Tag: morning routine

Happy 4th of July!!

It’s July 4th. Happy Independence Day! I pray that you are celebrating safely with your family and friends. We’re now more than half way through 2017. This year seems to be going by very fast.

Where Has the Time Gone

If you’re like me, at the beginning of the year you set goals of things that you want to accomplish this year. Maybe you are better than I am and you have already accomplished everything that you set out to do this year. You could be on the other end of the spectrum and you realize that it’s July 4th and you can’t even remember what your goals were. This year, I’m somewhere in the middle. I haven’t accomplished everything that I set out to do this year, but I have accomplished more this year than I have in years past.

This Year Can Still be Awesome!! Click To Tweet

So how do you get the most out of the rest of this year? Can your goals still be accomplished this year? The easy answer is yes, but the more complicated answer is that the rest of this year is dependent upon you. This year can still be great but it must come with some reflection.

What Is Holding You Back?

What has kept us back so far this year? Has it been laziness, busyness, or any number of other things that will try to creep up on our priority list. There must be a time of self reflection where we can see what is holding us back.

As we celebrate America’s Independence Day today, let’s set the rest of our year to make the best of it. Let’s have a time of reflection and then have a plan. We can’t just wish that things will be different, we have to plan to do better. Plan for the things that will try to hold us back and how we can overcome them.

Plan For Better

This can still be an awesome year! What has been holding you back this year? What’s your plan to overcome your setbacks? We can still accomplish so much this year. Let’s get to work!

The Morning Routine You Need

Time w/ God

I like to get the most out of my day. I feel like it is a good day when at night I can look back and feel like I accomplished something. It’s a good feeling to have days where you feel productive. Productivity has a way of making you feel better in every area of your life.

Netflix & What Would’ve Been

I despise the feeling of having a day off of work or being on vacation and wanting to get so many things done, and yet somehow nothing gets done. If you’re like me, you have this day marked on your calendar and you expect having a “free day” to do whatever you need or want. However,  the great plans that you had disappeared when you sat down to catch up on your Netflix queue. Before you know it, you’ve watched an entire season of House of Cards, it’s 6 o’ clock and you still haven’t showered!

Start the Right Way

One of the most important things that I’ve learned over the last couple of years is how important your morning routine is to the start of a great day. You can pretty much Google “How to have a great morning,” and get plenty of advice on how to get the most out of your day. What I see from these tips and morning routines are the biblical principles that God has laid out for us. So what does God say about how we are to start our day.

1. Plan the night before

The start to a great day actually begins the night before. Proverbs 21:5 Says that “the plans of the diligent leads to abundance”. A successful day actually begins the day before. Too many times we just let the day happen to us. We need to plan how we want our days to look in advance.

2. Praise & Worship

I like to start my day with some Praise & Worship. This helps me so that I’m not tempted to go back to sleep. Offering up praise and worship to God is a way get our blood pumping and our bodies moving. Having this time of praise and worship has a way of opening our hearts and helps us focus on God’s goodness at the start of the day.

3. Devotional

Having a good devotional is a  benefit. Most devotionals give a daily scripture, some reflection and a prayer at the end. I really like devotionals because they offer a focus for the day. It provides context and gives me a reference for what I can refer to throughout the day. Joshua 1:8 says it best. We are to “meditate on God’s word day and night.” Devotionals are great for this.

4. Pray

By this point in the morning routine, there you should flow from one thing to the next. It can be easy to flow from the devotional  prayer to a time of personal prayer. For me, I like to begin my personal time with expressing to God how thankful I am. Our prayer time should focus on God rather  than ourselves. While there are times we do need to express issues of our lives to God, there should also be times where we are praying for our families, friends and communities.

 

5. Journal

I am a big fan of writing in a journal. For me, it’s a great way to reflect on the previous day, and a way to transfer the thoughts in my head out on paper. Sitting down to journal after a time of prayer is a great way of getting in the habit of writing the things down that God tells us. Making using a journal a part of your morning routine helps to value God’s voice and His word.

6. Confessions/Affirmations

Ending the morning routine with confessions or affirmations is an awesome way to build up our confidence and self-esteem before  we step into the world. God’s word is most powerful when we speak it out of our mouths. We don’t just become the things we see and hear, we become what we say. Confessing God’s word over lives builds us up for so many things that we attack during the day.

 

Have you developed a morning routine? If not, what is holding you back? Let’s start today with getting the most out of our days.