First waking moments

How do you start your day?

Bible reading


Kids in your bed

Step on the scales

Straight to the kitchen to make breakfast and into the chores of the day?

What are those first moments of your day? Those first thoughts that run through your mind? We are creatures of habit and we are creatures of desire. We do what we desire and our hearts reveal our desire for love, for affirmation, for rest, security, peace and purpose from our first waking moments.

How we start our day can reveal how we settle our hearts, where we place our personal security, our sense of peace and our readiness for the day ahead, whether we’re ready to seize or just get through it.

So how do we start our days to console those worries, to assure our hearts, to affirm ourselves for the day ahead, and to start the day aright.
How we start our days can reveal where our heart finds its security….

Do our hearts find reassurance, find security, and peace with the number on the weight scales?

On the depth of conversation and connectedness with family around the breakfast table?

On the success of the previous day?

On the hopes of the achievements hoping to be ticked off this day?

On the quality of our Bible time and whether we’ve got that word or verse for the day?

On the intimacy of our prayer time?

On the busyness of our calendar this day?

Does our peace and readiness rely in the assurance of time to ourselves, or in the diary reassuring us of sufficient time with others, filling the empty hours of the day?

Does the first wake check of social media assure our hearts by giving us sufficient likes, kudos, messages?

Does that morning mental checklist calm and quieten our heart that we have enough things to do that day, speaking words of security to self doubt, ‘you are wanted, you are needed, your life is useful’?

Our hearts search around for a resting place from the first moment we awake in the morning and they will latch on to something to take hold, to settle and prepare for the day ahead.

But so many mornings, they are disquieted and troubled when our personal security is left wondering, anxious and adrift , unable to breathe easy when our actions prove dissatisfying and insufficient.

The calendar doesn’t look appealing, the scales speak out the word failure or out of control, the Bible time yields no special word or verse for the day, and our families offer no words of gratitude or recognition.

How we spend our first waking moments all too often set a course for the remaining hours of the days, and our heart’s desire for acceptance, belonging, security and peace search around until they take hold.

But there is a better way and this is how God begins your day;

You are accepted

You are delivered from the kingdom of darkness 

You are loved and never alone

You have authority to fight against sin

We awake every morning with our Redeemer Lord having already secured our heart’s acceptance, belonging and desire to be love. Our personal security from the first moments of our waking day to the time we drift off to sleep is secured by the accepting love of God and the sacrifice of Christ.

Our heavenly Father who speaks these words to us, based not on any words we do, who loves us on account of His gracious, steadfast goodness, who accepts us and secures us to him all on account of work already done for this and every day, on the precious and redeeming work of Jesus through his life, and on the cross.

Every morning you awake with your heart having all it requires to secure your desire to belong, to belong, to be loved, accepted and justified. All in Christ.

No number from social media post likes, diary commitments, scales can offer this.

No words, however precious, spoken by our loved ones, can satisfy the deepest desires of our hearts, the deepest needs of our hearts.

How you start your day has significance, it does matter. But only as an overflow of our heart’s rest and security already placed and assured in the precious truth of God’s justification of us already in Christ.

When we open our Bible, make our coffee, greet our children, prepare the breakfast, do the chores, when we pray upon waking, we do not seek the acceptance, security and love our heart’s desire, we awake already safe, secure, belonging to God, already justified.

We begin the day as we ended the last, as we spent the night, graciously, wonderfully, securely, eternally justified, already and always in Christ.

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