Phill Shallenberger

No one could write this story… but GOD DID! 🙏 The best way to describe it all came from my dad…. “I thought I was attending a baseball tournament and walked out of the stadium feeling like I left a REVIVAL! 🤲 When you truly SURRENDER with “Open Hands” God does the work!

What a journey! God is good!

If you’re a coach, business owner, or anyone who leads people, you need to get your hands on Everyone Is a Leader by Brian Dodd. What I love about this book is that it’s not just something you read once and put away. It’s the kind of book you keep on your shelf and come back to. Full of leadership stories and real-life experiences you can pull from when you need perspective, encouragement, or a reminder of what leadership is really about. As coaches, we’re always looking for ways to better lead, serve, and invest in the people around us. This book gives you so many examples to learn from and apply in your own leadership. Brian, thank you for the handwritten note and for allowing me to be a small part of this project. Grateful for the work you’re doing and the resource you’ve put together! Leaders, add this one to your shelf. You’ll be glad you did. 👊

Been getting a lot of requests for our apparel! Here ya go! All proceeds go to help support our upcoming Missions Trip to the DR! 🇩🇴 👇👇👇

Go comment with your suggestion! 🍌 instagram.com/reel/DeNdPBQpV…

Congrats Zay! @isaiahparido12

Give Up Surrender, giving over, letting go…. GIVE UP! As a coach, these are words or phrases we tend to not have in our vocabulary—usually the exact opposite. Instead, we are more inclined to move towards FIGHT! Fight till… The last pitch. The last second. The final goal. The final buzzer. Waving the white flag is never seen as a positive. It means you have nowhere else to go except to give yourself over in order to save your life. To actually wave the white flag, you have to drop your weapon to do so—completely making yourself defenseless. You are saying… “I am done fighting!” In sports we take pride in fighting until the end. So much so, if someone doesn’t run out a ball to first base even when we are down 10 runs in the 9th inning, our whole team will be sure to let that guy know that’s not how we compete. This teaches perseverance, grit and the ability to face adversity head on! Not allowing your circumstances to change how you steward what God has given you. Yet…. I am convinced when it comes to our lives and following Jesus—the best place to be is in the state of “I give up!” I give up: Control My desires Resisting what You want Trying to fight this sin with my own strength—because I can’t Psalm 55:22 — “Cast your burden on the Lord, and HE WILL sustain you!” When we “cast” or throw away from us everything we are clinging to or trying to fix ourselves, how much lighter do we feel? It’s like carrying a heavy bag on a long hike, and when you make it to your destination you finally throw it to the ground. Your body immediately feels free from the weight you were carrying. When we give up control of our lives, the same is true for us. The resistance, anxiety and pressure turns into peace and joy because we know HE WILL SUSTAIN US! Definitely dating myself here but if you know you know… My first remote control car was a Tyco Rebound. It was incredible! You could drive on both sides, do hundreds of flips and take it pretty much anywhere with your control. It was one of the more popular RC cars you could get, so my friends had them too. I would meet up with my buddy and we would try to drive them together and race them. We quickly found out they operated on the same frequency. At times my car would go where I wanted it to go, and other times we found one of us would actually be controlling the other’s RC car. It was really frustrating as a 7-year-old boy. Finally, one of us gave up and shut their car off to not disrupt the other’s control. When ONE was in control, it operated how it should, going where it was supposed to go. Yet how often do we try to control our own life that was meant to be controlled and shepherded by God? God is always fighting, defending and contending for us…but can you imagine if we just shut off the remote we are trying to use to control our own life? What if we just gave up? Not gave up on God or because we lost hope. But gave up the fight for control. Whether we “give up” because we have nowhere else to go but God, or because we finally realize how much better His way is for us, there is an incredible sense of peace and joy that follows no matter the circumstance. So GIVE UP….Give up the fight for control. Give it up to Jesus and trust what He already promised: HE WILL SUSTAIN YOU!

“The Battles You Never Knew He Fought” Being a father, my boys believe I assume many roles to them. All-time whiffle ball pitcher, coach, storyteller, Lego master and so many others. But one role I’ve seen often by their response to me is defender, protector and shelter. It never fails when I am traveling and not able to be home for bedtime, I get a call because our oldest is struggling to fall asleep without his dad home. I’ll admit, this gets hard. Knowing they want me home and I can’t be. And sometimes I even become frustrated wondering why he can’t just fall asleep when I’m not there. But when I began to sit and ask, “Why is this?” I started to realize it’s because me being home provides safety to them. If Dad is home, nothing is going to hurt me. A thunderstorm is scary when I’m not home, but when I am home it becomes a spectacle for us to take in and watch together. Same storm. Same thunder. Same intensity. But a far different view of the storm in their world. The presence of their father changes their outlook on the storm completely. How true is this in our own lives? The storms we face seem so much stronger when we feel like our Heavenly Father isn’t present in our lives. Yet in Romans 8, Paul explains that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. What if we haven’t read our Bible in months or even years? Nothing can separate you. What if we fell back into that addiction we thought we beat? Nothing can separate you. What if I am questioning the realness of who God is? Nothing can separate you. When I leave for a recruiting trip or a weekend series, the last thing I would ever do is leave my boys if our home wasn’t safe. If the windows were shattered, I would make sure they were fixed before I left. If the lock on the door was broken, you better believe I’m making sure it is fixed before I leave for a few days. So what makes us think God would leave us in a place that wasn’t safe for us? The problem is, safety may look different to us than what God sees as safe. We tend to think safe means nothing bad happens. No pain. No suffering. No storms. But God never promised us that. What He did promise is that He would never leave us. God loves us so much that He has even prepared a room for us. So even if we suffer here to the point of death, God has prepared a place for us that is the most amazing place we could ever be. And He didn’t just leave us here alone until then. He sent us His Spirit, who intercedes on our behalf. Paul says earlier in Romans 8 that there are moments when we don’t even know what to pray for, and the Spirit Himself “groans” for us. Think about that. There are moments when we don’t even know what to say, yet God is still working on our behalf. In Scripture we see God fighting battles His people could never fight on their own. Many times they didn’t even fully understand what God was doing, yet He was already working. My boys don’t realize all the ways their earthly father is defending them either. They don’t think about the bills being paid so the heat and electric stay on or the doors being locked at night. They just know Dad is home. And sometimes I wonder how much God is doing that I don’t see either. There have been many moments in my life where I have been lost. I’ve felt distance from God. My own sin was breaking some of the threads that allowed me to draw close to Him. Yet God was still fighting for me. He was protecting me. He was continually drawing me back to Him even when I didn’t see it. There is nothing I wouldn’t do to fight for my two boys. Nothing I wouldn’t do to protect them. And as much as I love my boys, my love as an earthly father doesn’t even compare to the love our Heavenly Father has for His children. So when the storm comes and it feels like God is nowhere around, remember: The storm may not have changed. The intensity may not have changed. But your Father is still there. And when we are IN CHRIST, NOTHING CAN SEPARATE US FROM HIS LOVE.

Isaiah Parido continues to show he can play. Different level. Same result. He keeps producing. Don’t overlook the guy who keeps proving he belongs!

Really enjoyed this conversation! Thanks for having me on!

Special!

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He is unreal right now! 🤯

I’m not sure expressing your own style and building a winning, sustainable, selfless culture are mutually exclusive. Coaches should be true to who they are and maybe this is what Coach is getting at—but Ballplayers don’t need to look, dress, or express themselves exactly the same to be bought into a culture. Culture isn’t about the cleats you wear, the endorsements you have, or how much fun you’re allowed to have. It’s about a group of people willingly rallying around a shared vision that’s bigger than their individual desires. Unity doesn’t require uniformity.

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