Starting Right
Starting Right is a 5 minute Day Starter to help keep you motivated, encouraged, and focused throughout your day. DannyMac is a pastor, teacher, motivational speaker, husband, and father. His years of leading and training people have given him vast experience in helping individuals to accomplish change in their lives and meet their goals. He can help you set the course for your day by offering practical advice from God's Word in a positive and fun way. There is no better way to begin your day than by Starting Right with DannyMac.
Starting Right
Are You Too Busy for Your Own Life?
Have you noticed your to-do list constantly growing while your accomplishments struggle to keep pace? You're not alone. In this heartfelt exploration of time and priorities, we confront the jarring realization that half the year has vanished with only a fraction of our goals achieved—a phenomenon that seems to accelerate with each passing year.
Join us today as we talk about embracing life's fullness and enjoying what God has given us.
Good morning and welcome to Starting Right with Danny Mac. I'm going to be here every Monday to Friday to help you get a great five-minute start to your day, so grab your cup of coffee, sit back, relax and let me help you start your day right. Have you ever noticed how your to-do list is always bigger and growing much faster than your list of things that you have accomplished and finished? It seems to be happening to everybody, and I don't know about you, but to me it seems like it's happening faster, in a greater proportion, than it ever has before. I was sitting at my desk and looked up at the calendar and I realized that we are almost in the middle of the year. Where did the first half go? Just poof, it's gone. Then I asked myself well, what have you accomplished? And I've only accomplished just a few of the things that I felt were important for me for this year.
Speaker 1:As I thought about that, I remembered a phrase that I'd heard quite a while back. It said never let your plans for the day keep you from experiencing God's unexpected blessings. Let's not forget to take the time to enjoy the life that God has given us, and I've forgotten how important that really is. Psalm 90, verse 12 from the message says this oh, teach us to live well, teach us to live wisely and well. We need to learn how to do that better. And a bunch of notes that I have, I found this one article called Time. I don't even know who actually wrote it, so hopefully they'll have some grace in me for reading it this morning. It came from a man who said this my wife and I have a friend who lives by a three-word philosophy seize the moment. Too many people put off something that brings them joy just because they haven't thought about it, don't have it on their schedule, didn't know it was coming, or are too rigid to depart from their routine. I got thinking one day about those people on the Titanic who passed up dessert at dinner that fateful night in an effort to cut back. From then on, I've always tried to be a little bit more flexible.
Speaker 1:How many women out there will eat at home because their husband didn't suggest going out for dinner until after something had been thawed? Does the word refrigeration mean nothing to you? How often have your kids dropped in to talk and sat in silence while you watched Jeopardy or the hockey game on TV? You need to take advantage of those opportunities. You need to seize the moment. He said my wife cannot count the times that she's called her sister and said how about going to lunch in half an hour? Her sister would gasp and stammer and say I can't. I've got clothes in the laundry, my hair is dirty, or I wish I had known yesterday, or I had a late breakfast, or it looks like rain. And then there was my wife's personal favorite it's only Monday. My wife's sister died a few years ago and they never did have lunch together.
Speaker 1:Because we cram so much into our lives that we tend to schedule our heartaches, we live on a sparse diet of promises we make to ourselves when all the conditions are perfect and we fail to seize the moment. We'll go back to visit the grandparents when we get Stevie Toilet trained, or we'll entertain when we replace the living room furniture. We'll go on a second honeymoon when we get the two kids out of college. Life has a way of accelerating. As we get older, the days get shorter and the list of promises to ourselves get longer. One morning we awaken and all we have to show for our lives is a litany of I'm going to, I plan on and someday, when things are settled down a bit.
Speaker 1:When anyone calls our seize the moment friend, he is always open to adventure and available for trips of any kind. He keeps an open mind to new ideas. His enthusiasm for life is contagious. If you sit down and talk with him for five minutes, man, you're ready to get up and climb a mountain or go on a road trip, or even find the nearest place to go bungee jumping. I have not had ice cream in 10 years. I love ice cream. It's just that I might as well apply it directly to my gut with a spatula and eliminate the digestive process.
Speaker 1:The other day I stopped the car and bought a triple-decker. If my car had hit an iceberg on the way home, I would have died happy. Now, go on and have a nice day, not something on your should-do list. Seize the moment. What are the conversations with your family and friends that you've missed because you were too busy? What are the opportunities that you have said no to because there's been too many things on your schedule and you decided it was going to be too much trouble?
Speaker 1:God has given us this life for us to experience his full goodness, his blessings, his joy. We need to embrace the opportunities that will make our lives even better. It's the people and experiences around us that God will use to bring joy and peace and comfort into our lives, and may Psalm 90, verse 12, be our prayer. Oh Lord, teach us to live well, teach us to live wisely and well. Have a wonderful day, my friends, and we will talk again tomorrow. Wonderful day, my friends, and we will talk again tomorrow. Thank you for listening today and I invite you to join me Monday to Friday, right here on Starting Right with Danny Mac.
