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 Distractions Stealing Your Relationship With Christ?
Have you noticed how increasingly difficult it's become to carve out meaningful time with God? You're not alone. The modern landscape of constant notifications, endless responsibilities, and perpetual entertainment options creates the perfect breeding ground for spiritual disconnection.
Today's episode uncovers a thought-provoking fictional account of Satan's convention—where he reveals his master strategy isn't keeping believers from church or Bible reading. Rather, it's keeping Christians so thoroughly distracted they can't form an intimate, abiding relationship with Jesus. The enemy understands a profound truth: when believers maintain that vital connection with Christ, his power over them is broken.
Are we creating space to hear God's still, small voice? Are we prioritizing our relationship with Jesus amid competing demands? The battle for our attention is real, but standing firm against these tactics allows us to experience the power and wisdom that only comes through genuine connection with God.
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. Let me ask you this today, have you found it becoming more difficult to spend the time you want to with the Lord and reading His Word? There are so many distractions that come against us and we struggle to be able to keep that part in our lives and I know there are times at the end of my day I look and say, man, I didn't talk to Jesus enough. Today it seems to be getting more and more difficult to make sure that there is time given to God.
Speaker 1:I came across this fictional story that I think helps us to understand a little bit of, maybe, what the devil is trying to do to us, because we know that he is our enemy. Ephesians 6.12 tells us. For we are not fighting against flesh and blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers of this dark world and against evil spirits in the heavenly places. That's our battle and that's who we're fighting with. But this short story this morning, I think, will help us to understand a little bit of Satan's tactics that he likes to use against us. Listen carefully Satan called a worldwide convention.
Speaker 1:In his opening address to his evil angels he said we can't keep Christians from going to church. We can't keep Christian believers from reading their Bibles and knowing the truth. We can't even keep a Christian from conservative values. But we can do something else. We can keep them from forming an intimate, abiding relationship experience with Jesus. If they gain that connection with Jesus, our power over them is broken. So let them go to church, let them have their conservative lifestyles, but steal their time so they can't gain that experience in Jesus Christ. So here's what I want you to do, angels Distract every Christian from making that vital connection with their Savior and maintaining that connection throughout their day. The angels shouted how shall we do this? Satan replied easy.
Speaker 1:Keep Christians busy in the non-essentials of life. Invent unnumbered schemes to occupy their minds. Convince Christian wives to go to work for long hours and the husbands to work six or seven days a week, ten to twelve hours a day, so they can afford their lifestyle. Keep them from spending time with their children as their family fragments. Soon their homes will offer no escape from the pressures of work. Then overstimulate their minds so they cannot hear that still small voice, entice them to play on their phones, listen to the radio or digital media wherever they drive, and keep the TV and online streaming going constantly in their homes and see to it that every store and restaurant in the world plays non-biblical music constantly. This will jam their minds and break that union with Christ, even in their recreation. Let them be excessive.
Speaker 1:Have Christians return from their recreation exhausted, disquieted and unprepared for the coming week. Don't let them go out in nature to reflect on God's wonders. Send them to amusement parks and sporting events, concerts and movies instead, and when they meet for inspirational spiritual fellowship, involve them in gossip and small talk so that they leave with troubled consciences and unsettled emotion. Or you can let them be involved in soul winning. Go right ahead, but crowd their lives with so many good causes that they have no time to seek the power of God. Soon they will be working in their own strength, sacrificing their health and family unity for the good of the cause.
Speaker 1:It was quite a convention in the end, and the evil angels went eagerly to their assignments, causing Christians everywhere to get busy, busy, busy. Assignments causing Christians everywhere to get busy, busy, busy and rush here and there. I gotta tell you those schemes of the devil seem to be pretty active in our lives. 1 Peter 5, verses 8 and 9, says Stay alert, watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Stand firm against him and be strong in your faith. Remember that your family of believers all over the world is going through this same kind of suffering as you are. So, my friends, be strong, be faithful, and we must determine within ourselves to not let the enemy distract us from building and keeping that relationship with God and seeking His power and wisdom in our lives. Have a great day, my friends. We will talk again tomorrow. Thank you for joining us today and I invite you to join us every Monday to Friday, right here at Starting Right with Danny Mac.
