Put God’s News First
Number one, priority. Priority is God’s news first. When we first get up in the morning, we often find in our souls an urge for something new, something fresh, it’s a new day, what’s new for today. I do not think that that desire for something fresh in the morning is a sinful desire. I think God put it there, he designed it for himself to come first to him in the morning, through his own words in scripture and by the life-giving power of his holy spirit and to find new mercies at the outset of each day.
So we dare not replace the sweetness and the substance of God’s voice first thing in the morning with productized marketed news. How tragic to aim our God-given desire for new morning mercies at the world’s report on its patterns rather than letting the world’s news set the mood and the tone and the terms of our day! We want our God to speak first into our souls. We prioritize Him through his word and when he has fed our souls and decidedly set the mood and the tone and the terms of our day, then we’re more ready as the day unfolds to navigate the world’s news, with a full heart and with a level head.
Set our Minds on Above Things
Then we also need to frame it is where we go to set our minds, you know that language set your minds right. Brothers and sisters, if then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not things that are on the earth. It doesn’t say to reject the things of the earth that come at us, but that’s not where we go to set the mind. We set our minds on our risen reigning glorified Christ sitting at God’s right hand.
Where do you go first thing in the morning to set your mind for the day? As Christians and as pastors all the more we want our best most focused most engaged moments of the day typically the first moments of the day, with the help of coffee perhaps to be an unhurried season away from noise away from distraction, in which we steep our souls in the word of the living God.
Find The Balance
What you do intentionally to access world and local news proportion relates to being in the world and not of the world. Or better we might even say not of the world but sent into the world. Jesus is praying for us as we’re sent into the world.
Proportion means that we need to find the balance of how often we access the news and for how long and what sources and all the while counting the cost of what we’re not giving our mind and heart to in that time. We learn to hear the news without being occupied by it.
Credit: Behind the Times: Survival in a Day of Suffocating News
