Starting Right

A blind beggar sits outside Jericho, listening to footsteps and rumors, wondering if life will ever change, and then he hears the name that rewrites his future: Jesus. I walk through the story of Bartimaeus from Mark 10:46-52 and the moment he decides hope is worth getting loud about, even when the crowd tells him to be quiet. We talk about what makes Bartimaeus so relatable: long days of limitati...

A 1964 radio commentary shouldn’t feel like a breaking-news transcript, but that’s exactly what happens when we read Paul Harvey’s “If I Were the Devil.” Danny Mac brings the piece back to life and lets it speak for itself, line by line, as it describes how a nation can be weakened through distraction, division, media influence, the erosion of family, and a slow reshaping of what people call right...

When you’re praying hard and nothing seems to move, the silence can start telling stories: maybe God isn’t listening, maybe it won’t change, maybe it’s already over. We push back on that spiral with a five-minute morning reset rooted in Scripture, worship, and a stubborn kind of faith that refuses to quit. “Miracle in the Works” by Brian and Katie Torwalt reminds us that God is working and we can...

Grief has a way of emptying your mind and stealing your next step, so what do you do when you’re driving home with news you never wanted to hear? We tell the true story Darlene Zschech shares from her book, Extravagant Worship: a devastating doctor’s visit, a brokenhearted ride home, and a quiet prompt from the Holy Spirit that felt almost unbearable, “Sing.”  We walk through why that moment matte...

God doesn’t sit on a throne waiting to grant demands like a genie and that one truth changes how we pray, work, and give. We start with a hard reset on expectations, then zoom out to a powerful biblical pattern: God often chooses to build His kingdom through people, not shortcuts. If you’ve ever wondered why your prayers feel unanswered, or whether your daily job has spiritual value, this conversa...

Fire can feel cruel when you’re standing in it, but what if it’s also doing something precise and necessary?  Have you ever watched a silversmith work?  He is  able to take the raw material and melt it down with extreme heat, and the use it to create something beautiful.  That sounds a lot like how God sometimes works in us.  Listen today to find out more. We would love to hear your comments. Send...

You can learn a lot about life by doing one thing most of us never do: watching the credits all the way to the end. After a movie night surprise, we turn to Colossians 4:7-10 and find a set of names that rarely get the spotlight, yet carry massive weight in the early church: Tychicus, Onesimus, and Aristarchus. Their stories shine a bright light on behind the scenes ministry and why quiet faithful...

Thanksgiving can feel like a warm meal and a full table, but I want to take it deeper than tradition. Today we ground gratitude in Scripture, starting with Psalm 100:4 and the simple, challenging idea that thanksgiving is a way we enter God’s presence with open hands. When we remember why Thanksgiving was established in the first place, we see it as a deliberate pause to acknowledge God’s provisio...

A lawn chair, a stack of weather balloons, and a man who drifted toward the ocean at 11,000 feet. It’s a story you can’t unhear, and we use it to ask a bigger question: what does boredom do to our choices, and what does God offer instead? This Friday Roundup pulls together the most meaningful moments from the week, built for a quick, five-minute start that still leaves you grounded, challenged, an...

The town of Hum in Croatia is officially the smallest town in the world.   It's size is less than a football field and the population is a mere 30 people.  Yet  somehow has two churches, and that odd little detail opens the door to a bigger question: what happens to our faith when we try to do it alone? We share the story of Hum, Croatia and use it as a simple prompt to think about belonging,...

A lawn chair, forty five weather balloons, a tank of helium, and a BB gun. That’s not a movie plot, it’s the true story of Larry Walters, a truck driver who wanted to fly so badly that he turned his backyard into a launch pad and accidentally floated to about 11,000 feet. We tell the whole story, from the dream that started it to the moment a pilot reports “a guy in a lawn chair” near Los Angeles...

Childhood has changed fast, and you can feel it the moment you sit down with a teenager and watch how different their world is from the one you grew up in. After spending time with our grandchildren and sharing a simple moment around a new video game, we step back and talk honestly about the dangers, pressure, and confusing messages kids face today and why grandparents still matter more than ever....

Monday can hit like a wave, and if you’re already tired before the week even starts, you’re not alone. We’re keeping it simple and steady with a five-minute  devotional designed to lift your focus and give you a clean start to the day. Grab your coffee, take a breath, and let worship music do what it does best: move you from stress to trust. Our Music Monday pick is “Gonna Be Good” by Taya, a voic...

You can love Jesus and still feel totally baffled by the people around you. One person wants a plan, another wants a party, another wants peace, and another wants to lead the charge. So what if the friction you feel is less about “bad attitudes” and more about God-designed differences you haven’t learned how to read yet? We start with 1 Corinthians 12 and Paul’s clear picture of the body of Christ...

A ship goes down in the South Pacific, and one man makes it to shore alive: a preacher who is furious at God. He builds a life from wreckage, finds water and food, and still wakes up every day asking the same questions many of us whisper when life hurts: Where are you, God, and why won’t you answer me? Then the worst thing happens. While he’s away gathering food, his hut catches fire and everythin...

God can feel painfully quiet when you’re stressed, tired, and out of answers. That’s why so many of us end up saying the same simple line: “I need a word from God.” Today’s five-minute encouragement starts there, with the real-life emotion behind that prayer, and the honest question hiding under it: If God is with me, why does everything still feel so hard? We go back to Judges 6 and sit with Gide...

Some mornings don’t need more noise. They need a reset. We open with a simple, sturdy line from Psalm 118:24: “This is the day the Lord has made,” and we treat it like a real decision point. Before the emails, before the headlines, before the stress spiral, we choose to rejoice and be glad, not because life is easy, but because God is good and his love doesn’t quit. We talk about why gratitude is...

A half-wolf with a taste for chickens sounds like an odd place to find life advice, but Jack London's White Fang story hits a nerve fast. We start with a simple picture: instinct lunges toward what looks good, a steady voice calls it back, and over time a wild heart learns a new “law.” That’s not just animal training, it’s a map for daily self-control when no one is watching and the temptatio...

Some worship songs feel like a warm blanket. This one feels like a spine. We’ve been reading through the Book of Acts and getting a fresh look at the New Testament church, where faith isn’t a weekend accessory. Believers share sacrificially, face life-and-death pressure, and still watch the Spirit of God move with power through miracles, spiritual gifts, and people coming to Christ in huge numbers...

You can know your “usual path” and still get hurt when one small thing changes in the dark. That’s the image I can’t shake as I talk through a moment we’ve all lived: waking up at night, trying to navigate the house without turning on the light, and suddenly slamming into what you didn’t expect. It’s funny until it’s not, and it’s a surprisingly honest picture of what uncertainty does to us when w...

When the world feels like it’s spinning out of control, your mind can start writing the worst ending possible. We hit pause on that spiral and reach for a different anchor: a song Danny Mac could not wait to share on Music Monday, Matthew West’s “Last Page of the Bible” featuring Anne Wilson.  We talk about the moment Matthew West connected the song to one of Billy Graham’s most memorable lines, t...

The most dangerous temptations don’t look like disasters. They look like tiny detours that feel reasonable. Today we take a fast, focused look at C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters and why this classic Christian book on temptation and spiritual warfare still feels uncomfortably current. Lewis flips the usual approach by letting us overhear demons strategizing, and that “backwards” view makes the p...

You can pray, ask the right questions, and still feel the sting of, “I haven’t seen God doing anything lately.” That honest frustration is where we start, because so many of us measure God’s work by what we can point to, prove, and post. I walk through a conversation with a friend who’s been faithful for years, yet feels like heaven has gone quiet, and I ask the question that changes the frame: wh...

“What if?” It sounds small, but it can hijack your whole day, and it loves to show up at night when everything is quiet. Today I’m taking on that worry spiral head-on and giving you a simple, five-minute mindset shift you can carry into work, family stress, health scares, and all the unknowns that like to camp out in your thoughts.  Here is what “what if” really does: it multiplies fear, steals sl...

A brave mouse from Narnia might be the last person you’d expect to challenge your faith, but Reepicheep does exactly that. I’m Danny Mack, and today on Starting Right I share how reading The Chronicles of Narnia as an adult opened my eyes to the Christian theology C.S. Lewis threads through the story, especially in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. When Reepicheep reaches the very edge of Aslan’s co...