dedication – Ramblings of a Christian Father

Target Focused Dads and Husbands – On Paper

-Quick update here, I thought I had posted this back in October. I just found this post, that should have been the second post in this series sitting in my drafts. I’ve been behind on getting some things together for this series and even though this was supposed to be out before, this feels right 2 months in here in 2024. How are things going with your resolutions? How are things with your changes for 2024? Do you have any idea where you are going this year? Let’s take some time to reflect on how this year is going so far, and make sure we are still grouped, consistent, and On Paper.

If you’ve ever been around someone sighting in a rifle or maybe you’ve been the one doing it, one of your first hopes is just to hit something that you can see. You just want to get on paper. From there you can make corrections, but you just need to know that you are actually making it somewhere. Sometimes that is how we go through life. We might think we are going the right way, but we aren’t even coming close to hitting the what we think we are aiming at.

To figure things out, sometimes it takes moving the paper closer and making other changes. Another way to think about getting on paper is to truly get things down on paper. I’m sure that at some point you’ve heard that the only way to achieve goals is to write them down. The other thing to think about is taking time not only to write your goals but to write down a personal inventory of your strengths and weaknesses. Take the time, to be honest with yourself about your weaknesses and the things that you struggle with. Once we are honest with ourselves and acknowledge our problems, we can start to deal with them.

18And I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. I want to do what is right, but I can’t. 19I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway.

Romans 7:18-19

Getting on paper in this series is, spending time getting into the Bible, get into God’s papers. For many of us, sitting down and taking 5, 10, 15 minutes to read the Bible is a challenge. We will spend hours watching videos, reading reviews on cars, trucks, guns, bows, etc., but when it’s the Bible, we struggle. God has given us the instructions, as much as we hate to read instructions, we need to take the time to find the things that God has laid our for us. At our church of the last few weeks, we have been talking about David moving the Ark of the Covenant back into Jerusalem. When he first started moving it, he did what he thought he should do, put it on a cart, and move it with his power as the mighty ruler that he was. This resulted in one of the people in the group dying when he accidentally touched the Ark. David decided to stop moving the Ark and placed it in someone’s house. When he went back to move it again, David consulted the law and history. God had already told his people, how to properly move the Ark, it should be carried by the poles inserted on each side. (2 Samuel 6:1-7, 12-15 and Exodus 25:10-15)

A good next step for many of us is to find a reading plan, a small 3 day or 5 day devotional using the Bible App on your phone, or look for a Bible in a Year/New Testament in a year Bible. The studies from UNCOMMEN, have been good thought provoking short sessions. These are only 5-6 day commitments at a time. If you miss a few days, you can catch up, or just pick it back up. Taking small steps and making small changes will build the habits that lead to a change in how you handle all things in your life.

Take time over the next few weeks, find a study to do, and do it. Make time for God, make time for your family, make time for your wife. Move things out of the way and get yourself on paper. Get to where you have some idea of you stand, where you are aiming, where you are going. From there you can start making the corrections and building the habits that I’ll talk about next time, when we talk about groupings and consistency.

—Cory

February 26, 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

Persistent stubborn dedication or Insanity

“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.”
― Albert Einstein

Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers
Remember when you’re talkin’ to the man upstairs
That just because he doesn’t answer doesn’t mean he don’t care
Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers
–Garth Brooks Unanswered Prayers

Jesus went away from there, and withdrew into the district of Tyre and Sidon. And a Canaanite woman from that region came out and began to cry out, saying, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is cruelly demon-possessed.” But He did not answer her a word. And His disciples came and implored Him, saying, “Send her away, because she keeps shouting at us.” But He answered and said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and began to bow down before Him, saying, “Lord, help me!” And He answered and said, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” But she said, “Yes, Lord; [m]but even the dogs feed on the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus said to her, “O woman, your faith is great; it shall be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed at once.
— Matthew 15:21-27

A few weeks ago I wrote a post on passion. After really thinking about it, I started to see how your passion for something could get you called insane, or have people praise you for your dedication to whatever it is. This past week I really felt God leading me into this post about how we pray for things and how we display our faith, passion, and even our work ethic.

It’s been a few crazy weeks around the house with Easter, birthdays, work trips, vacation, and the many other things that are just part of daily life. So when I felt God placing this message on me I took some extra time to pray and look at my own faith and prayer life. As a family we pray EVERY night before the munchkin goes to sleep and then we will all say at least one thing that we are thankful for from the day we just had. But every night, as we are praying the munchkin will have to insert her request to Jesus, and it is the same every night, for her to have a baby brother or baby sister, and she will also pray for people that we had said were sick weeks ago, even if we have forgotten they were sick, she makes sure that we tell Jesus to be with them.

But the are things that we as Christians, find ourselves constantly asking God for: wisdom and guidance in career decisions and all decisions in general, healing, financial help/guidance. But at some point even the most dedicated Christians will fall victim to fear and doubt, but it is here that we must remember that God’s timing is not the same as ours. Just when we think that we have things all figured out, God shows us that he is still in control. So even when it seems like our prays are nor being heard, we know that God hears the voices of all of his children.

Along with the verse I have quoted above , another prime example of how God feels about us in found in Matthew 7:7-11—

7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. 9 Or what man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? 11 If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!

It’s spelled out clearly, that when we go to God and just ask, if it is his will for us, he will grant that request. There are times, many times, that the things we ask for are not the best things for us. I mean honestly think about it as a parent, if you kid is asking for Ice cream for dinner, you are going to say no. In the same way, we may not see how our request will hurt us in the long run, but God will eventually give us something else and we forget about what we were originally looking for, or we see that is was actually a better alternative to what we had been praying so hard for.

So while many people will look at our faith as partial insanity, we pray for the same things all the time and get the same results, but we expect something different. This is where we must insure that our faith is strong enough to remember and trus that our heavenly father still knows what is best for us. God wants us to trust him, to pursue him daily, and to be devoted to him in our daily lives. It is this stubborn blind passionate devotion that sets us apart as Christians. While many do not understand why we believe what we do, we know what God can, will, and has done for each of us in our lives.

So take time to think about the way that you pray, what you have been praying for, and also the things that God has done for you in the past. Look for the other solution to your problems, because sometimes we are so focused on what we want, we don’t see the answer God is placing directly in front of us.

April 29, 2012April 29, 2012 by corymcglone

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