"Living in The Light"

"Awake up, my glory; awake, psaltery and harp: I myself will awake early." (Psalms 57:8) I know it might be hard to get this, but there is something special about waking up to spend time with the Lord. How anyone can get up twenty or thirty minutes before they need to leave the house, is beyond me; but I guess it's all about habits. Even when I did not do morning devotions, when that was I can't quite remember, I still liked to have at least one hour of preparing myself for the new day ahead; preferably two hours, if it were possible. Sometime around 1985 I heard something on the radio about how we sleep one third of our lives, (it might have even been 1983, now that I think of it,) but from that moment I decided that I was only going to sleep of fourth of my life, and since then I have typically kept my sleeping to six hours a night; which really turns out to be more like four or five lately with the nightly interruptions. I try and give the Lord at least ten percent of my day for just Him and me to spend time together; most of the time it becomes more than that, but for the most part, it's at least two and a half hours within every twenty-four hour cycle. My morning time work habits actually started in my last year of High School; it was then that I decided that I would get up three hours before I needed to leave for school, to do my homework in the mornings, verses trying to get it done in the afternoon. I found it more refreshing to study and complete assignments very early in the morning, and rather enjoyed the quiet time for a couple hours by myself. As I began to start a family, my work involved several hours of completing reports in my after work hours; so I saved my work for the early morning hours while my wife and son were still asleep in bed; that way I could spend the evenings giving them my full attention. Basically my point is about how important these morning times are to me, and how I have always, as far back as I can remember, tried to be awake before the sun rises each morning; I prefer to wake up at 4:00, but for some strange reason, the Lord has been waking up at 3:35 about every other day; this morning it was 2:48, just to say hello, I guess. I know this without a doubt, that Jesus had to have been a morning person, because He really loves to spend time with me in the morning; it's when we have our best conversations, and when He best has my attention. We know that David was a morning person, because he mentions it several times in many of his Psalms, and here we have one of them. Don't get me wrong, I will not put you down for not doing your morning devotions, as long as you are getting some devotion times structured into each day, you are doing well; but if you do not have some specific time each day that you have set aside for spending time with the Lord, then I am more than sure you have several days that go without spending time with Him. And I can also tell you, that without a doubt, the early morning, before you do anything else, is the best time to plan it. I can hardly count on one hand the number of times that I have been distracted from having my morning devotions; nobody is ever awake at 4:00 to distract me, so I do not get the chance to not have the time, or to run out of time. This is not me bragging about something, but rather trying to give something away that I have learned over a period of many years: if you truly want to spend time with the Lord each and every day, then you had better make it the first few hours of every day... "With my soul have I desired Thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek Thee early: for when Thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness." (Isaiah 26:9)