truck? Do you want to be known for being a big shot at your workplace? We all have a drive for success, but how do you define success for yourself? Is your main relationship focus based on success? What in your life determines success? Growing up in a small town, success looked like owning a Cadillac, a BMW, or a Mercedes would show you were successful. Living in a certain section of town pointed to being successful as well. After moving from a small town to a bigger city, all the cars that weren’t common back home were now everywhere. The section of town that would mean you were “successful” became more out of reach. When we measure success with things, things are always going to change. A relationship with success is bound to be an ever-changing and moving target. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have a focus on being better; I’m saying that we need to know how we are defining success and not letting success define us. Also, when looking at a relationship with others based on your “successes,” what happens if and when those things go away? What happens if the company downsizes or gets new leadership and you lose your high-power position? If those relationships with others go away just because you no longer have this specific thing, how deep and strong was that relationship to begin with? Changing how you are known can help you recognize what relationships you need to be focused on. If you didn’t have your job or career, who would you be? Can you describe yourself without talking about work?

What does your relationship with God look like? I’m not talking about religion; God wants to walk daily with you. God wants a relationship with you; that’s how he built us. We were designed to be in a relationship. For many of us, we don’t like vulnerability, but having a relationship with God gives us that foundational relationship and friendship that fills the hole in our heart and soul. When I talk about a relationship with God, I have to go back to the other posts from this series and remind all of us that we can only get closer to Him by spending time getting on paper with Him. We HAVE to spend time learning more about Him, talking to Him in prayer, and listening to Him when we pray. When you started dating your spouse/significant other/baby momma, you didn’t just say, “ Hi, I’m __________, will you be part of my life?” You spent time getting to know them, their likes and dislikes, finding out more about them, getting to the point that you were of one mind. This is what God wants to have with us. He wants us to be in a loving relationship with Him. Still, if we don’t put forth the time and effort to know Him, that relationship will never grow past the superficial, easily broken, not-real relationship many others have. When you look back at the very start of the Bible, God designed us for relationships. He knew we shouldn’t be alone, and He also spent time interacting with Adam.

”Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him.” So the Lord God formed from the ground all the wild animals and all the birds of the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would call them, and the man chose a name for each one. He gave names to all the livestock, all the birds of the sky, and all the wild animals. But still there was no helper just right for him. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. While the man slept, the Lord God took out one of the man’s ribs and closed up the opening. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib, and he brought her to the man.“
‭‭Genesis‬ ‭2‬:‭18‬-‭22‬ ‭NLT‬‬
https://bible.com/bible/116/gen.2.18-22.NLT

God also spent time walking around the garden with Adam and Eve, in the cool air of the evenings. We see that when God came to see them after they had sinned by doing the one thing they weren’t supposed to do. But God still provided for them.

”And the Lord God made clothing from animal skins for Adam and his wife.“
‭‭Genesis‬ ‭3‬:‭21‬ ‭NLT‬‬
https://bible.com/bible/116/gen.3.21.NLT

Through our lives, God wants us to depend on Him, He wants us to have a relationship with Him, and He wants to be in a relationship with us. He is still providing for us; we have to know what and how to look for Him in our daily lives. Sometimes, we may not even see what He is doing until we have gotten way past when it happened. We look back and see, wow, God did something amazing. That is when we need to take the time to refocus on Him and thank Him for always being there, even when we didn’t know it.

The next most important relationship is with your spouse. Most likely, you spent time dating and learning about each other, getting to know each other, and falling in love. Hopefully, you are still falling in love. Dating is when we put in all the front-end work: dressing up and going to dinner, celebrating that six-week anniversary, that three-month anniversary of your first kiss. But sometimes dating and marriage can have times that things become stagnant. It’s easy to look at all the bright, shiny new things in the relationship when everything starts, but what do things look like, when one or both of you have the flu? When someone almost loses or loses a family member? What happens when both of you have a lot of obligations at work?

You have to be careful not to lose sight of each other. It’s fun when you are dating, engaged, newlyweds, and spending your time planning the future. What no one is prepared for is that first fight, the first time the water gets shut off, the day no one remembered to turn on the crockpot. Relationships are work. Relationships take communication and connection from both sides. After almost 20 years of marriage, I’m happy to say that we are still happily married and deeply in love. No, we aren’t the same people we were 20 years ago; that was a few houses and several jobs ago. One thing that we have always kept in mind is that we have to keep working on us; we have to fight for us. We are a team. When we got married, we had a reference to Ecclesiastes 4:12 placed in our wedding rings: “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.” We knew that the 3rd strand in that cord was our relationship with God. We work to build each other up; we have come to know when the other person just needs a little space, and we also know when to call the other one on some BS. Yes, there are times that there have been struggles and stresses, but knowing that we have each other holding each other, holding each other up has allowed us to grow stronger and closer every day and every year. Again, it takes work. It doesn’t just happen. It takes compromise, support, communication, space, understanding. You have to be focused on this relationship because other things will fight for that focus. When you don’t feed and nurture this relationship, it will suffer. You can’t let other relationships take the place of your relationship with your wife. This relationship and your relationship with God should be your main relationship focus.

You can’t just go through the motions with God, you can’t just go through the motions as a husband, and you can’t just go through the motions as a dad. The third relationship I want to focus on is the relationship with your children. We have all seen the sitcoms and movies and stories of the dad who comes home, sits in the recliner with a beer, and falls asleep while the kids want a little attention. As a dad, yes, working hard and showing your kids a strong work ethic is important, but most of the time, your kids would rather have your time than have you buy them something. As dads, we have a big job, we need to love our children’s mother, show our kids what a strong marriage should look like, and we have to try our hardest not to screw them up too much. We don’t have to be perfect, we don’t have to be right all of the time, but we do need to be there. We don’t need to be lost in our phones, hobbies, or ourselves. We also need to be careful not to live through our kids. We should be teaching our kids and helping them grow. We also need to show them that it’s ok to mess up. As dads, we have to admit our mistakes, we have to show our kids how to get up after being knocked down, and we have to teach them how to build their relationships as they grow. If all they see and hear from you, is that they can’t do things right, or they need to work harder so they don’t fail, but you never help them figure out how to do it right, their relationship with you is going to suffer. You are going to be one of the foundational building blocks for their future relationships. If that block is broken, rough, or missing, they are going to find something, potentially harmful to put in that spot. When that block is made out of love, understanding, guidance, and good examples, you are setting the framework for your kid to have an opportunity to build great relationships in the future. At the end of the day just be present with your kids. Be vulnerable around them, love their mother in front of them, show them what a strong relationship with God looks like. They are going to get more out of that than any “thing” you can give or buy them. Doing things with your kids, finding stuff to do together, making memories, and encouraging them, are some of the ways that you can build that relationship. For some of you, it may be late, but it’s never too late to build/fix those relationships.

As you reflect on your relationships, please take a moment to see what ones need to change and how they need to change. Find your key relationships, and focus on God, your wife, and your family. On the relationship target, you may be off from the center, but by making it this far through this post, I’m going to say you are on track to make the needed corrections to hit where you need to on this target. Let your family see you make these adjustments, let them help you, and let other men around you help you. We have to work together; we try to do things alone to prove to ourselves we are strong, but the more strands you add to that cord, the stronger it will be.

March 27, 2024March 27, 2024 by corymcglone

Target Focused Dads and Husbands – Groupings and Consistency

After knowing where your shots are landing, only then you can work on your consistency, your groupings. Groupings are what many of us are simply going for when we go to the range. Are you getting a jagged hole, a clover, are they all in the A zone, did they all hit the plate? What kind of grouping are you going for? If you are just trying to hit the paper, then maybe you aren’t ready to be focused on grouping your shots and improving your consistency. Once you are focused on the idea of “aim small miss small” and you are focused on taking your time and repeating the same actions over and over, then you are building a discipline and habit. The tighter the group, the more consistent you are, the more focused you are, the easier it will be to move on to the next steps of being on the right target and being centered on that target.

As we go through our lives, we develop habits whether we want to or not. Some of these are good habits, some are not so good. These grouped actions, shape our lives, our friendships, our relationships, our marriages, and our families. If you are not consistent, your relationships are going to suffer. If your word, your work, and your actions are all over the place, it will be hard for people to trust you. The people affected are your co-workers, your spouse, your kids, your family, nothing is going to affect just you. Sometimes it might be your actions that affect someone else in a way that you did not expect. If you look at the story of David bringing the ark back in to the city that I referenced in the last post,(2 Samuel 6:1-7, 12-15 and Exodus 25:10-15) David’s actions and desire to move the ark back was good, but he was not doing it the way it should be done. Yes, they were able to start moving it, yes, they got it closer to the city faster with the cart, but God didn’t want it moved that way. God had given specific instructions on how the Ark should be built, moved, who should move it, ages before David ever needed to move it back.

As we take the time to figure out where our shots are landing and how consistent our shots are, we can move that consistency on to the proper target, to the proper place on the target.

Shifting our focus, shifting our priorities, allows us to get into proper alignment. Once we have started to shift our groupings, shift focus, and start to make improvements we will make our lives and the lives of those we love better, eventually. It’s not going to be easy, there are going to be things that continue to fight for our attention, life is going to happen, things aren’t going to go right every day. The true test of our consistency comes from these chances to prove our faith and our training. When issues arise, our training or lack of training will be evident. When we have been consistent in growing in our faith, in growing our relationship with God, and with our family and our support groups, we will be able to go through tough times and come out on the other side. I’m not going to say that you will come out unaffected, but you very well could come out of the fire not smelling like smoke. The more consistent you become, and as you start to move to a better place, you start to focus on the target, you will have to be prepared for attacks from the enemy. These attacks may not be extremely obvious, it could be just that you get to a point where you have more and more on your plate and small things that need pieces of your time. Keeping your priorities in line, and keeping up your consistency, is the only way to win these battles.

“…be earnest and disciplined in your prayers.”

1 Peter 4:7b

So with that, I challenge you to work on your habits over the next few weeks. Work to be more consistent in your prayer life, in your time spent with God, and be intentional in the time you spend with your family. Be intentional watching for those things or those people that pull you away from being consistent, and move them out of your way.

Next post we will talk about being on target, not just on paper and grouped, but what it means to really be grouped near the center of the target.

November 27, 2023November 26, 2023 by corymcglone

But I’m not a very good person

So in contrast to my other post,But I’m a Good Person, I want to flip things around for you a little bit. Again along the lines of Grace being for ALL not SOME. Many people feel that they have too much baggage for God. Too much wrong in their past for God to love or to use them.

So I wanted to give you a list of jacked up people in Bible:

Let’s start here:

Matthew 1:1-2, 6

1The [a]record of the genealogy of [b]Jesus [c]the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham:

2 Abraham [d]was the father of Isaac, [e]Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of[f]Judah and his brothers

6 Jesse was the father of David the king. David was the father of Solomon by [h]Bathsheba who had been the wife of Uriah.

Abraham — Yes, Father Abraham, didn’t believe God could make good on His promise of having a son, because his wife was barren. Had a son with a hand maiden. After his wife got pregnant, he sent off the hand maiden and her son. So here we have an adulterous dead-beat dad…

Jacob — Ever heard the story of Jacob and his brother Esau. Twin boys, Jacob was momma’s boy. Manipulated his brother into giving up his birthright. He also with the help of his mom, tricked his dad Isaac who was dying and going blind, taking his brothers family rights, and making his brother his slave. To the point that his brother Esau wanted to kill him.

David — David was a great man of God. He was a loved ruler of Israel. But verse 6 above says a lot. David had Bathsheba’s husband killed so that he could be with her, after he got her pregnant while her husband was away at war.

Genesis 9:20-21

20 Then Noah began [j]farming and planted a vineyard. 21 He drank of the wine and became drunk, and uncovered himself inside his tent.

Noah — Builder of the Ark, after the flood got drunk and naked.

Exodus 2:11-12

11 Now it came about in those days, when Moses had grown up, that he went out to his brethren and looked on their [c]hard labors; and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his brethren. 12 So he [d]looked this way and that, and when he saw there was no one around, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.

Moses — Leader of God’s people out of Egypt, Holder of the 10 commandments; was a murderer.

Joshua 2:1, 8-9

1 Then Joshua the son of Nun sent two men as spies secretly from Shittim, saying, “Go, view the land, especially Jericho.” So they went and came into the house of a harlot whose name was Rahab, and [a]lodged there.

Now before they lay down, [b]she came up to them on the roof, 9 and said to the men, “I know that the Lord has given you the land, and that the terror of you has fallen on us, and that all the inhabitants of the land have [c]melted away before you.

Rahab — One of a few women in the bible with her own story. She was a harlot. She protected the Israelite spies in Jericho.

Are you feeling any better about what is in your past yet? God has used murderers, drunks, prostitutes, tax collectors, and cheaters.

No matter what your situation is, no matter what you have done in your past, no matter how ruined you feel that you are, God can and will use you. All you have to do is listen to Him, when he is calling to you. He is waiting on you to call out to Him and ask for His grace and forgiveness. He is waiting on YOU to say, Lord I know I’m a sinner, and that I am far from you. I want you in my life. I want to receive your forgiveness and grace. Lord please forgive me and come into my life and make me new. Use me Lord, to reach those around me that are far from you. Clean me Lord and restore me. I know that it is only though you that I can be saved. It is only through you that I am made whole. Thank you Lord for making me whole and saving me. Thank you for your grace and your love and your mercy.

Remember that Grace will always win…

January 21, 2016 by corymcglone