Tag: Love

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

Kids say the darndest things…

It’s very true that our kids say the darndest, most brutally honest things, they get it from somewhere.  Everything our kids do, they have learned it some place, from someone, somehow.  A number of the things that they pick up, we don’t really mind, but it isn’t always the good things they pick up on.

Our kids look to us for what to do in social interactions and in all situations.  Face it, you talk to your friends and co-workers completely different than you do around your house with your family and children, well maybe.  None of us really think about some of the things we say or do, until they are repeated or done by our kids.  There are so many kid’s today that are constantly in trouble, either at school or even the police, because of poor guidance or honestly a lack there of.

We have to guide our kids in the right ways try our hardest to keep them from doing just really stupid things.  I mean yes there is a fine line from being an over-protective parent, a controlling parent, and a crazy, but that is part of being a parent.  Face it, as a parent you are to be a parent not your child’s friend.  Now don’t get me wrong, you need to be there for your children, but being the cool parent, isn’t always going to be the best thing for your kids.  Now I’m not saying that I’m “World’s Greatest Dad” and should teach classes on how to be a father, but sometimes you go somewhere and you just think – I’m not doing so bad a am I…

We all have seen the kids, that make you think I wish they were your kid, or make you want to slap their momma.  Pushing your kids to be respectful to others is one thing, but more than that, we have to push our kids to respect themselves.  Too many kids today are “depressed” but are so privileged they don’t know what to do with themselves.  We have pushed to far into the “everyone did great”, and the everyone gets a trophy mentality that there is no winner.  This is where the problem comes along when these kids grow up and become part of “the real world,”  if something isn’t handed to them, they don’t know what to do.

Let’s push our kids to respect themselves and others.  Let’s push to break our kids of these entitled attitudes.  Start the push from within yourself.  Let you kids see you working hard for what you have and what your family has, teach them the value of money, time, love, and true friendship.  Let’s see our kids change the direction of their generation and our world.

by corymcglone

What we’re doing just ain’t working…

Hands

In today’s world many times we are starting out our relationships and marriages on a track to fail. We think we need a prenup… Or to state that when, not if, we get divorced what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours. 50% of marriages are ending in divorce now. We either marry out of convenience, so that we’re not alone, or others expectations.

But 50% do seem to make it. This is the stat that no one ever seems to focus on. Half of the time we do meet our “true love” or “the one”. Now I’m not saying that the half that makes it is better or they never fight about things but they focus on the marriage as a true partnership and that all decisions are WE.

When couples that stay together and make it they are ones that fight for their marriage. Your marriage and your spouse are things that can’t be taken for granted. A marriage isn’t a cactus, it needs cared for more than just every once in a while.

When you hit those rough patches in your relationship take a look at yourself before looking at the other person. If it’s always their fault, in your eye, maybe it’s really you. Before you look at stepping away, look at the person that you are in love with, and remember what it was that made you fall in love with them. What changed? Who Changed? I am willing to bet that the thing about them that you fell in love with, is still there. Maybe you have just taken it for granted. Maybe you just need to refocus on the WE in the relationship instead of the me.

by corymcglone