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
What You Already Have Is Enough To Begin
Ever feel like you’ve got “nothing left” except a little bit of energy, a small skill, or one last idea? We take a fresh look at the story of the widow and her oil from 2 Kings 4 and pull out simple, actionable lessons for mornings when life feels thin. In just a few minutes, we move from the heaviness of scarcity to the relief of practical hope by asking two clear questions: what do you have, and how much room have you made for what you’re asking for?
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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. There are a lot of stories in the Old Testament that I really like, but one of my favorites comes from 2 Kings chapter 4. It's the story of the widow and her oil. Let me just read it to you this morning. The wife of a man from the company of the prophets cried out to Elisha, Your servant, my husband, is dead, and you know he revered the Lord, but now his creditor is coming to take my two boys as his slaves. Elisha replied to her, How can I help you? Tell me, what do you have in your house? Your servant has nothing there at all, she said, except a little oil. Elisha said, Go around and ask all your neighbors for empty jars. Don't ask for just a few. Then go inside and shut the door behind you and your sons. Pour oil into all the jars, and as each is filled, put it to one side. Then she left him and afterwards shut the door behind her and her sons. They brought the jars to her and she kept pouring. When all the jars were full, she said to her son, Bring me another one. But he replied, There is no jar left. Then the oil stopped flowing. She went and told the man of God, and he said, Go sell the oil and pay your debts. You and your sons can live on what you have left. I really like this story because it talks about two things. It talks about the widow believing that she had nothing, that she was completely at the end of her rope. And yet the prophet said to her, What do you have? It was then she said, Nothing except a little oil. The prophet then told her to go and use what she had. The other reason I like this story is that the prophet told her to go and get jars, that don't get just a few, but get as many as you can find and bring them into your home and start pouring the oil that you have into those jars. And the oil flowed from her jar into all of those other jars until all of the other jars were now full. I've often wondered what would have happened if she'd had more jars. Would the oil have kept flowing? I believe it would have. I want to bring you some encouragement today on those two areas. Sometimes we think we have nothing left to give. When we've stopped striving on our own, when we get to the place where we don't want to try to do it anymore our way, but we're willing to do it his way, that's when he can really start to work in us. And he can start to do miraculous things in our lives. What do you have? Give him what little you have and what little you can do and let him start to work in it. But then know too that when God directs you, he's going to bless you and strengthen you. He's going to give you direction and he's going to give you hope. And the blessing that came to this widow with her oil, the blessing continued as long as she had something to be able to receive it. Know that God loves you. Know that God meets you right where you are at, and his blessings are there to give you everything that you need. Let his love flow in you and be in you. And let it flow out of you into other people around you. Be blessed, my friends. Thank you for listening today. And I invite you to join me Monday to Friday right here on Starting Right with Danny Mack.
