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
Three Brothers, One Stroke, and a Song That Healed
What happens when a pandemic and personal tragedy force musicians to question everything about their calling? For the Ward brothers of Consumed by Fire, these challenges led to a profound spiritual awakening captured in their song "First Things First."
The song draws inspiration from Revelation 2:4-5, which speaks of returning to our first love and doing the works we did at first. As the brothers discovered, this isn't about religious rules but about relationship—specifically, prioritizing our connection with God above everything else competing for our attention. The lyrics powerfully remind us: "Your kingdom's all I want to seek. I don't want to love what the world loves... First things first."
Both ancient and modern voices converge on a single question worth considering: Are we keeping first things first? And if not, what might we be missing? Take five minutes to realign your priorities and start your day right with this musical reflection on what matters most.
Here is the Youtube link to First Things First.
https://youtu.be/bpTOcZN9JB4
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. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to another week.
Speaker 1:Here we are on Music Monday, and today's song for you is coming from a group that I hadn't heard from before. They're called Consumed by Fire and the song is First Things First. The group is made up of three brothers from Wagoner, oklahoma, caleb Jordan and Joshua Ward, who began their music careers singing in the church where their parents were pastors. Just over three years ago, their father had a stroke and then, almost immediately following their father's stroke, the pandemic broke out. This caused the brothers and their ministry to begin doing some re-evaluation of what they were doing and what they were singing. They had already recorded a couple of albums, but those songs really hadn't gone very far and they had not really done a whole lot with them. The brothers began to question whether they should even go on with this music thing that they were doing For the next couple of years.
Speaker 1:The brothers spent time in this re-evaluation process, but they also began writing some songs, and today's song, first Things First, was a song that particularly impacted them as they were writing it. In an interview they said this song really is all about returning to their first love and for the very first time they realized how a song can impact and heal, which is what it did for them. They said the song itself is not about do's and don'ts, but about returning to and ministering their first love. And the first love they're talking about is found in Revelation 2, verses 4 and 5. It says I have this complaint against you you don't love me or each other as you did at first. Look how far you have fallen. Turn back to me and do the works you did at first. After much time, before God writing the song and considering what God had for them, they wrapped everything up in this one question that they had Is anything in life really worth it if you lose that first love? And that's really what the song reminds us of.
Speaker 1:We live in a very busy world, in a world where people and family and so many other things are pulling at us, demanding of our time, demanding our energies, demanding our focus, and sometimes it's very difficult to maintain our first priority in the midst of it all, the first priority being that relationship with God and people, and that's the part that really is important. The key is the relationship with God, your first love, the life commitment, the communication, the speaking to God, the listening to what God has to say to us. To build that ongoing relationship with Him. It takes energy, it takes time and it's part of that first love that we need to maintain the words. Speak it this way your kingdom's all I want to seek. I don't want to love what the world loves. I don't want to chase what the world does. I only want you. First things first. I seek your will and not my own. Do we keep our first things first? That's a real challenge for all of us, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Even King David realized the importance of this when he wrote the 101st Psalm. I'm going to summarize this Psalm just a little bit, but here's what David had to say about making sure he kept the first things first. I will praise you with songs. I will be careful to live a blameless life. I will lead a life of integrity in my own home. I will refuse to look at anything vile and vulgar. I will have nothing to do with people who deal crookedly. I will reject perverse ideas and stay away from evil. I will not tolerate people who slander their neighbors and I will not endure conceit and pride. I will search out faithful people to be my friends.
Speaker 1:David made the choice to put first things first. He was making the choices to keep the things that were important for him to be able to live as God wanted him to, and those are the kind of choices that, quite frankly, we need to think about, we need to be aware of, we need to evaluate ourselves and ask the question do I have the first things first and how much time do we give to God each day to teach us, to guide us, to encourage us? How much do we talk to him each day to teach us, to guide us, to encourage us? How much do we talk to Him and let Him speak to us? My encouragement to you today is keep the first things first, and that way, you will always be able to experience the very best that God has for you.
Speaker 1:I'm going to leave you with a clip of First Things First by Consumed by Fire, and in your show notes today there will be the YouTube link that you can click on and go and watch the entire video there. I hope you have a great day, my friends. Here's Consumed by Fire singing. First Things First.
Speaker 2:Keep the first thing first. To live your truth, walk your ways. Set my eyes, lord, I'll fix my face on you. All my desires reversed. To keep the first thing first.
