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
Burned Out? God Has Bread for That
Feeling drained by the demands of daily life? You're not alone. Even the strongest spiritual warriors experience moments of complete exhaustion.
In this powerful morning reflection, we explore the surprising story of the prophet Elijah's breakdown after his greatest spiritual victory. Despite witnessing God send fire from heaven and defeat 450 prophets of Baal, Elijah finds himself running for his life, collapsing under a tree, and asking God to let him die. This dramatic contrast between triumph and despair reveals profound truths about human resilience and divine restoration.
Take five minutes today to reset your perspective and discover how to find renewal when you're "tired of the stress of being you." Join us every weekday morning to start your day with encouragement and wisdom that will sustain you through life's challenges.
Good morning and welcome to Starting Right. I am Danny Mac and I'm going to be here every Monday to Friday to help you get a great start to your day. So grab your cup of coffee, sit back and relax for the next five minutes as I help you start your day by starting right. Good morning everyone, and welcome to another day. Hey, have you ever felt like you're just tired with the stress of being you? I think most of us have at some point or another.
Speaker 1:Today I want to talk about a fellow from Scripture who was exactly like that. His name happens to be Elijah. We're going to pick up his story in chapter 19 of the book of 1 Kings, but we need to remember the setup here as we get to it. Elijah had just won the battle on Mount Carmel with all of the prophets of Baal, and those prophets were now dead because God had just sent fire down from heaven to receive Elijah's sacrifice, whereas the prophets of Baal could get nothing to happen with their gods. But now in chapter 19, starting in verse 1, it reads this way Ahab told Jezebel everything that Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them.
Speaker 1:Elijah was afraid and he ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba and Judah, he left his servant there, while he himself went a day's journey into the desert. He came to a broom tree, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. I have had enough, lord, he said. Take my life. I am no better than my ancestors. Then he lay down under the tree and fell asleep. An angel touched him and said Get up and eat. He looked around and there, by his head, was a cake of bread baked over hot coals and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again. The angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you. So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God, and there he went into a cave and spent the night.
Speaker 1:Well, we can sometimes criticize Elijah for being afraid of Queen Jezebel when he had just seen God bring such a tremendous victory up on Mount Carmel. I think most of us can understand how we react when we are exhausted, when we're tired, when we're under pressure. It's at those times that we are generally far from our best and we need to have something refresh us on the inside. We will never be able to produce results outside of us when the inside of us is weak, and Elijah had just spent a tremendous amount of physical, emotional and spiritual energy in his battle on Mount Carmel and now he was drained inside. We can get to that point, too, where we have been giving out to others. We've been pouring into other people, trying to touch them and impact them in some way. We've been serving our family, we've been serving our community, we've been serving our church, and we just get drained on the inside and we just get tired of being who we are.
Speaker 1:Can I give you three quick things this morning that will help all of us when we're at that place. First of all, we need to keep our proper perspective. In those moments, it's not about us, it's about what God has for us. We need to be able to seek Him first in all the things that we do. Secondly, we need to remember that our walk with God is a journey. It's not about being great in every moment, but it's all about having a life of faith. David is known as a man after God's own heart, and we know how badly he messed up in his life, but those moments did not define him. It was his life that defined him.
Speaker 1:Thirdly, we need to make sure that we preserve some strength in us, that we don't use it all up too fast, and I'm talking about emotional and spiritual and physical strength, all of those things. If we use it up, we need to take time to get it refilled and refueled within us before we go on. Otherwise we will step out and we will feel defeated and struggle and a sense of failure and negativity can overcome us. So today, my friends, I encourage you with this let's learn from Elijah, who obeyed God, did everything God had told him to do, but he still got tired and depressed and he needed to be refreshed.
Speaker 1:And I encourage you this morning if you need to be refreshed, you take some time to do just that. Step back from what you are pushing into and let God refresh you. Don't let yourself get to the point where you're just tired of the stress of being you, but know that in that place, at that time, that's when God will come and will minister to you the most and will give you the strength that you need. Have a great day, my friends. We'll talk again tomorrow. Have a great day, my friends. We'll 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.
