Are you a morning person? This message outlines the benefits of being a morning person, drawing inspiration from Bible characters such as Abraham as well as reformers such as Martin Luther. Sebastien shares how being an early morning person and spending time in prayer can help you realise your full potential experience a deeper relationship with God.

GYCE Focus 2016: Coming to Christ

<p>Are you a morning person? This message outlines the benefits of being a morning person, drawing inspiration from Bible characters such as Abraham as well as reformers such as Martin Luther. Sebastien shares how being an early morning person and spending time in prayer can help you realise your full potential experience a deeper relationship with God.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

GYC Europe

Sebastien Braxton

Early Morning to Rise

Mighty God, Everlasting Father, here we are again in your presence, not to hear the words of a man, but to hear the words of God.

Lord, help us to banish all earthly matters from our minds, to lift our eyes heavenward where Jesus often looked as he walked upon this earth.

We pray, Lord, that the Spirit of God would come down in response to our earnest plea, that God would be in this place and that He would move from heart to heart and from mind to mind, impressing upon the soul the truth that we might be changed, sanctified by your word because your word is truth.

Father, we trust that you will grant this request not because we ask or because we are worthy, but because of our great need.

This is our prayer, and we trust that you will help this to be our experience.

The title of my message is Early in the Morning.

How many people here would say you are not a morning person?

Well, let me share with you the benefits that you're missing out on.

How many of you say you are a morning person?

Okay, so I'm going to share with you the benefits of being a morning person.

There's been several research studies upon this issue that there's something about the early morning There was a study in Texas that discovered that students who were early morning risers or who are morning people They had better grades and in America we call it your GPA.

I don't know if you guys have GPA in England.

But in America, we have GPA on a scale from 0 to 4.0 is perfect.

And on average, people who are mourning people had a 1 point higher GPA than people who were night owls.

Another study in Harvard noticed that people who are morning people are more proactive.

A, they spend more time thinking about their long range goals And B, they feel more in charge of their day and of their lives.

Number 3, people who are early morning risers, They actually anticipate problems more than people who are not early morning risers.

And in fact, they spend time minimalizing these anticipated difficulties that leads them to be more efficient throughout the day.

People who are morning risers are actually better planners scientifically People who are morning risers usually take time to exercise in the morning More consistently produce more discipline and this is the common habit of the most successful people in the world the average CEO Who is running a multi-billion dollar?

Multinational corporation rises at 4 a.m.

In the morning and is at the job by 8 a.m.

I can go on if you want me to name bigger names than that.

People who are early morning risers get better sleep.

Not just the number of hours, but the actual quality of the sleep is better.

People who are early morning risers are more optimistic, more agreeable, have greater levels of satisfaction and are more conscientious people.

People who are night owls are associated with people who are irritable, But they are associated with higher levels of creativity.

People who are early morning risers also have an easier commute to work because they leave before all the traffic hits.

People who are early morning risers enjoy a quiet hour before the rest of the office arrives.

And last but not least, early morning risers have more family time.

They end up not bringing their work home because they got to jump on the day by getting up early in the morning.

I told a woman who was coming to me about her husband being a priest of her home.

She was trying to encourage him in a way that a wife may encourage her husband sometimes.

Probably not what he interprets as encouragement, but in her mind it's encouragement.

And 1 of the things that I had to do with this woman is I said, so your problem with your husband is that he's not taking the spiritual initiative in your house.

I said, okay, so Let's take your husband's schedule.

So he wakes up, he cooks breakfast for her and the kids, goes to work by 8 a.m.

He's commuting, gets to work by 9, works until 5, commutes 45 minutes back home.

Then he's supposed to spend time with the kids, sit down for dinner, right, have worship and put them to bed.

I said, so looking at your husband's schedule, let me ask you a question.

When would he have time to study the Bible?

If this was your schedule, where would you place it?" She kind of looked around.

Well, I guess if I took care of breakfast in the morning, then he would have some time in the morning.

So I said, how much time would he have if you cooked breakfast instead of him?

I said, how much time do you think a man needs to spend with God to be a spiritual leader?

So she was thinking to herself, this is really odd, I never thought about this this way.

I said, yeah, because when he comes home, what's the expectation?

Spend time with me, spend time with the kids, put them to bed, have dinner together as a family.

So by the time he wants to spend time with God, what should he be doing?

Spending time with you, because now the kids are asleep.

Well, he can't stay up too late, because he has to get up early in the morning.

So now she's a little confused about what to do.

Then I looked at him and I said, have you ever thought about getting up 2 hours earlier?

Never crossed his mind because getting up early in the morning is not an option.

I said, then What you're saying is being a spiritual priest is not an option.

You see, we have this thing in the Marines that people often say in the military that Marines are very overly confident.

But this is how we would end up this way as Marines, is because when you're going through Marine Corps training, anytime you think something is too difficult, your superior will always remind you of something you are not willing to sacrifice to get it.

So you look on your physical fitness exam and you'll say, listen, I want to be able to run 5K in 18 minutes.

You'll say, man, there's no way, you know, sorry, I just can't do it.

My superior would say, Sebastian, if you decided to run when it wasn't just time for company runs 2 times a week, you would probably get your time down to 18 minutes.

If you decided to understand why we do the singing when we're running which is to train your breathing in your lungs you would understand what we're trying to do and you would practice and develop your lung capacity so you could run faster and longer with greater speed If you realize how to actually run, you wouldn't be hurting your knees when you're running if you learn proper form.

But you see, you don't want to take time to do that.

You want to run and then get off and go to the club and go do what you want to do.

But then you want to complain that you're running 23 minutes.

And you're out of breath because you're not willing to sacrifice what it takes to get there.

And the early morning is always a reminder of what we are willing to sacrifice for.

There was a project that was started by a woman named Karen Strucker called the 4am project.

She started a blog 5 years ago about show me a picture.

She's a photographer and she says I want to see what you see at 4 o'clock in the morning wherever you are in the world.

So these photographers were literally taking pictures all over the world and uploading it to the blog of where they were at 04:00 in the morning.

I'm saying, who in the world is up at 04:00 in the morning with a camera?

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Early Morning to Rise

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