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
Forgive And Live Light
Five minutes can change the texture of a day, especially when those minutes turn us from grudges to grace. We open with gratitude for God’s goodness—family, work, everyday blessings—and then focus on the most life-giving truth we know: through Jesus, our past, present, and future are forgiven. That assurance doesn’t make us careless; it makes us honest about our limits and more hungry for a life shaped by love rather than shame.
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. Yesterday I began my day thinking about how good God has been to me, how he's worked in my life, the miracles that we've seen him do, his blessings of my family and my wife and my kids, my job, the things that God's done for me and continues to do for me. And then I began to think about one of the greatest gifts that God ever gave me. It happened at the time when I first committed my life to Christ. You see, right then and there, He forgave me. He forgave me of all of my sins that I had done and all the mistakes of my life. I am forgiven. The Bible tells us that we are forgiven of the past, present, and future. All of our sins are forgiven by the grace of God. And that is an incredibly wonderful, powerful gift to be forgiven, to know that every mistake I made and will make is already covered by Jesus Christ. Now, contrary to what some people think, that doesn't mean I want to make more mistakes, no way. But it does help me to realize how much God's love for me is there, and how much I need His love and His forgiveness to work in my life. Let's face it, none of us are perfect. We all will make mistakes and we all will fall short sometimes. And it's God's forgiveness that we need. But as I was thinking about how good God's forgiveness was for my life, it brought my mind to a couple of people that I was continuing to hold a grudge against. Some people that I had not completely forgiven, and it was still there in my mind. And I know enough to know that when we lack forgiveness, it destroys us from the inside. To not forgive someone is not punishing them. It's punishing us. They probably don't even know they're not forgiven. They probably don't care that they're not forgiven. But the truth is we tend to hold on to it and say, I can't forgive them for what they did, as though somehow we are going to punish them. And that's just doesn't work that way. Colossians chapter three and verse thirteen, Paul is writing, he says, Bear with each other and forgive one another. If any of you has a grievance against someone, forgive as the Lord forgave you. We need to forgive people and not carry around anger and bitterness towards anyone, because it will impact our walk with God and the peace that we have in our lives and our relationship with Him. I want to share with you a little story that I think will help you understand the impact of a lack of forgiveness. A young lady named Sally attended a seminary class given by her teacher, Dr. Smith. She says that doctor Smith was known for his elaborate object lessons. And one particular day Sally walked into the seminary and knew that they were in for a fun day. On the wall there was a big target, and on a nearby table were many darts. Dr. Smith told the students to draw a picture of someone they had disliked or someone who had made them angry or hurt them, and he would allow them to throw darts at the person's picture. Sally's friend drew a picture of a girl who had stolen her boyfriend. Another friend drew a picture of his little brother. Sally drew a picture of a former friend putting a great deal of detail into her drawing, even drawing pimples on her face. The class lined up and began throwing darts. Some of the students threw their darts with such force that their targets were ripping apart. Sally was looking forward to her turn, but didn't get a chance because Dr. Smith asked the students to return to their seats because time was running out. As Sally sat thinking about how disappointed she was because she didn't have a chance to throw any darts at her target, Dr. Smith began removing the target from the wall. Underneath the target was a picture of Jesus. A hush fell over the room as each student viewed the mangled picture of Jesus, holes and jagged marks covering his face, and his eyes were pierced. Dr. Smith said only these words. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me. No other words were necessary. The tears-filled eyes of the students focused only on the picture of Christ. Every time we focus our anger on another person, someone that God has directly commanded us to love, we in fact are hurting Jesus and hurting ourselves more than we're hurting them. Let's be people who forgive and move on and learn to love more and more. I hope we 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.
