How To Start the Day

I believe that how we start our day can affect how our day turns out.  Here is an example.  You get up late, because you overslept; so you rush out the door ill prepared to deal with the demands of your day.  Don't you just hate when that happens.  Or, maybe your a teenager and you never get caught up on your sleep, so in the mornings you are grumpy and irritable because you stayed up late on Face book instead of getting to bed on time.  Wouldn't you agree that the morning sets the tone for the rest of  our day. 


For me, morning is the best time of the day.  I feel rejuvenated from sleep and I can think more creatively in the morning hours.  Every morning is like a new beginning; an opportunity to start fresh and do it all over again, and hopefully to do it better this time. 


Years ago I read a book by Joseph S. Carroll, called, How to Worship Jesus Christ.  I highly recommend it because it changed my life.  The thing I learned that has stuck with me through the years is the importance of starting each day in submission to God, that is, to start each day with a simple prayer, a prayer of submission.  This prayer has become for me an established routine.  As soon as my mind leaves dreamland and comes into consciousness, I think of God.  I may say this prayer from the warmth of my bed, but many times I kneel beside my bed or a chair, and I thank God for the new day.  I offer my life to him, asking that his will be done in me.  Again, what I do is acknowledge that he is God and I am totally dependant upon him for everything I need and I can trust him, no matter what.  This prayer of surrender takes only a couple of minutes, but it fine-tunes my heart so that I can hear what he would say to me today and it helps me focus on what is of eternal consequence.

There's more, of course, to worshiping Christ than this two minute prayer in the morning.  But, somehow it  makes all the difference between having a good day verses having a bad day. 


Song of Solomon 7:12,  "Let us rise early and go to the vinyards;"
Psalm 63:1,  "O God, thou art my God; I shall seek thee earnestly:"