Tag: father

Target Focused Dads and Husbands – Groupings and Consistency

At least they are on the paper…

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.

What are you aiming for?

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.

Pray in the fire.

“…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.

by corymcglone

Target focused dads and husbands

Photo by Mikhail Nilov: https://www.pexels.com/photo/businessman-man-person-people-6620423/

Something that has been on my mind for a while is a series of thoughts for us dads and husbands to help us shift/readjust/refocus our lives better on what God wants us to do. We are called to lead our families. Some of us had really good role models, others may have had role models who showed us what not to do, and in other cases, we saw what not to do but didn’t know any better and thought that was the usual way of doing things. Hopefully, if you are reading this and are/were in that last category, you know that God brought you to this page for a reason.

As dads and husbands, we need to be leaders and examples within our families and to those around us. Older husbands and dads need to take the time to mentor new husbands and new dads. As a young dad, I had no clue what I was doing. Luckily, I had seen other dads in my life support their wives and daughters, preparing me to be a “girl dad.” That’s the point of me taking time now to sit and write out these thoughts that I feel God has put into my heart and mind. I want to be that support for another dad out there that isn’t sure what to do, or that husband that isn’t sure what step is next.

Over the next few posts I plan to expand on the following 4 concepts:

Be On paper – Use God’s word to know that you are going the right way. If you aren’t even hitting the paper, you have no idea what direction you are going. Also looking at this a something that we as men hate to do, read directions. God has already laid out so many plans, templates, frameworks, for our lives. We are just typically too stubborn to check the directions.

Get Grouped – Once you are hitting paper, you have to be consistent. Develop a habit of staying in the word, get into groups with other dads and husbands, start into reading plans on the YouVersion Bible app. Work on improving you direction and consistency

Photo by RDNE Stock project: https://www.pexels.com/photo/nature-dirty-wall-vintage-6668983/

Be On target – You’ve gotten on paper, you’ve put together some good groupings, now it’s time to make sure that you are actually hitting the main target. Some of us may be happy enough just putting consistent shots on a steel plate and hearing that satisfying ting. But how far out is that target? What happens when hitting that target becomes too easy and we get bored? Do we get too relaxed and start missing?

Photo by : https://www.pexels.com/photo/bullseye-center-illustration-round-416832/

Get Centered – Hitting the Bullseye. Let’s face it, no matter how long you have been shooting guns, archery, throwing darts, there is a satisfaction that comes from placing that perfect shot or throw dead-center, when you put a few grouped right together, you can feel invincible. But don’t get too proud, because that next shot might be a out of true arrow, a lighter load, a bent vane, and that perfect score just got a miss or a 2. Staying centered, but being able to recover when you make a mistake is going to be the critical when going though life.

Everything I hope to get out during this, is about recovering from that bad shot. Having a group of other people, other dads, other husbands around you, that can help you get back on target, or maybe get on target for the very first time, is critical. We all need a person or persons in our life that is going to help us make corrections, especially when they are correcting things that we can’t even see that we are doing.

That’s it for this post. Be sure to check back in soon for the next part of this series.

—Cory

by corymcglone

Senselessness and Ignorance

The past 3 days have been extremely painful to look at the news and to look at social media.  As if the senseless deaths of 3 people, wasn’t enough to turn you stomach, the fighting amongst people posting and trolling, has made me need to just go bang my head against a wall.  Anytime things like this happen, you are going to have people become irrational, people are going to be scared, people are going to need to vent.  But seeing posts that start calling others names and belittling the original poster or others commenting, how is the world is that even going to be productive or constructive.  

ignorant

adjective

1.lacking in knowledge or training; unlearned:

2.lacking knowledge or information as to a particular subject or fact:
3. uninformed; unaware.

4.due to or showing lack of knowledge or training:

What I want to vent about here is the senselessness of what has happened over the last couple of days in Baton Rouge and Minnesota.  No I don’t have all the facts, but I have seen multiple articles and the videos, and have been sick to my stomach all day over this.  What I don’t understand, is the abuse of using lethal force is these situations.  Self defense/Fear for your life has a fine line.  Writing this as a Black Belt, I was always trained to know that there was a line for self-defense.  If I were to get into a fight and knock the other person down and control them until someone comes, that would be fine.  If I were to knock this person out and then continue to hit them while they were on the ground, I have crossed a line because, I am no longer in danger.  This is based on the assumption that there are no weapons also.  And I won’t lie, weapons make things go to another level, but what we have seen in the past couple days, while these men were carrying guns, neither appear to have been reaching for them.  I wasn’t there,  I can’t talk to that point, but what I can say is that 2 men were killed in front of people, one in front of his fiancé and a 4 year old.  This is the one that tears me up the most.  There was a 4 year old girl in the back seat.  This man told the office that he had CCDW, and had it on him.  He was reaching for his license when he was shot 4 times.  The officer’s voice in the video that the fiancé started is panicked, while she remains calm.  This is senseless.  

Baton Rouge, a father is shot multiple times after being already put on the ground.  6 shots into someone that is already down.  Senseless.

I have friends and family in law enforcement, I do not envy their job.  In this line of duty, you know that you are putting your life on the line, you are sworn to serve and protect.  Where are the stun guns, tazers, or wounding shots. And I know that for every story like these there are 9 more stories of police officers doing good things, but at the end of the day, even one senseless killing is too many.

Now, as I’m writing this, we have vigilantes in Dallas, shooting police officers.  Violence breeds violence.  Eye for an eye tooth for a tooth no longer works.  We have to realize this at some point people.  What is this solving?  Nothing at all.  We just have more dead people, more fatherless children and husbandless wifes.  

Matthew 22:36-40New International Version (NIV)

36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Racism, ignorance, and lack of good ol common sense, is tearing our country apart.  America once, the land of opportunity (for some), has shown itself in the recent years as it’s true self.  A country of power hungry priveledged people.  A country where the bullies get their way.  A country where if you don’t like something or someone, or you like someone’s something you just take it from them.  This ignorance has been a staple of our country for years, we all think about WW2, and Hitler rounding up all of the Jews, but what about our own country, rounding up all Japanese Americans or those that looked Asian, and putting them in internment camps.  No the government didn’t mass murder them, but still they were forced to give up their homes, businesses, everything with no choice.  

To all of you who have gotten you panties in a wad over the last year with the #BlackLivesMatter movement and been offended because you feel that All lives matter, it’s not that anyone is saying that there is a difference in the value of one life to another.  It comes down to those are the lives that are being ripped away in such public ways by senselessness, that it can’t go unnoticed.  The best comparison that I have seen on this was in a comment today comparing BLM to Breast Cancer Awareness.  Is breast cancer more important than another cancer, no all cancer sucks, all lives are precious.  

When are we as a country going to get it.  We have to push for change.  Change in Government, change in laws, change in priorities, changes in standards.  I get freaked out more and more all the time to think about what we will become as a country.  It’s not about stricter gun laws, and who can get guns.  Violence is going to happen when people don’t give a ______.  It could be a rock, a gun, a knife, a fist, it doesn’t matter.  As long as there are people who care, there is hope for this world.

by corymcglone