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
Finding Your Lens
What happens when a simple rock climbing adventure turns into a profound lesson about faith and divine intervention? Today's story follows Brenda, who despite her overwhelming fear, joined friends for a climb up a towering granite cliff. When her safety rope accidentally knocked out her contact lens—leaving her stranded with impaired vision hundreds of feet above the ground—panic quickly set in.
Your current struggles may be preparing you for something greater or touching lives you'll never even know about. Whatever difficult climb you're facing today, remember that you're not abandoned on that cliff face. God sees you, has a plan for you, and sometimes works through the most unexpected means to bring that plan to fruition.
Subscribe to Starting Right with Danny Mac every Monday through Friday for more five-minute stories that will help you start your day with purpose, inspiration, and a fresh perspective.
Good morning and welcome to Starting Right with Danny Mac. I'm going to be here every Monday to Friday to help you get a great five-minute start to your day. So grab your cup of coffee, sit back, relax and let me help you start your day right. I've got a new story for you today. It's about a young woman named Brenda who was invited to go rock climbing and, although she was scared to death, she went with her group of friends to this giant granite cliff. She looked up at the cliff completely filled with fear, but she put on the gear, took a hold of the rope and started to climb up the face of the rock. Well, she got to a ledge where she could take a breather and as she was hanging there, the safety rope snapped against her eye and knocked out her contact lens. Well, here she was, on a rock ledge with hundreds of feet below her and hundreds of feet above her. Of course, she looked and looked, hoping that the lens had landed on the ledge, but it just wasn't there. Here she was, far from home, her sight now blurry. She was desperate and began to get upset, so she prayed to the Lord to help her find it when she got to the top of the cliff, a friend examined her eye and her clothing for the lens, but there was no contact lens to be found. She sat down almost in tears with those who had already made it to the top, waiting for the rest of them to make up the face of the cliff. She looked out across the range of mountains, thinking of that Bible verse that says the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth. She thought, lord, you can see all these mountains, you know every stone and leaf and you know exactly where my contact lens is. Please, god, help me. Finally, they walked down the easy way to the bottom of the cliff and at the bottom there was a new party of climbers just starting up the face. One of them shouted out hey, you guys, anybody lost the contact lens? Well, that would be startling enough, but you know why. The climber saw it. There was an ant moving slowly across the face of the rock carrying the contact lens. Brenda's father was a cartoonist and when she told him the incredible story of the ant, the prayer and the contact lens, he drew a picture of an ant lugging a contact lens with the words Lord, I don't know why you want me to carry this thing. I can't eat it and it's awful heavy. But if this is what you want me to do, I'll carry it for you.
Speaker 1:Sometimes we don't understand why we go through the things that we do. We believe God is with us, we believe he's guiding us, that his hand is on us, and yet we find ourselves often carrying loads that we didn't expect, that we don't want and that we somehow have to deal with. And at that point we have choices to make whether to get upset with God and the situation we're in, or to realize that maybe God is trying to do something. Psalm 138, verse 8, says the Lord will work out his plans for my life, for your faithful love, o Lord, endures forever. I think it would probably do us all some good occasionally to say God, I don't know why you want me to carry this load, I can't see any good in it and it's awfully heavy. But if you want me to carry it, I will.
Speaker 1:You see, god doesn't call the qualified, he qualifies the called. And if he's called you and you find that you have to carry a burden of some kind for a while, god qualifies you to do that. He gives you the strength, the wisdom and the understanding to do it, to be able to get through that valley that you're going through. The other side of the valley will be reached because God is giving you what you need to get there.
Speaker 1:And we need to remember that sometimes we go through difficult, trying, hard times, because it's not just about us. It's about God's plan for the people around us, maybe even people that we will never know until we get to heaven. But God uses those difficult times in our lives to qualify us, to help us become more and more like Him, so that His plans can be fulfilled in the people and the world around us. So when you're going through tough times, hang on, don't give up. God will work for you and in you. He's not going to abandon you, and sometimes he may do a miracle to help us find what we think we've lost. And at other times he may ask us to carry something that we don't know why we need to carry it. And yet God has got a plan and a purpose in it all. Have a great day, my friends. We will talk again tomorrow. Thank you for joining us today and I invite you to join us every Monday to Friday, right here at Starting Right with Danny Mac.
