Early in the Morning My Song Shall Rise

By Grant Gaines

This morning I want to approach this blog in a slightly different manner than normal. I’m not going to give an interesting story as an introduction and then focus on one text from the Bible as I often do. Rather, I want to talk to you about the importance of getting into the Word and into prayer first thing in the morning.

Before I start, however, I need to tell you that a morning quiet time is NOT a command from God that you’re going to find in the Bible. Certainly spending time with Him through studying the Bible, listening to Him, praying to Him, worshipping Him, and serving Him are all commands but the time of day that you accomplish these commands are all personal preference. That being said, however, I personally believe that a morning quiet time before your day gets kicked off is one of the wisest things you could ever do. Let me explain by using an analogy from the greatest sport ever invented – football.

Before the quarterback takes the snap and starts the play, he first walks up to the line of scrimmage to “read” the defense. What he’s doing is checking to see if the play the offense is about to run will be successful against the way the defense is lined up. Is the offensive line set up to block the correct way? Does the running back need to scoot up or back in order to do his job successfully? Are the defensive backs showing a coverage that will be beneficial to the play the offense is about to run?

All those are questions that might run through a quarterback’s head as he is about to take the snap. The beautiful thing about this “pre-snap read” is that while the defenders may be pacing back and forth to try to confuse the quarterback as to where they will actually be at the snap of the ball, they can’t hide; every single one of the eleven defenders have to be in front of the quarterback on the appropriate side of the line of scrimmage. They can move around all they want, but they can’t truly hide from the quarterback’s vision.

However, as soon as the ball is snapped, this all changes. No longer is the quarterback only concerned with who’s in front of him, but now he has to worry about the defensive linemen that is quickly barreling down on him from his blindside, the linebacker who is blitzing around the outside corner, or the defensive back who is slouching in a zone trying to disguise his coverage. After the ball has been snapped, it’s utter chaos!

I believe this demonstrates the difference between a morning quiet time and an afternoon/evening quiet time. If you spend time with the Lord before you look at your phone, talk to others, or get to work, your day is pretty much all in front of you – just as the defenders are before the snap of the ball. You don’t have to worry about all the craziness the day is about to throw at you because you can view your calendar and To-Do list through the lens of God’s peace and sovereignty before everything gets moving.

However, as soon as you start looking at your phone, checking emails, or interacting with your kids, the “ball has been snapped” and now all of the sudden there is chaos abounding. “How am I going to put this ‘fire’ out at work?” “How are we going to pay the bills?” “Why are my kids acting this way?”

Questions and confusion begin to swirl around your head like a tornado until you can’t do anything other than lash out in a fleshy response (opposed to a fruit of the Spirit-filled response) because of the stress that has been mounting on your shoulders.

Will a morning quiet time stop all the chaos from coming? Not at all! But will a morning quiet time change the way you look at all the confusion? Absolutely!

You see, just because a quarterback makes a pre-snap read that a linebacker is going to blitz around the outside corner doesn’t stop the linebacker from doing so when the ball is snapped. What that pre-snap read does, though, is it allows the quarterback now to use the blitzing linebacker to his own advantage by exposing the zone that linebacker left in order to blitz the quarterback.

In the same way, if we allow the Lord to speak the first words into our lives, we may still have problems at work, at home, or in relationships, but rather than being blindsided by those problems, we can allow the Lord to work those circumstances for our good as He promised He would in Romans 8:28.

Again, a morning quiet time is NOT a specific command in the Word, but for whatever reason, Jesus Himself thought it was pretty important to start His day off with the Lord as can be seen from Mark 1:35 (NIV, bold mine) which says, “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where He prayed.”

If you already spend time with the Lord in the morning, let this be an encouragement to you to continue to do so…it’s worth it! If you don’t spend time with the Lord first thing in the morning, let this be a challenge to you to give it a try for a week. Set your alarm 15-30 minutes earlier and let your day start out with the Lord. I know you want to sleep, but I think we would both agree that spending 15 extra minutes in bed doesn’t come close to comparing to 15 extra minutes with the God who can actually give rest and strength.

Make your “pre-snap” read…the chaos of the day is about to begin!

“In the morning, LORD, You hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before You and wait expectantly.”

– Psalm 5:3 (NIV)