Tag: Christian

Married Mondays – No Mulligans

Over the past couple weeks I have heard so many people talking about time and how no matter what we can’t get it back.  We all have the same number of hours every day, we all get 24 hours each day.  It’s what we do with this time everyday that matters.

“Time is free, but it is priceless.

You can’t own it, but you can use it.

You can’t keep time, but you can spend it.

Once you’ve lost it,

you can never get it back.”

–Harvey McKay

Recently at our church in Kentucky and in Ohio we had a series backed up by secular movies.  The weeks that involved time used Interstellar and About Time.  Both were focusing on trying to do things differently and trying to change your past.  We don’t get that chance.  We can’t go back in time and change our decisions.  We can only make the most of the time that we have right now, and what we can do differently going forward.  We have to value the time that we have with our family, our loved ones, our friends.

A couple of the most interesting things that I have heard about our time these past few weeks have been that it’s a bank.  We must invest into others lives, before we withdraw too much from them.  We have to be careful how we withdraw from others lives, and make sure that we have invested properly into this bank.  We get out of people what we put into them.

The other example was around a man putting gum balls in a jar that equaled the number of days between then and when his son would go off to college.  Every day he removed one knowing that it was one day that he could never get back with his son.  Our pastor in Ohio took this a step further and placed gum balls in a jar for every year between now and when he would be 76 – The average age of a man in the United States when he dies.  Yes, this seems morbid, but put it into perspective how much longer you have with your loved ones.  I want to take this a step further, the average age of women at death is estimated at around 81.  How many gum balls do you have left with your spouse?  How many gum balls do you have left before your kid or kids go off to college?  How many gum balls do you have left with your parents?

I want to leave you with this challenge this week.  Shut up and listen.  Stop focusing on what you have to do tomorrow or next week.  Focus on what you can do with your family today.  Focus on what you can do as a family tonight.  Spend this week going just a little slower and looking at what you have around you.  We are now in the fall, leaves are changing, day light doesn’t last as long, find a spot to look at the trees or look at the stars.  Look at the beauty in the world around you.  Invest in the lives of your loved ones, invest in the lives of your friends, invest in the lives of those that you come across every day.  Do something for someone else, give the server at the restaurant a compliment along with that tip, pay for the person behind you in the drive through, Turn off you work brain at the end of the day.  I have to admit that I’m a fan of the new Hyundai commercial that says “When did leaving work on time become a badge of courage?”  Leave work at work, focus on what is right in front of you.  You cannot get time back that you miss out on with your family.  Your child only takes their first steps once.  There is only one first time for anything.

Take a look at this video, and have a great week.

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

Be above the mix…

This past week, I had one of those moments where the most random thing just sparked an idea that I couldn’t shake.  “You need to be above the mix…”  I heard this in two different episodes of one of our favorite new shows, Empire.  Both times she was listening to a new track, and this was her suggestion, “be above the mix,” “Don’t hide behind the music.”

I just keep thinking of this in real life.  So many times in life we hide behind, what we want others to see and hear.  We are scared to stand out and be different.  To some comparing life to music production and songs, won’t make any sense, to others it’s going to click like it did for me.  When you listen to a number of today’s top songs, you will hear a lot of the same beats, you will hear the beats better than the lyrics, you hear words not lines.  Today songs come out, many sound the same, sale incredibly great, but the meaning is not there.  Songs are made to give people what they want to hear, they give that great beat to move to.

Many of us live our lives this exact same way.  We hide behind what we know others want to see or hear, we spend so much time doing what others want, we forget ourselves.  It’s the people who step up,  go above the mix, those that let their voice be heard, that speak clearly and with meaning and purpose, that are remembered.  These are the people who make a difference.

Are you willing to be above the mix and not hide behind the idea of who you are, but truly be you?  Are you willing to be the parent that says, my kid isn’t going to do that or I’m a parent not a friend?  Are you willing to be that husband that actually listens to his wife, that does the laundry and the dishes to give your wife a break?  Are you willing to be that friend, that slaps your best friend back to reality when they are just being plain stupid?  Are you willing to be that student, that stops the bully, that sets the example for the rest of the team, for the rest of the class?

Take just one day, and put yourself above the mix, put yourself above where others think you should be, and then prove why you should be there.  If you’re stuck in a hole, is up to you to grab the rope.  If your voice is far below the drum machine and the bass, you have to choose to move that fader up.  Others can put the equipment there, others can help only as much as you let them.  It is up to you to make the call to get it moving.

by corymcglone