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.
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
0:00
|
5:56
Love is one of the most overused words in our culture and one of the least practiced when things get tense. Today we start with a surprising connection: a 1965 hit written at the height of the Vietnam War, “What the World Needs Now Is Love,” and the reason that message still feels urgent when fear and anger are everywhere.
We ask the real, practical question: what does love look like when you are dealing with people who are struggling, difficult, or different from you. I walk through Jesus’ answer in Mark 12:30–31, where loving God with everything we have is inseparable from loving our neighbor as ourselves. “Neighbor” is not a concept, it is the person in front of you, and the bridge to loving them is compassion and empathy. Without those, we cannot even begin.
Then I share a story from Dale Galloway that lands like a gut punch and forces a moment of honesty about what embarrassment and image can do to our hearts. We end with Ephesians 4:32 and a simple challenge for the week: skip the sermon, show the care. Reach out, listen, and let someone know they are not alone and that God cares.
If you want a short, faith-based morning reset with practical Christian encouragement, press play, then subscribe, share this with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review so more people can find Starting Right.
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.
Back in 1965, at the height of the Vietnam War, Bert Bacarak wrote a song called What the World Needs Now is Love. It was written as a response to all of the fear and anger at that time, particularly in the United States. The very unpopular Vietnam War, the racial riots throughout the United States, the tensions and anger and conflict between so many people. And so Bert Backerak wrote this song about the world needing love. It's really interesting that over the years that song continues to have been recorded, and in 2020, it was recorded again by different people on five different albums. What the world needs now truly is love, sweet
Well, Jesus gave the answer, and we have talked about it a number of times before here on Starting Right. It's found in Mark chapter 12, verses 30 and 31. Jesus was asked what are the greatest commandments, and he said to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. And the second is this love your neighbor as yourself. Our neighbors are the people around us, the people that we come in contact with. And how do we love them? It says to love them as ourselves, but the key to that really is having some compassion, some empathy for people who are really struggling and going through things. Without having empathy and compassion, we fail to even begin to love them.
I came across this story by Dale Galloway from his book Rebuild Your Life. The story comes from back during the Vietnam War and goes like this. The phone rang in a high society Boston home. On the other end of the line was a son who had just returned from Vietnam and was calling from California. His folks were the cocktail circuit party kind who enjoyed gambling and all the things that go with it. The boy said to his mother, I just called to tell you that I I I want to bring home a buddy with me. His mother said, Sure, bring him along for a few days. But mother, there there's something you need to know about this boy. One leg is gone, uh one arm is gone, he's lost an eye, and and his face, Mom, it's it's quite disfigured. Is it okay if I bring him home? His mother said, uh bring him home for a few days. The son said, You didn't understand me, mother. I want to bring him home to live with us. The mother began to make all kinds of excuses about embarrassment of what people would think. And the phone clicked. A few hours later, the police called from California to Boston. The mother picked up the phone again. The police sergeant said, Ma'am, are are you Mrs. Wilson? She said, Yes. Well, ma'am, we just found a young man who had lost an arm. He only had one leg, he was missing an eye, and his face, uh, ma'am, was quite mangled. Um and ma'am, this poor lad had just killed himself. The identification papers on the body uh say that he is uh your son. Can you imagine the thoughts and regrets that immediately went through that mother's mind?
Ephesians chapter 4, verse 32 tells us to be kind to one another. That phrase be kind means to have compassion. It means to have care for one another. When we really understand what it means to love our neighbors as ourselves, it means that kindness, that compassion, that care is shown in how we respond to them, how we reach out to them. It's not preaching to them, it's showing them, showing them that you care. And then once they see that we care, they will understand that God cares. And it opens up a door into their lives where God can reach in and begin to do the miracles of change that they really need Him to do for them. It's the love of Christ shown through us to the people that need it the most.
I have a challenge for you this week. I am sure that you know of someone who is hurting from something in their life. Can we find someone who needs us to show Christ's love to them? It doesn't have to be complicated. It's just a matter of reaching out with the love of God to somebody that you know needs it. They need to hear that God loves them. They need someone maybe to listen to them while they talk. Can we do that this week? I know we can. So reach out and share some love with someone this week and let them know they're not alone and that God and you are with them.
Have a great day, my friends. Enjoy your week. Reach out with that love, and 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.
