The Morning Watch

by Pastor Mitch Horton | March 2000

"But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you." (Matthew 6:33)"

"".....Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day." (2 Corinthians 4:16)

"I was working on staff at a large church in Oklahoma in the early 1980's after having attended my second Bible school. During this time in my life I was a very dissatisfied Christian! I had received the baptism with the Holy Spirit six years earlier, and was on the staff of a church pastored by one of God's choicest servants, and yet I was miserable! I could think of no known sin that I was hiding, and as best as I knew at the time, I was walking with God. By his gentle tug within me, I knew that there was something that the Lord wanted me to change, and I did sense that He wanted to take me to a deeper level of intimacy and awareness of spiritual things. James 4:8 reads, "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you...." He is always waiting for us to take the first step.

"I had the habit of meditating on the Word of God when my mind was not occupied with my work, and one day on the way home for lunch I was meditating on Matthew 6:33. The Lord seemed to impress this thought into my spirit as I meditated, "What's first in your life you should put first in your day." I knew that He was presenting me with a personal challenge to change my lifestyle.

"At first I didn't want to yield to the challenge that He had presented to me, but in it I saw the reason for my spiritual dissatisfaction. I was a devoted believer, but until this time in my life I had not committed to a regular time with the Lord each day.

"My time with Him was sporadic. My prayer life and time in the Word was "hit and miss." I would go a day or two without real, meaningful time in the Word and in prayer. And it was costing me spiritual progress. His challenge for me was to develop a habit of daily time with Him in the Word and in prayer.

"As I began to respond to His challenge, I found a precedent in scripture for seeking God early and making Him THE PRIORITY in my daily schedule.

"In Exodus 16, the children of Israel had just been freed from four hundred years of bondage to harsh Egyptian taskmasters; had miraculously passed through the Red Sea; had just received the covenant of healing from God, our "Jehovah Rapha", or the Lord our Healer. At the beginning of their journey to the land of promise, God promised to feed them daily. We read in Exodus 16:

"(4) "Then the LORD said to Moses, 'Behold, I will rain bread from Heaven for you. And the people shall go out and gather a certain quota every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in My law or not.'

"(5) And it shall be on the sixth day that they shall prepare what they bring in, and it shall be twice as much as they gather daily.

"(14) And when the layer of dew lifted, there, on the surface of the wilderness, was a small round substance, as fine as frost on the ground.

"(15) So when the children of Israel saw it, they said to one another, "What is it?" For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, "This is the bread which the LORD has given you to eat.

"(16) This is the thing which the LORD has commanded: 'Let every man gather it according to each one's need, one more for each person, according to the number of persons; let every man take for those who are in his tent.'

"(17) And the children of Israel did so and gathered, some more, some less.

"(18) So when they measured it by omers, he who had gathered much had nothing left over, and he who gathered little had no lack. Every man had gathered according to each one's need.

"(19) And Moses said, 'Let no one leave any of it till morning.'

"(20) Notwithstanding they did not heed Moses. But some of them left part of it until morning, and it bred worms and stank. And Moses was angry with them.

"(21) So they gathered it every morning, every man according to his need. And when the sun became hot, it melted.

"(22) And so it was, on the sixth day, that they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for each one. And all the rulers of the congregation came and told Moses.

"(23) Then he said to them, "This is what the LORD has said:'Tomorrow is a Sabbath rest, a holy Sabbath to the LORD. Bake what you will bake today, and boil what you will boil; and lay up for yourselves all that remains, to be kept until morning.'"

"(24) So they laid it up till morning, as Moses commanded; and it did not stink, nor were there any worms in it.

"(25) Then Moses said, 'Eat that today, for today is a Sabbath to the LORD; today you will not find it in the field.

"(26) Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, which is the Sabbath, there will be none.'

"(27) Now it happened that some of the people went out on the seventh day to gather, but they found none.

"(28) And the LORD said to Moses, 'How long do you refuse to keep My commandments and My laws?

"(29) See! For the LORD has given you the Sabbath; therefore He gives you on the sixth day bread for two days. Let every man remain in his place; let no man go out of his place on the seventh day."

"(30) So the people rested on the seventh day.

"(31) And the house of Israel called its name Manna. And it was like white coriander seed, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey.

"(35) And the children of Israel ate manna forty years, until they came to an inhabited land; they ate manna until they came to the border of the land of Canaan. Exodus 16:4-5, 14-31, 35 (NKJV)

"The narrative in Exodus 16 is full of life applications for us today. As it says in 1 Corinthians 10:11, "Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, on whom the ends of the ages have come." (NKJ)

"Notice that the manna fell with the morning dew, and was to be gathered before the dew dried each day. That meant that each family had to get up and gather their manna the first thing every morning. If they happened to wait too late, the manna would simply disappear as the dew dried.

"Jesus, referring to the manna and quoting Deuteronomy 8:3, said in Matthew 4:4,".....Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." And just as the Israelites gathered their daily manna early, we, too, should make our manna (our daily supply of spiritual nourishment from the Word) our first priority.

"Notice also that the Israelites had to gather the manna daily. They could only gather enough for one day with the exception of the Sabbath, when they were allowed to collect the Sabbath supply the day before. Some tried to glean enough manna for an extra day. They didn't want to go to the time and trouble to pick up a fresh supply every day. The left over manna bread worms and stank, just as God had said.

"We can't live on yesterday's manna either. We need to replenish our supply of "food from heaven" each day. Just as your body can't store certain vitamins, your spirit can't store up tomorrows' vitality today. Spiritual strength must be renewed daily. As Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4:16, "...Though the outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day."

"Most of us know what we should do, but we often neglect to do it! We know that we need time in the Word and in prayer daily, but we easily get sidetracked. I believe that the enemy seeks to hinder our personal time with God in order to keep us weak and deficient spiritually.

"Although I had good intentions, I found myself neglecting my daily time with the Lord. I believe that Satan's scheme is to "nickle and dime" our time away; five minutes here, ten minutes there, Twenty minutes in another activity, and before we know it, our day is gone. We have great intentions, but no follow through.

"Psalm 90:12 reads, "So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom." Bible teacher Marilyn Hickey says that you could replace "number our days" with "organize our time." If we are going to have time with the Lord, we need to plan it into our daily routine, or we may never progress as the Lord desires for us spiritually.

"I began to respond to God's challenge to me to draw near to Him by setting aside the first part of my day to gather the "manna" that I needed for spiritual strength each day. As I began to get up early enough to spend time in the Word and in prayer each day, I found a new ability in Him to withstand the world, the flesh, and the devil, my three spiritual enemies! My depth of fellowship with the Lord increased. My spiritual hunger began to be satisfied. All because I chose to make Him the first priority in my schedule.

"Notice the admonitions we have from the scripture to seek God early: Psalm 59:16 - "But I will sing of Your power; yes, I will sing aloud of Your mercy in the morning; for You have been my defense and refuge in the day of my trouble." (NKJ)

"Psalm 63:1 - "O God, You are my God; early will I seek You; my soul thirsts for You; my flesh longs for You in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water." (NKJ)

"Psalm 5:3 - "My voice You shall hear in the morning; O LORD; in the morning I will direct it to You, and I will look up."

"Psalm 88:13 - "But to You I have cried out, O LORD, and in the morning my prayer comes before you."

"Psalm 143:8 - "Cause me to hear Your lovingkindness in the morning, for in You do I trust; cause me to know the way in which I should walk, for I lift up my soul to You." (NKJ)

"Isiah 26:9 - "With my soul I have desired You in the night, yes, by my spirit within me I will seek You early; for when Your judgements are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness." (NKJ)

"If Jesus really is Lord or "boss" of our lives, it only makes sense to consult Him about His plan for our day before we begin it! No one with any common sense at all would think about leaving their job at 5:00 P.M., and just before leaving ask their boss if there was anything he wanted them to do! People who remain employed consult with their boss when their day begins. We should give Jesus our Lord the same respect!

"Anything worthwhile will cost you something. The best things in life are not free. Even our salvation, which is free to us, cost Jesus His life! And spiritual satisfaction comes at a price, too. The J.B. Phillips translation of 1 Timothy 4:7 reads ".....Take time and trouble to keep yourself spiritually fit." It's worth the trouble to keep yourself spiritually fit!

"When God first dealt with me to change my schedule to make him my first priority, I didn't think I could do it. All of my life it seemed as though I lived in a fog for the first few hours of the day. I would rarely talk to anyone before 9:00 AM! It was so much of a problem for me that I made sure that I told my wife before we were married that it took me quite a while to become normal in the morning! I usually got up in just enough time to get to work or school.

"When I decided to obey the Lord in rising earlier to begin my day with Him, it was a real challenge. But He showed me that if I would start slowly, I could develop a new habit of rising and spending time with Him.

"I began by getting up ten minutes earlier than normal. I'd get dressed, eat breakfast, and then take ten or twenty minutes to read and pray. That's not a lot of time, but it's better than spending no time with the Lord to start your day. I knew that you could form a new habit if you'll do something repetitously for twenty one to twenty eight days. I found that after a few days the ten minutes was no longer satisfying, so I increased the time to twenty minutes, then thirty minutes over a period of several weeks. I found that as I started slowly, giving myself grace if I missed a day, that I was able to change my life habits. The resulting dividends of spiritual vitality have been tremendous!

"To begin with, I had to walk around and read aloud to keep from falling asleep while reading. To keep myself from falling asleep while praying, I had to get up off my knees and walk around while in prayer.

"I had to train my body to do what I wanted it to do! We should not allow our bodies to lead us, we should control our bodies! Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9:27, "But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached the gospel to others, I myself should be a castaway." We are to surrender our bodies as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1)

"For years our minds and bodies have sided against our spirits to cause us to be body ruled instead of spirit-ruled. But as Christians, we can change that so that our spirits rule our lives!

"If you haven't had a consistent time with the Lord daily, I challenge you to begin today. You have to take the time to spend with Him.

"I also found that during my time of reading the Word, I needed a plan. In our natural lives, we set goals and challenge ourselves to meet them. The goals we set keep us motivated. I found that if I had a pattern to follow, then my mind would more easily cooperate with my spirit in early rising, and I would remain motivated and interested in feeding on God's Word daily. There are many Bible reading plans available these days! Go today and find one that suits you!

"I personally read through the Old Testament each year, and through the New Testament each month or so. I read different translations of the New Testament just to keep my mind interested and stimulated. Oswald Sanders, stated in his book Spiritual Leadership, that "variety is as restful to the mind as to the body."

"I also found that as I read a chapter or so from a book by a "Spirit-anointed" author along with my Bible reading, that I would be further aided spiritually, and that my motivation and interest would remain strong.

"These are just some practical tips that I encourage you to act on in your life. After sixteen years, rising early to spend time with the Lord has become a lifestyle to me. I made my flesh do what I wanted it to do. Now rising early is like second nature to me. I have found that the benefits of rising early to start my day with the Lord far exceed the cost to discipline myself.

"The Lord has a appointment with you in the morning. He'll be up when you rise. Will you choose to spend time with Him before you start your busy day? He's waiting to renew your strength. Will you start in the morning?