The Best Way to Start the Day

People have asked me for years if they need to have a quiet time first thing in the morning. My most frequent answer has been to say that we ought to spend time with God when we are at our best. We ought to give God our time of greatest focus. We ought to give Him the time when we are most fresh. I am rethinking all that. I do think we ought to give Him our best, but we really need Him to set the attitude for our day. We need God to refresh our thinking and perspective.

Here is my main idea: Spending time reading the Bible and praying is the best way to begin your day because it gets you thinking right. Thinking right is not very complicated. Here are a few thoughts about what thinking right looks like. 

• Remembering that there is a God and that you are not Him. 
• Remembering that this God of the universe loves you passionately and that matters the most. 
• Puts us in the place where we know we ought to trust Him and not ourselves for everything that may happen during the day. 
• Gives us a much greater chance of doing all our human relationships better. 
• Is about living a life of worshipping God and not me or my stuff. 
• Is remembering that our day belongs to God and we are merely stewards of it.
• Is beginning the day trying to listen to the guiding voice of the Holy Spirit. 

This thinking right gives us our best theoretical chance of doing well and not just wasting time.

Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love,

 that we may sing for joy and be glad all of my days.

Psalm 90:14

This delightful reminder was part of my morning reading today. It was so sweet to read. But the verse just two verses above has caught my attention for more than 30 years. 

Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

 Psalm 90:12

In this present chapter of life for me, I statistically have fewer days left than I had previously thought. The instruction seems to produce a prayer like, “Jesus, help me be wise with how I spend this day!”. Or maybe the prayer looks like, “Jesus, give me insight as to what is the best way to spend my minutes!”. Maybe the beginning of the day is the very best time to stop and listen and get leadership for how to spend the time.

SUGGESTIONS ABOUT SPENDING TIME WITH GOD

First off, it is probably best not to think of time with God like a checklist item on your to do list. It is relational time with your God. Just like hanging out with your wife or friends is not a checklist item. 

Most people struggle to spend time with God because they have not figured out a good “What,” a good “where,” and a good “when.”

What we are going to read is a really big deal. If you sit down to read and spend 20 minutes trying to figure out what to read, you wasted that time and then probably got bored and then moved on. How about we adopt a plan of what to read so that we can sit down and get after it? I am going to list a handful of “what’s” that I think are fantastic, and easy to decide, places to read.

BIBLE READING SUGGESTIONS

Read the Proverbs of the day. Whatever day of the month it is, read that chapter. For example, today is November 14. I read Chapter 14 of Proverbs. It has 31 convenient chapters. Ask yourself how you see a particular proverb playing out in real life as you read the chapter. Ask Jesus to have one pop off the page for you to chew on all day.

Read the Psalms for the day. There are 150 psalms. Read the day of the month, then add 30 and read that one, then add 30 and read that one, then add 30 and read that one, then add 30 again and read that. For example, today is November 14. I read Psalm 14, 44, 74, 104, and 134! What a great assortment of fantastic psalms. They are the authentic prayers of men who cry out to God, sometimes joyfully, sometimes sadly, sometimes appealingly, sometimes worshipfully. Reading them every month for years and years is really good for the soul.

Read the New Testament (NT) every season (semester). If you read 3 chapters a day in the NT every day (about 15 minutes), you can read it in about 4 months. I suggest reading the NT through cover to cover a few times a year. After 5 years you will have a familiarity that is really healthy and encouraging. I think we keep reading and reading it well into our years. As I read what I have even memorized, it still speaks and I still need to hear it.

Read a smaller NT book each day for a week or two. Over the years there have been Bible texts that have shown to be crucial for my development. The epistles (Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Collosians, 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus and 1 Peter) have been so good for me to hammer into my soul. Reading them cover to cover everyday for a couple weeks lets you hear what God is trying to say.

The question of what to read is massive, but if we do not figure out a “when” we will have little chance to get it to happen. Everything in life is desiring to use up our time. “When can I go and meet with God?”  When is the doable, realistic, time you can sit down and listen best?

The last question is “where?” There are so many distractions. Where can you go that will give you the greatest chance of hearing?

One last thought about “how” you read. We all have these amazing devices called cell phones where you probably have Bible apps. I think the Bible apps are cool, but I am not a fan for us to use them for our time with God. They are a “distraction factory”. I have sat down so many times to read and lost track in less than 1 minute. I see a text come in or a news notification and off I go “chasing that squirrel”. Just like a dog cannot resist chasing squirrels, so we chase squirrels all day on our phones. I am back to using my paper Bible for my time with Jesus.

Bonus material

The next time you go to Walmart, buy a pack of index cards. Keep the cards and a pen near your spot. Write down the verses that jump off the page and keep them in your pocket to look at throughout the day. The verses I write down stick in my soul better than if I do not write them down.

Final Reflection

As I fight this cancer, more than anything, I need to hear God’s leadership and voice. My best possible chance of this is to sit with Him in my blue recliner every morning. I can read His words and talk with Him. Let’s go listen to the Master every morning. His desire to meet with us is far greater than our desire to meet with Him.