radical

Psalm 119:105 Your word is a lamp to guide my feet
      and a light for my path. (NLT & ESV)


I LOVE to sleep. Getting up early was such a struggle because I just love the warm & fuzzy feeling of lying in bed, all covered up, warm, & comfortable.

Let's have a moment of silence for lying in bed, all covered up, warm, & comfortable...


now, picture this...

beginning of January, 2003...

I start waking up at 4:30 to 5 A.M.!!! - for no reason.

Every morning during the first 2 weeks of January of 2003 I'm waking up. And this isn't my usual kinda groggy, sleepy kinda waking up. This is a HELLO! I'M AWAKE! kinda thing.

I was NOT amused.

After a couple of weeks of this, I asked my wife, Lynn, about it. (She's nurse practitioner)

I figured she was gonna say it's just another facet of being in your fifties. (whee)

She says, "I don't know. Maybe the Lord is trying to tell you something. Why don't you ask Him"

So, the next morning, when I woke up, I asked Him if there was something He was trying to tell me.

A Voice inside my head said, "Get up and read."

As much as I like to sleep, that was not something I would say to me.

So, I got up, read in the Bible, I listened.

And I've been doing that every morning ever since. I don't set the alarm, never have - God just wakes me up. Now it's more like 4am when He does that. And I just wake up. HELLO!


My life has been wrecked by doing this - in a good way.

God started talking to me, & He ain't stopped. He talks to me thru my eyes.

I read a psalm every day (me & Billy Graham), I read a chapter in the new testament, & a chapter in the old testament. I read sequencially - iow, I'm read in, say, Acts, straight thru. Then maybe James, then the gospels, etc. You get the idea. I don't read randomly.

He's wrecked me.

My life has gone through so many changes. He's constantly healing me, changing me, pruning me (back to the ground sometimes), encouraging me, loving on me, disciplining me, kicking my butt!

Iow, He's being a Father.

He's taken me in directions & places I never would have chosen. I've said & done things I never would have chosen to say or do.


He says just the things I need to heard that day through the places I "just happen" to read that morning.

He's given me verses or passages to hold on to during a year or season that have literally kept me from losing my mind (what's left of it!)

I have just one ting to say about this...


PLEASE DO THIS TOO!!!!!!!!!!!!


The smartest thing I've EVER done was getting up each morning, reading the Bible, & listening out for what He might have to say to me.


The dumbest thing I've ever done?


Waiting until I was 52 1/2 yrs old to do it.


Don't be as dumb as I was.