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
Five Minutes to Lift Someone Up
Five minutes can reset a day. We open with a simple question—why are there so many critics and so few encouragers?—and follow it to a windswept pier in the Bahamas where a young sailor’s dream meets a chorus of doubt. As warnings pile up, one voice cuts through: Bon voyage, we’re with you. That moment becomes a compass for how we speak to each other, online and off, when the stakes feel high and the path looks rough.
By the end, you’ll have a short list of phrases that lift others without sugarcoating reality, a reminder to notice the person mid-journey, and a clear challenge to be the one at the end of the pier waving both arms. If this five-minute boost helps you start right, subscribe for weekday mornings, share it with a friend who needs courage today, and leave a quick review to help more people find the show.
Good morning and welcome to Starting Right with Danny Mack. 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. You noticed over the last little while that there are many more people who are becoming critics and fewer and fewer people who seem to be coming encouragers. I find that disheartening. There's enough negativity in the world around us right now without allowing ourselves to be drawn into a battle and to start tearing people and things down. I really appreciate all the more the people around me then who are encouragers, and I really miss the fact that there aren't more of them. I think there's a story here that illustrates it. It comes from a fellow by the name of John Powell. It happened while he was vacationing in the Bahamas. He saw a large and restless crowd gathered on a pier. Upon investigation he discovered that the object of all the attention was a young man making the last minute preparations for a solo journey around the world in a homemade boat. Without exception, everyone on the pier was vocally pessimistic. All were actively volunteering to tell the ambitious sailor all the things that could possibly go wrong. The sun will broil you. You won't have enough food. That boat of yours won't withstand the waves in a storm. You'll never make it. You're going to die. When my friend heard all these discouraging warnings to the adventurous young man, he felt an irresistible desire to offer some optimism and encouragement. As the little craft began to drift away from the pier towards the horizon, my friend went to the end of the pier, waving both arms wildly. He kept shouting Bon voyage, you're really something. We're with you. We're proud of you. Good luck, brother. Negative criticism has the ability to wear us down, to make us tired, to make us question what we believe. If we're not careful, we can get stuck there and not be able to move forward again. It wouldn't have surprised me if that young man had not had some strength within him about his purpose and about his mission to sail around the world in a small boat, that he wouldn't have just given up because of all the negative things that were being said to him. And yet he pursued on. And as he did take that step ahead, there was the one man in the crowd who decided he was going to cheer him on and give him some encouragement and hope. And can you imagine being in that boat and just sailing out after hearing all of that negative stuff coming against you? And then as you're going away to have someone behind you yelling, We're for you, we're with you, my brother, you can do this. This is great, you're good. In 1 Thessalonians chapter five and verse eleven, it says encourage each other, build each other up just as you are already doing. He's speaking there within the context of the knowledge of Christ's coming and our salvation that is sure before us. But the principle goes far beyond that. It speaks to how we are to treat one another, we are to encourage one another, we are to lift one another up. We're not to tear down another pastor because of the way he speaks, we're not to tear down another church because of the way they sing their songs, we're not to gossip about Christians and other people because we don't like the way they do something. We're to be encouragers, we're to lift people up. Let me ask you this this morning. When was the last time that you received some encouragement from someone? Someone who came along to you and said, I like I like what you're doing. Way to go. You're a good person. So thankful that you're in my life. Now let me ask you the opposite side. When was the last time that you gave that and said that to someone else? Let's choose to be encouragers. Let's choose to build people up. The next time we want to write an email or a text or a tweet or a Facebook posting that is being critical of someone or something else, let's stop and think. Do I really want to be negative or do I want to build someone else up instead? Let's choose to build people up. I encourage you today just to find someone that you can write an email to, that you can phone up, that you can call and say, hey, I just want you to know that I appreciate you. I just want you to know how glad I am that you're in my life. I want you to know how much I like your smile. Make connections today. Encourage someone. Build people up. Let God's love shine through you and be an encourager, not a discourager. Have a great day, my friends. We'll talk to you tomorrow. Thank you for listening today. And I invite you to join me Monday to Friday right here on Starting Right with Danny Mack.
