Tag: guidance

Married Mondays – Old School

Over the past few weeks, I know that I have repeatedly, wrote about shutting off your devices and spending good old fashioned quality time with your spouse and loved ones.  This week I want to step past just talking about things to do with your spouse and hit on things to do as a family.

As we get further into the holiday season, take time to focus on what truly matters most.  Many of us just finished up Thanksgiving, and still have days worth of left overs.  Many of us went out for Black Friday sales on Thursday and through the weekend, and many more of us will be spending time going through all of the Cyber Monday/Cyber Week deals.  These aren’t the things that matter.  What truly matters is looking at what you can do as a family to touch those around you.  Maybe, as a family, you can start a tradition of doing Operation Christmas Child(a little late for this one now,) Angel Tree, Toys for Tots, or working with one of the many other charities out there.  As a family we have made it a point to do something every year.  For less than you would spend on junk that you don’t need, you can use that on someone else.  We tend to fill our lives with stuff, and we retreat to our STUFF to make us Happy, but then we just need the newest thing, or the thing that is better than someone else’s.  And we get stuck in a cycle of want.  Let’s put it in perspective, the phone that many of you are reading this on, will cost you over $600 ($10-30/month at a time.)  If you feel that you can use that same phone for a year longer, what could you do for someone else, for another family, for someone in another county.  As a family take a moment to do something for someone else.  We are now a global community, from your house in the US, you can with a simple click, buy chickens for a family in another country.

This week’s title I took from the book my daughter is reading right now Diary of A Wimpy Kid : Old School.  It has taken her a little while to understand what it is really about.  From what I have seen of it so far is one of the things that I have been touching on over the past few weeks.  Stepping away from technology, actually communicating with words from your mouth, and enjoying what is around you.  Enjoying the outdoors, enjoying company, enjoying each other.

For our marriages and for our families, shutting down the electronics, and spending time playing, using your imagination, talking, and being present changes everything.  The past couple weeks, my wife and I have had the chance to just chill at the house after the munchkin has gone to bed.  It has been awesome to unplug, not watch a show or anything, but spend time together with the Christmas tree on.  We have been able to take this little bit of time to catch up with each other, and put into practice what I’ve been writing these past few weeks.

Also as we get further into the holiday season, I encourage you to make sure that you are taking time out as a couple and as a family, to refocus and rebalance your needs and wants.  Focus on the things that you can do together as a couple and/or as a family, that don’t involve the TV, computer, or game system.  Pull out an old board game, do something that requires imagination, and give them your full attention.  The worries of tomorrow can wait until tomorrow.  Don’t make you family, your spouse, your loved ones, compete for your attention. Go Old School, shut down and have family time.

by corymcglone

Married Mondays — United

Welcome back to another Monday!  I’ve gone back and forth on what to talk about this week.  I’ve finally went with being United.  To me this takes being a team, being partners, being there, to another level.  When you get married you are referred to as one mind, one body, and one soul.  You are United.  You stand together as Mr. and Mrs.  You are now one unit.  Again, you will have different strengths and weaknesses, you will have different opinions on things at times, but when it comes to big things you must be united together.

Standing up for something, believing in something, standing strong together, is how to truly build you relationship and shape the future for generations to follow.  It is being united as parents, that shape your children’s futures.  Just being partners in your marriage works for a period of time, then for many that season of life ends and another season starts with a new life coming into yours.  Now the decisions have gone from what do you and I need, to what do WE need.  Life changes.   The partnership and sharing of responsibility now becomes, who is changing the diapers, the diaper genie, doing the 3 AM feeding…  Face it if it’s both of you together that’s great but at some point someone is going to be in someone’s way.

And it’s easier as the kids are younger, but even at an early age, your kids will know if you aren’t united.  If one is the “fun” parent and one isn’t, kids are going to play at that.  They don’t know that they are picking one over the other, their kids they want to have fun and be kids.  And kids are kids, not bargaining chips, not leverage.  Your kids are going to model their future relationships off of what they see in your house.  If that is a life of manipulation and fighting, they are more likely to go toward that type of relationship in the future.  If they see parents, that are truly in love with each other, that take time for each other, and time for the kids, that show that they know where the proper priorities are, they are more likely to have a relationship that is long lasting.

I am very happy to say that my wife and I both come from families that were like that.  After around 30 years or more of marriage, our parents are still together.  We had great examples growing up, and I feel that is why our marriage has been successful up to this point.  We saw what it looked like, to work as a team, stick to decisions, and be dedicated to each other.

This week I challenge you to make sure that you and your spouse, are on the same track.  Make sure that you have the same vision for your family.  Make sure that you are setting the example for your kids, of what a God filled, love filled marriage looks like.  And if you still can, thank those you helped shape your marriage and your life.

Thank you Bob and Deb and Rick and Jazmina, for shaping us and being an example of how to work through things and be united.

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