Psalm 63:1 “O God, thou art My God; early will I seek thee: My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee In a dry and thirsty land, where no water is;”
‭‭

Hi Rose Buddy! It is the beginning of yet another week and I want to share with you the benefits of waking up early. If you’re like me, you hate starting your day in muddled chaos. You know, the hitting snooze for the third time, turning to the other side of the bed, and rapidly upsurging from the bed at the last minute like your name was Usain Bolt. Now, I do not always hit the mark every morning. This is more of an informational post to encourage us to form this habit as a routine. When I reflect when I was at my healthiest self physically, mentally, and spiritually, waking up early was etched into my routine. So, I would like to not only get back to that space, but share the benefits I gained from doing this. As this generation would say, “No gatekeeping” around here. I honestly want to see us all grow forward and live efficiently in Christ.

One thing that I found to be a benefit by waking up early is calmness at the start of my day. Of course, we can’t control what news we may receive no matter the time of day. That unfortunately is out of our control. Relating to the majority of our days, we have an opportunity to lead it with calmness. That extra hour or two can be monumental in how the rest of our day looks. We now begin to program our mind and body to move in the Peace of God and not a rushing, violent, wind of disorder. Did you know that you can teach your body that unnecessary commotion is normal? What we teach it is how it will operate even when it does not feel good to us. Crazy, right? So, why not teach it to move in Peace with God? God takes His time doing things even if it is sudden for us. He is never rushed. This teaches us that our lives should not be lived in a rushed state as well. Since our Generous Father has given us so much precious time, let’s use it wisely.

The next thing that I learned is that waking up early gave me more time to do things that I thought were unreachable. Funny how that works. Sacrifice an hour or two and I can finish a task that I do not have to worry about later. How many of you absolutely dread coming home from work and looking at a long to-do-list before bed? If you rose your virtual hand in agreement, then we are officially besties and you owe me a Starbucks date. All jokes aside, I completely detest doing anything after work. I just want to bathe, eat, put my earplugs in and crawl into my blanket to never speak to the outside world until the next day. That is what goes on in my head, but will never benefit me in my actual life. Can we have evenings that look like this? Sure! It just can’t be every evening. As we mature, we understand that certain things must get done whether we feel like it or not. So, taking the extra twenty minutes in my morning to content plan for the blog helps me rest longer once I am off of work in the evening. Are you seeing the comforting perks, yet?

Lastly, waking up early shows God that I am serious about the time He has given me to steward. We list so many things we want God to give us. Things like enlarged territory, bigger business dealings, divine networking opportunities, more money etc…Without proper understanding that the time He gives us is one of the main elements we need to even grasp all of those things. Who cares about more territory if we are not managing our time well to possess it? More money will indeed ensue more problems if our time is unsupervised. Putting God first is harder and will become obsolete if we are always rushing to start our day. It may not be our intentions, but squeezing God in for five minutes while we are en route to our next destination is not very loving. Funny how intentions work, because we use that excuse with God. On the contrary, when used with our significant others, it would be a point of offense. “How dare you not allot time for me!”, we would say in passionate anger. Even funnier is that we violently proclaim that we are in such a great relationship with God, but decide to speak to Him on the fly. I don’t have to talk to Him before church. He will be there. Why should worship service be the first time that morning you speak to the lover of your soul? Does that truly make sense? I will answer that for you, no.

I know that last benefit was pretty heavy and that is why I made it last. Waking up early is not just something we put on a Pinterest board for aesthetics. It is actually a godly principle. There are various counts of God’s people giving their time to Him first early in the morning as a reflection of their heart. As much as we talk, our heart does reflect our intentions and it shows up in our day to day actions. If most of our days are started in lack of time management, then we need to ask God to search us and desire His Heart to do better. We have to be able to serve from a devoted space and devotion starts with sacrifice.

Lord thank You for the gift of time and I pray we dare not take it for granted any longer. Help us to show up in this world even better than our brothers and sisters in The Bible that read about with great admiration. We want to do Your Will and we understand now that it includes wholehearted commitment with everything You have given us, even time. We repent and ask for Your forgiveness. In Jesus Name, Amen!

Until next time, PEACE!