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
From Shipwreck To Rescue
Smoke rises. Your plans are ashes. And just when anger peaks, a ship appears on the horizon. We share a tight, story-driven reflection about a shipwrecked preacher who spends months pleading for rescue, only to watch his hut burn—then learns the fire became the very signal that saved him. It’s a vivid picture of how setbacks, silence, and frustration can hide the beginnings of help.
From the first cup of coffee to the final takeaway, we walk through the emotions of waiting: asking where God is, wondering why prayers seem unanswered, and wrestling with disappointment when our best efforts go up in flames. Then we pivot to a fresh, grounded look at Romans 8:26–28. Instead of treating “all things work together for good” like a cliché, we trace it back to the Spirit’s intercession—how God meets us in weakness, translates our wordless groans, and aligns our lives with a will we often can’t see in the moment. The message is not to celebrate pain, but to recognize the quiet work beneath it.
you’ve felt stranded, if the horizon looks empty, or if your “hut” is burning right now, this conversation offers clarity, comfort, and a nudge to keep watching the waterline.
Good morning and welcome to Starting Right. I am Danny Mack, 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. Last week we had a week full of our best stories from our first 15 months, and I hope you enjoyed them. Well, today I've got another story for you. This is a brand new story. This is a story of a ship that went down in the South Pacific in the 1930s. Now, none of the crew survived this wreck except for one man who happened to be a disgruntled preacher. He washed up on shore of a small uninhabited island, and he really began to question God. Why did you let this happen to me? Why did you let the ship sink? Don't you know the plans that I have and all the things that I need to do? Why aren't you listening to me, God? Why don't you answer me? Where are you? And what's more, where am I? And God didn't answer him. He spent several days gathering up bits and pieces from the shipwreck, then he began to explore the island. He soon found a source of fresh water, and he realized there was a good supply of fruit and a small bay that had an abundance of fish where they were easily caught. He eventually built himself a hut, and every day he called out to God, Where are you? Why are you not answering me? Why are you ignoring me? He would climb the highest part of the island where he could get a three hundred and sixty degree view of the ocean and again call out to God, Where are you? I need you, God, why can't you save me? Please, please save me. Don't let me stay here. Several months went by. Every day he had the same routine. Got up in the morning, he called out to God for rescue. And every day he climbed to the highest part of the island, surveying everything as far as he could see. Then one day he walked over to the other side of the island to explore and gather some food and do some fishing. On his way back home, he looked up and he saw smoke rising from where his hut was. He dropped everything and ran as fast as he could, only to find that his island home was completely engulfed in flames. Frustration and anger just overwhelmed him. He fell down on the sand screaming at God, God, why have you done this? Why is this happening to me? Why are you not rescuing me? Why? Tears streamed down his cheeks as he sat on the sand and watched the fire consume everything that he had built or salvaged. When the flames had died down and there was nothing left but embers and smoke, he began to pick through the remains to see what could be saved. With a few meager scraps salvaged from the fire, he looked out across the ocean wondering what would happen next when he spotted a shape far out on the water. He sprang to his feet, realizing it was a ship, headed directly to his island, and before long he saw a small launch leave the ship, headed towards him, and he realized that he was about to be rescued. As the boat arrived at the beach, he met it with jumps and shouts of excitement, and when the first sailor greeted him, he said to the sailor, Oh, I'm so glad you're here, I'm so glad you're here, I'm so glad you're here, but how did you find me? The sailor said, We saw your distress smoke signal. Sometimes we get angry with God when things happen that make us think that he's out of control or that he doesn't care about what we're going through. But that's just not the case. God will often work in ways that we completely don't understand. But Romans 8 28 tells us that all things work together for the good of those who love the Lord and are called according to his purpose. There are times when we get that verse kind of mixed up. We want it to apply to absolutely everything, believing that we are supposed to feel good about everything that God does. And this is not talking about that at all. Let's go back in chapter 8 to verse 26, just a couple of verses before, and we can learn in a little bit more. It says the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don't know what God wants us to pray for, but the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words, and the Father that knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God's own will. You see, the Holy Spirit prays for us, he intercedes for us, praying that we will experience God's will in our lives. But when he does pray for us to experience God's will, we can be assured that we will ultimately see God's good for us. But God's will for our lives is not always what we are wanting at the moment. We don't often understand or see what God's trying to do. In fact, sometimes we can feel that everything has been stripped away from us, that people and things have been destroyed and removed from us, and we cry out to God, how can you leave us like this? Well, God hasn't left us. He will continue to work for us because he loves us. But there will be times when we look around and see our hut is burning and we ask, why? Why have you left me? Why have you allowed this to happen to me? Why have you brought me to this place only to see that everything I have has been destroyed? Why haven't you just come and rescued me? It really is all about how much do we really trust God. Is our faith based on if and when God will answer my prayer? True faith. True faith that will help us is faith that says, I will trust God even if he does not answer my prayer. That's the real measure of our faith. Our problems are sometimes part of the answer we are needing. We just need to keep believing and hang on when things go wrong. Keep believing even through the shipwrecks and burning huts of our lives. God will be with us because he is faithful to us. Have a great day, my friends. 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 Mack.
