When You’ve Accidentally Ruined Your Morning Routine

This post is by Kelli LaFram.

Alarm goes off, I hit snooze once, twice, maybe even three times. I roll out of bed and pour a cup of coffee (Thank the Lord for the invention of delay set coffee pots! Am I right?) I plop down on the couch, tell Alexa to shuffle a worship playlist, and attempt to keep eyes open for the next 20-30 minutes, the time allotted to spend with Jesus. 

This sounds just like the wonderful God-center morning routine you hear so much about at Hello Mornings, doesn't it? Nope. Not at all. This sounds like pure torture. Really, if this was the example Hello Mornings used in promoting their mission, many ladies would be saying “No, thanks. I’d rather have the extra sleep.”

But the reality is, this is many of our mornings. We want to get up early. We want to read our Bibles. We want what everyone else appears to have. But we don’t, we don’t know why, and often we get so frustrated with ourselves that we give up. 

Good news though: it doesn’t have to be like this. But in order to make a change we have to be honest with ourselves and with Jesus.  We have to get real about our motives. So many times we begin our morning routines with the wrong outcome in mind. We look for something we think we need, but it isn't really satisfying at all. Here are a few examples:

• We think if we wake up early enough, read enough Scripture, or say enough of the right prayers we will get some cosmic benefit from our Cosmic Sugar Daddy. If you haven’t realized it yet, God isn’t a sugar daddy.  
• We believe a morning Bible and prayer routine is the “right” thing and therefore do the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing. 
• We attempt to orchestrate a “perfect” morning to feel or look like a super Christian (just fyi, there’s no such thing as a perfect morning or a super Christian). 

And in the end, morning routines fueled by these motives leave up empty, dry, and frustrated. Motivations like these have one thing in common: self. And selfish behavior? Well we probably all have some idea that it leads to pretty lonely situations. 

Thankfully there is a better way — there is a purer motive. That motive? Seeking Jesus. I’m not talking about just learning about Him, researching His parables, or memorizing red letter verses (though each of those things are beneficial). What I’m talking about is seeking a relationship with Jesus. 

In Psalm 63 David writes, “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts of you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” This verse describes David’s physical yearning to be with God. And God promises, “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart,” (Jeremiah 29:13). These two verses (along with all the others in the Bible) tell us that we are designed for an intimate relationship with Him.

When we set our alarm clocks and program our coffee pots our end goal should not be the morning routine itself. Our chief ambition should be to seek and find rest in the presence of our Savior. Our morning routines are just one tool to help us get there.

Lord in heaven, thank you for sending your Son to make a way for us to know you intimately. I pray for any woman, myself included, who struggles with her morning routine. Please reveal to her any selfish motive that may be lingering in the dark. Draw her into repentance and right her motives. May each of us seek and thirst and faint for you. In the name of your Son I pray. Amen.

Kelli LaFram is actually Kelli LaFramboise, but no one can pronounce that, so with the permission of her family she writes under the shorter pen name. Her neighbors have started referring to her bunch as the LaFram Fam. In addition to writing for Hello Mornings, Kelli leads a Bible study in her home and serves in the children’s ministry at her local church. Kelli is an elementary school teacher and her hobbies include blogging about God’s word, listening to audiobooks with her children, drinking good coffee, and hand painting faith-based signs (but not after too much coffee). You can find her at www.quietlyreminded.com and https://www.instagram.com/kellilafram/.

Photo by mostafa mahmoudi on Unsplash