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
Choosing Right When No One Sees
What if the most important thing you give your family isn’t comfort or success, but a name they can carry with pride? We dive into a gripping real-life story from Chicago’s past—Easy Eddie, the high-powered lawyer who protected Al Capone—only to watch him choose truth over safety for the sake of his son’s future. That turning point reframes the question we all face: where does a harmless indulgence end and a soul-shaping compromise begin?
The culture often insists that truth is flexible and right and wrong are relative; we challenge that idea with a clear, biblical lens and show how conviction can be both firm and compassionate. This isn’t a call to perfection—it’s a practical path toward integrity, one honest choice at a time.
You’ll hear simple, workable steps to make pre-decisions before pressure hits, build habits of Scripture-shaped reflexes, and invite wise accountability that keeps your heart steady. If you’re ready to stop saying “I know I shouldn’t, but…” and start living a story worth passing on, press play, share this with a friend who needs courage today, and subscribe so you never miss a morning of truth and hope.
Good morning. I am Denny Mack, and you're listening to Starting Right. Every weekday morning, I'm going to be here to share stories of life and hope from God's Word. So grab a cup of coffee, sit back and relax for the next five minutes as I help you start your day by starting right. Have you ever made this statement? I know I shouldn't do this, but I'm going to do it anyway. I think all of us have. Usually it's something like I know I shouldn't have this extra piece of pie or this extra cookie, but I'm going to do it anyway. And some of those are rather harmless statements to a certain degree, but they are not a reflection of a character compromise. The problem arises when we make that statement and it compromises who we are, and we know deep down that we need to be better than what we just said or did. Back in the 1920s, there was a lawyer in Chicago who went by the nickname of Easy Eddie. He was one of the highest paid lawyers in the entire country, and certainly in Chicago, for the man who employed him solely was another fellow whose name was Al Capone. Al Capone wasn't famous for anything terribly heroic. He was famous for bootlegging, prostitution, and murder. And because Easy Eddie had helped Capone stay out of jail for so long and through so many of those illegal squabbles that he had along the way, Capone decided to reward him very richly, and Easy Eddie lived a life of luxury. Eddie had a soft spot, however. He had a son that he loved very, very much, and Eddie saw to it that his son had clothes and cars and a good education. Nothing was withheld, there was no price that was too great to pay for Eddie to look after his son. And despite Eddie's involvement with organized crime, he really wanted his son to be a better man than he was. One day Eddie came to a very difficult decision. He decided that he wanted to right the wrongs that he had done, and so he decided to go to the legal authorities and tell the truth about Al Capone, to clean his tarnished name to try to save some integrity for himself and his son. But to do this he would have to testify against Capone, and he knew the cost for that would be pretty heavy. So he testified. Within a year, Eddie was shot down in a blaze of gunfire in Chicago. When the police emptied his pockets, they found a rosary, a crucifix, a religious medallion, and a poem clipped from a magazine. The poem read The clock of life is wound but once, and no man has the power to tell just when the hands will stop, at late or early hour. Now is the only time you own. Live, love, toil with a will, place no faith in time, for the clock may soon be still. Eddie chose right from wrong to preserve the integrity for his son and to try to bring some back into his own life. In the book of Second Thessalonians, in chapter three and verse thirteen, Paul writes this. And as for you, brothers, never tire in doing what is right. People everywhere today believe that there is no such thing as absolute truth. There is no ultimate right or wrong. It is all relative, relative to the situation, relative to the person, relative to their life experience. And there really is no right or wrong anymore. Unfortunately, that's not what the Bible says. The Bible tells us that there are things that are right and there are things that are wrong. And it's our responsibility as followers of Jesus Christ to know what he says is right and to know what he says is wrong. And to live our lives the best way that we can in all of those things. To build and to know the choices that we make are following in that direction that we need to go. We want to get to the place in our lives where when we are in a moral choice, we don't ever find ourselves saying, I know I shouldn't do this, but I'm going to do it anyway. We want to do what's right. We want to know God's word so well and do what's right. So let God bless you with his word today. Let him encourage and strengthen you today. Be strong, be wise, be filled with the power of his spirit to live as he directs each one of us. Take care, my friends. We'll talk to you tomorrow. And I invite you to join me Monday to Friday right here on Starting Right with Danny Mack.
