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
New Year, New Heart
New beginnings feel different when hope has a backbone. As we count down the final hours of the year, we talk about how to leave behind what weighs us down and look for the “new thing” God is already growing, even in wilderness places. Drawing from Isaiah 43, we set a hopeful frame for the year ahead and then walk through three life verses that have become a daily compass.
If this encourages you, subscribe, share it with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What life verse will you carry into the new year?
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. Good morning everybody. Within just a very few hours, we will leave behind this past year and step into a brand new year. I am excited about what God can do, and I hope that you are too. I love what God said in the book of Isaiah, chapter 43. He said, Forget the former things, do not dwell in the past. See, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs up, do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. That's what I'm looking forward to. God being able to put behind us the things that are behind and open up new streams of life for us in this new year. As we're looking at stepping into the new year, I want to give you my three life verses. I have three of them that I hang on to. They try to teach me and guide me every day. And do I get it perfect? Absolutely not. But they are so important to me because they are the verses that stand out and keep me on track. I want to give these to you today as an encouragement to have some verses in your life that help you understand God's plan and purpose for you as well. You can use mine if you want, but if not, choose some that will help you. And it will help to keep you going the way you need to, because we're going to need to know what God has for us and where he's taken us. Here are the verses that I like, that I hang on to that to keep me going. First one is in Matthew chapter 6, verse 33. It says, Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. I love this verse because it talks about my priorities. If my priorities aren't for God and His Kingdom first, then they're just plain wrong. And I'm not going to find any joy or fulfillment as a result of pursuing them. It's a powerful, important verse. Seek God and His kingdom first, everything else will take care of itself. My second key verse for me is in Mark chapter twelve and verse thirty. We are told there to love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, and your mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself. Again, this is talking about priorities, but this is a priority at another level. It's where my love is. This is talking about loving God first above everything else. Then loving our neighbors and loving ourselves. It's our priorities. God still has to be first. It's very similar to my first verse, which is seek his kingdom first. But we want to love God first. It's now a matter of my heart and my mind. My third verse is very simple. It's in Romans chapter twelve and verse two. It says, Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will know what God's will is, his good, perfect, and pleasing will. This is now talking about my mind. It's about what I choose to do or what I choose to focus on with my mind. Do I listen to the news every night and let it guide me in my decisions and my actions? Absolutely not. Do I listen to the professors at the universities trying to tell me what is right and what is wrong? That morality is a construct of man and therefore can be changed and moved anytime it wants, that there are no absolutes whatsoever. Is that what I want my mind to be like? No. It says to renew my mind, give myself a new mind that's in line with what God has, so that I can love the Lord my God with all my heart and my soul, my strength, so that I can love my neighbor as myself, so that I can seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these other things will be added unto me. It's the focus that we have with it. I try to make sure that those verses guide me every day. As I said, do I have it perfect? No, I don't. But they are there to help correct me and guide me. And they are always with me. I have them written down with me almost all the time. I encourage you as we move now into this new year that you use the Word of God as part of your new year's resolutions or your goals or your planning, or whatever you want to call it. But make God's word a part of that so it will help to keep you on the path and direction that God wants you to go, where you will find the most fulfillment, the most joy, the most peace, and even the most excitement. Trust God that He will show you the new things that He has planned for you in the new year. And you can look forward to those things with tremendous anticipation that God is working. You're gonna have a wonderful year, my friends. Hang on to God's truth and let his blessings work in you. Be encouragers, be people of faith and strength, and God bless you. Have a great weekend, my friends, and we'll talk to you again next year. Thank you for listening today. And I invite you to join me Monday to Friday right here on Starting Right with Danny Mack.
