Win The Morning Series

A man, who wasn’t really a morning person at all was reading his paper early one morning at the breakfast table.

His wife came over to him and patted him on the shoulder. She looked at him, smiled, and said, “I bet you don’t know what today is, do you?”

He looked at her and said, “Of course I know what day it is!” and went back to reading his paper.

He didn’t have a clue, but he was afraid that he would make his wife upset because… she was really sensitive about special occasions.

He thought to himself, “Is it her Birthday? That must be it.” So… after he got to work, he called the florist and had a bouquet of white roses sent to his wife.

Then as the day went on, he began worrying that flowers may not be enough for such an important day. “What if it’s our anniversary?”

So at lunch… he went to the jewelry store down from his office, picked out a beautiful tennis bracelet and had it special delivered to his wife.

As he started home from work he decided that maybe he should also stop and buy an expensive box of chocolates to bring to her… just in case.

He pulls into the driveway and his wife runs out to greet him. As he gets out of the car and presents her with the box of chocolates, she throws her arms around him and says,

“Oh, honey, this is the best GROUNDHOG DAY I’ve ever had!”

Not many were celebrating Groundhog Day this year. Just an FYI, I did not see my shadow this past Sunday morning when I got up… so… only 4 more weeks of this sermon series.

Just kidding, only 2 weeks… today and next week and then we will have this series, “Every Thought Captive” wrapped up. And today, we are tackling this idea of “winning the morning”.

How we start our day, will often set the tone for the rest of the day. Or as the great Theologian and Philosopher, Kendall Wildey often said…

“Make it a great day or not, the choice is yours.”

- Kendall Wildey

If you ever worked with Kendall in school or ever had him as a student, then you’ve heard him say this. Now… I don’t know if He knows that he was actually being biblical or not… but he kinda was… I will show you how as we go along.

But first… I want to take a little quiz this morning. How many of consider yourself to be a morning person?

Some of you wake up energized, coffee in hand, ready to conquer the day before the sun is fully up. You wake up kind of like you’re Curly McClain in the musical Oklahoma… “Oh what a beautiful morning… Oh what a beautiful day.”

Now… How many of you are not morning people at all? You’re the type of person that believes that mornings are proof of Adam and Eve’s rebellion in the garden of Eden.

Like, there are three major curses of their sin. 1. Is physical death. 2 is labor pains for women. And 3. Mornings… and not necessarily in that order.

Here’s the thing: we all have this sorta theology of mornings, whether we realize it or not. What do you believe mornings are for? What do you do first? What… or who… gets your attention before anything else?

And how do you respond when someone else’s “theology of mornings” looks very different from yours?

This matters, because how we begin the day often shapes how we interpret everything that follows.

Your routine reveals your beliefs. And when someone else’s morning routine… or “theology of mornings”… differs from yours, how do you respond?

With grace? With judgment? With comparison? Mornings are not just about schedules. They’re about formation. What we do in the morning sets the tone for the rest of the day.

Like we’ve talked about a few times during this series, when we wake up in the morning, what do we do? Do we immediately reach for our phones or do we get into the word?

I’d like to tell you I’m really good at getting up in the morning and diving right into my devotional time… but that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes that doesn’t happen till later in the day when I get to the office.

I’m trying to do a better job implementing each day in the morning is this… “Scripture over screens”. Not that screens are always evil… some good can come form them… in their proper place.

But what happens when we hit our phones before anything else, we see this never-ending cycle of bad news.

Just the first three stories I saw this morning on my feed were related to all the turmoil surrounding ICE. The Epstein files. And the disappearance of Savannah Guthrie’s mom.