A PGA golfer will tell you that Thursday is a very important day in any professional golf tournament. It is the day the player needs to get off to a good start. While the tournament cannot be won on a Thursday, it can be lost. They can get so far behind that they don’t make the cut on Friday. I would suggest that what Thursdays are to the game of professional golf, the morning time is to our day. It sets us up for success or failure. It is the rudder to the rest of the day. The day can be won or lost in those first few minutes and hours after waking. Given that reality, let me suggest a good morning routine that will help us all get our day off to a good start.

Uncle Irv was not noted for his religious devotion but he needed one million dollars to clinch a real estate deal. So he went down to his local synagogue to pray for the money. By chance he knelt down next to a man who was praying for one hundred dollars to pay his rent. Irv reached into his pocket for his money clip, and took from it a hundred dollar bill which he pressed into the other man’s hand. Overcome by joy, the man got up and left the sanctuary. Uncle Irv then looked heavenward, and started his prayer, “Lord, now that I have your undivided attention . . . .”

The news of Japan’s surprise and savage attack upon the American fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, was a bittersweet affair to the British wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill. Bitter in the sense that he mourned the great loss of ships and sailors in this unprovoked attack! Sweet in the sense that it would become the catalyst for America’s entry into the Second World War! The sleeping giant had been awakened and now the tide would surely turn against Germany. The country of his mother’s birth would now be arrayed on Britain’s side. It is reported that on the evening of that infamous day in December that Churchill said: “Tonight I shall sleep the sleep of the saved and thankful.”

The worship offered to God in most churches on Sunday needs updating. It needs to become more contemporary, but not in the way most people think. When I talk about the need for more contemporary worship in our churches, I am not thinking in terms of a band replacing an orchestra, or a worship team replacing a choir, or throwing out the hymnal. The update has to do with who we worship, and not how we worship.

This was the situation of the children of Israel on the edge of entering the Promised Land. In Joshua three, the Israelites are looking across to Canaan with the River Jordan at flood level standing in their way (Josh. 3:1-17). The river’s edge was becoming a swamp (Josh. 3:15). It seems that God had brought them to the east bank of the river Jordan at a most unpropitious time. The more they looked the more impossible the crossing seemed. No boats, no bridges, no way!