Tag: Jesus

New Year Same Goal

Every year, many of us do the same things: we make New Year’s resolutions. I’ll lose weight, I’ll go to the gym, I’ll have a dry January, I’ll do this, I’ll do that. By mid-February, you haven’t seen the gym in days or weeks, you haven’t lost any weight, and well, that first Friday back to work was a long week, and you just needed something to help you relax, or you were celebrating a birthday, a promotion, a proposal… We all end up breaking promises we make to ourselves at some point; some make it longer than others, but at some point, we lose focus.

For me, this year is about focus. I was looking back through some old notes from 2019, where I started the year strong, I was fixing my focus on the bible and on God. I made it to February 6th, then had a note on the 12th, but that was it. So many times, we have the best intentions, and then we will say something like, “Life happened.” Yes, life happens, but what we have to determine is what we are going to do and adjust as life happens. When you think you have things figured out and a plan, remember the old saying: “If you want to make God laugh, make a plan.” 

Think back over how many times you had things figured out, then there is a death in the family, a car that breaks down, a water line that busts, a lay-off at work, someone gets sick, or something else that just messed up your plans. What happened? Did God take care of it? Was the result better than the one you were looking for? Sometimes, it is extremely hard to see what is ahead when we are directly in the storm, but if we have a solid foundation and a steady focus, we are more likely to hear and see what direction God wants us to go.

Goldendoodle laying on a porch

One of the things that has been constantly in my mind since probably last October comes to mind every time I’m walking my dog. Does God feel like I do walking my dog while walking with me? That might not make any sense at all, but let me expand on that a little bit. Our “mini” Goldendoodle seems to always walk like a bloodhound, nose to the ground, sniffing everywhere, stopping and cutting in different directions. I have no clue what he is smelling; it could be where another dog has walked, a rabbit was, who knows. - Stay with me.- He goes to do his business, and a car comes by, or another dog 4 streets over barks, or the wind moves in a different way, and nope, that spot isn’t good anymore. We have to go half a block up and then back to the same spot that is now good again. Other times, on our walks, he will just bark for no real reason or bark at another dog that is minding its own business. So, where am I going with this? 

Are we spending our days walking with God but not staying on the path that He wants to take us on? Are we so distracted by the things around us that we forget what we are here to do? How often have you felt God gently pull you back onto the path or calmly tell you to come on and do what you need to? How often have you felt God drag you back to the path and correct you? How often do we find ourselves yelling for no reason, picking fights we won’t win, yelling because someone else somewhere did it too?

If you are constantly distracted, take some time to slow down and fix your focus. The longer you are pulling away and doing your own thing, the more of the good things God has you will miss. At the end of the day, when God wants you to do something, you won’t have a choice. 

18 Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.”

19 The angel said to him, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. 20 And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their appointed time.”

Luke 1:18-20

Take time, as you start this year, to adjust your focus and your ears, eyes, and heart to what God has next for you. It might not make sense at first, but the more you lean into it, the more you seek him for clarity on it, the more you seek guidance from others, the more in focus your life will be.

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

Manual Focus

Retina Reflex SLR

So many times in life we lose our focus.  We need to adjust our lives back into focus, and get back in touch with what matters.

I’ve spent the last few weeks thinking through this post, and reflecting on the start of this year and what the new year means and the new beginnings that it brings.  It is when we take our eyes off of what is most important, that we lose focus and lose our way.  When you look through the Bible, you find many stories of true Bible heroes, that lost their focus, lost their way, and then eventually came back to the life God had called them to.

The first three that come to Samson, David, and Peter. Samson, lost his focus, blinded by the lies of Delilah and feeling that he could go about things on his own, was blinded literally by his enemies.  But with his last breaths, he prayed, that God would bless him with power one last time, and defeated more Philistines in that moment as he crashed the temple.  David, lost his focus to lust for Bathsheba, lost a child, and lost his way.  But in the end learned from his mistakes, and changed.  And the story of Peter walking on the water is to me the prime example of having, losing, and regaining focus, in a very short amount of time.  As soon as Peter stepped out of the boat and had his eyes focused on Jesus he was walking along just fine.  But it is the exact moment that he took his eyes off of Jesus, and looking at everything that was around him, he began to sink.

It is the times that we take our eyes off of what God has for us, and focus in on the chaos around us, that we begin to drown in life.  We get so caught up in the stuff, that goes on day in and day out, that we forget the blessings that are right in front of us.  We have to regain our focus on our families and on what God has for us.  It is the minor adjustments that you wouldn’t think about that make the biggest changes in life.  We must make sure that we are looking to God, and being fully focused on what He has for us.

by corymcglone