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
Quiet Starts, Strong Days
The loudest moments in life rarely carry the clearest answers. We start the day by exploring how guidance often arrives as a whisper—and why leaning in can change our choices, our mood, and our direction. Through a vivid story of a stressed young father and a wise preacher, we see how dropping our volume helps us hear what actually matters. Then we step into Elijah’s journey at Mount Horeb, where wind, earthquake, and fire demand attention but fail to deliver the message he needs, and a gentle whisper reframes everything.
I share how this ancient pattern mirrors modern mornings: anxiety shouts, deadlines crowd, and our minds sprint. Instead of chasing spectacle, we pause. You’ll hear practical, bite-sized habits for finding stillness in real life—before unlocking your phone, during a commute, while making breakfast, or after the kids are down. These micro-moments become training for discernment, making it easier to spot the next right step in work, relationships, and faith. We also unpack the difference between fear-driven noise and grounded wisdom, and why a quiet heart often sees options a frantic one misses.
If you’ve been waiting for a thunderbolt answer, consider the power of a softer voice. Lean closer, listen for the gentle nudge, and act on what you hear—one simple step at a time. Subscribe for weekday reflections that help you start right, share this with a friend who needs calm today, and leave a quick review to tell us where you hear your clearest whispers.
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. I recently heard a story about a young man and an old preacher. See, the young man had lost his job and he didn't know what to do or which way to turn. He had a wife and a young child. So he went to see the preacher, and as he paced around the preacher's study, he ranted and raved about his problem and all of his frustrations and his lack of ability to hear what God was saying. And finally he clenched his fist and shouted, I've begged God to say something to me, preacher. Why doesn't God answer me? Well the old preacher was sitting in his easy chair across the room and he spoke something in reply. It was it was so quiet and so hushed that it was indistinguishable. The young man stepped across the room and said, What did you say? And so the preacher repeated himself, but again in a tone as soft as a whisper. So the man moved closer until his hands were on the arms of the preacher's chair, and his head was right beside the preacher's face. Sorry, he said, I I still didn't hear you. With our heads so close together now, the preacher spoke once more. Sometimes God whispers, so we will move closer to hear him. This time the young man he heard it and he understood. All of us at certain times in our lives, we want God's voice to thunder through the air with an answer to our problems. But most often God is not that big, booming, thunderous voice. Most often he does not write on the wall, although I really wish sometimes he would. Most of the time God speaks in that still small voice, that that gentle whisper. And you know, maybe there's a reason for that? There's nothing that draws our focus quite like a whisper. When I want to hear God's whisper speak to me, that means I've got to stop getting uptight and stop ranting about everything else that's going on and stop telling him about what my problems are and how bad it is and how desperate I am for it. And I need to stop and just listen to him. And then as I listen, I get to find my answer. Sometimes we just need to train our minds to hear what God is whispering and not what the enemy is shouting. We see this concept of God's whisper in 1 Kings chapter 19. Elijah had just beaten the prophets of Baal, great victory for him. He ran away from Jezebel, he hid, he got tired, and now he's wanting to hear what God has to say to him. The angel of the Lord came again, touched him, and said, Get up, eat some more, or the journey ahead will be too much for you. So in verse eight it says he got up, he ate, and he drank, and the food gave him enough strength to travel forty days and forty nights to Mount Sinai, the mount of God. And there he came to a cave and he spent the night. But the Lord said to him, What are you doing here, Elijah? And Elijah replied, I have zealously served the Lord God almighty. But the people of Israel have broken their covenant with you, torn down your altars, and killed every one of your prophets, and I am the only one left, and now they're trying to kill me too. Go out and stand before me on the mountain, said the Lord. And as Elijah stood there the Lord passed by, and a mighty windstorm hit the mountain. It was such a terrible blast that the rocks were torn loose, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire, and after the fire there was a sound of a gentle whisper. And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave, and the voice said, What are you doing here, Elijah? In that still small voice, God finally got Elijah's attention and was able to speak to him and to catch him and to show him what to do and to tell him where to go. So often you and I want to hear God's booming voice. We want to see that writing on the wall. We want to know for sure that we're doing the right thing. But more often than not, God is speaking to you right now in that same still small voice. It comes to you when you're laying in bed at night. It comes to you when you're having your devotions in the morning. It'll come to you when you're driving to work or when you're walking down the street. Or when you're looking after the children, or when you're making breakfast, or when you're just spending some time by yourself. God will come in that still small voice. And when he speaks in that small voice, listen. Because then we can give him our full attention. Jesus said, I have come that you might have life and have it to the full. God will impart life and the fullness of life to you when you listen to what he says. Have a great day, my friends. We'll 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.
