How To: Your Best Morning Offering

The Foundation is Essential.

You can build a splendid house.
But if that house is built upon a faulty foundation, regardless as to how grand it appears, it will eventually crumble.
It cannot endure.

Our Lord, the eternal craftsman tells us that there are those who build their house (their life) on rock (solid habitual beliefs and actions based on His Word) whose lives endure in glory.
And there are those who build their lives on sand (faulty, shifting beliefs and actions based on human respect and opinion).[i] He refers to these as foolish men.
Your life is like a house, a skyscraper, intended for your soul and the Lord to dwell within [ii]and to ascend towards heaven.

The deeper, stronger and more balanced the foundation, the greater the room for the greater soul and his union with God.[iii]

Such a person will endure trials and tests and ascend to divine intimacy.

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How the Fool Builds His Life

Fools believe that building a successful, notable life boils down to grit, discipline, good habit systems, self-motivation and good ol’ hard work.
Human willpower.
But that is only half of the equation.
Our Lord describes this man as a fool.

“And everyone that heareth these my words, and doth them not, shall be like a foolish man that built his house upon the sand…” (Matthew 7:26).

Self-reliance is a fool’s errand.
Self-reliance leads to self-hatred.

You love yourself when you succeed (infrequent).
You loath yourself when you fail (more frequent).
Therefore, the fool who builds his life without God, usually, in the end loathes himself and dies with regret.
His life is swept away, like sand in the flood.

The fool forgets “Unless the Lord builds the house in vain do the labors labor” (Psalm 127:1).
Your toiling and sweat are in vain if the Lord is not building your life through you.
God is the other “half” of the equation.

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The First Step To Winning the Day

So, what is the first step to laying properly the foundation of your spiritual skyscraper?

Your life is comprised of years.
Your years are comprised of days.
Days are dependent on their mornings.
As they say, “Win the morning. Win the day.”[iv]

Your morning is your foundation.
How you lay that foundation in the morning, determines how you build your house during the day.

You get your morning right; your day will be right.
You only get so many mornings.

Many people end up mourning their misuse of their mornings.

If you don’t seize the morning, the day will seize you—like a stranglehold.
It chokes your joy, your peace, your productivity.
You seize the morning, you seize and command your day, your life.

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The Foundation of Your Morning is Your Morning Offering.

Your morning / day / years / life are dependent fundamentally on two things:

1. Whether you make a morning offering…that is, whether you invite God into your day by giving your day to God.
2. How you make your morning offering…what is the quality of it?

My experience is that most men think they should know how to make their morning offering.
But they don’t.
Consequently, they feel stupid asking someone for advice as to how to make a solid morning offering.
They guess and hack away at it.
Because of this, they tend to make sloppy morning offerings at best.
Or at worst, eventually refrain from making a morning offering at all.

There are an almost infinite amount of morning offering prayers available.
But the mistake many of us make is finding a prayer and saying it without putting our heart into it.
We check the box and feel like we are good with God and have done something noble.
We make the mistake of praying “vain repetitions” (See Matthew 6:7).
The Lord warns those who pray in this way, “This people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me” (Matthew 15:8).

The morning offering is not as much about what you say, but rather more about what you do.
Vital to your offering is your disposition in doing it, and that your words express what you are doing.
The morning offering is a soul-body action that demands the mind’s / the soul’s / the heart’s attentiveness to God.
It demands intentionality.

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Below are eight essentials to making a morning offering that is most pleasing to our God.

1. Make It the Very First Thing You Do—No Matter What

Upon waking, before you urinate (yes, prior to hitting the head.
Why? Because the pain from your bladder feeling like it is about to explode will help you be more alert and focused), before you make your bed (if you do), and certainly before you look at your phone—before you do anything else—make your morning offering.

“Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33).

 

2. Offer Yourself

You aren’t offering your words to God.
You are offering your self to God.

Regardless of the prayer you use or the prayer you formulate on your own, your offering is not your prayer per se, but rather your prayer is your offering of yourself to God.

This is the crucial point of the morning offering:
You are offering yourself; all that you are and all that you possess to God Almighty.
You are, in a sense, saying, “All that I am and have are Thine. Do with me as you will.”

And God says to those who do:
“Son, thou art always with me, and all I have is thine” (See Luke 15:31).

 

3. Speak With Your Body

Pope St. John Paul II said that the body is prophetic.[v]

A prophet speaks the truth, particularly regarding the future.
The way you use your body in your morning offering contains the prophetic truth regarding your future.
Will you be a sinner or a saint?
Your body holds the secret prophetic truth.

Praying your morning offering while laying on your back, hitting the snooze button, and occasionally snoring, communicates to God that you don’t really believe He is the all-powerful God, and more importantly that you could care less that He is.

When you roll out of bed, first, get on your knees; second, make the Sign of the Cross over your body.
This sign demonstrates to you and to God that you are professing your belief in Christ’s sacrifice on the cross for you.

The Cross is the Way to the Triune God.
The Sign of the Cross also expresses your belief that God is Triune: three Divine Persons in One Essence—One God.
This is your destination.
The Sign of the Cross communicates your desire to be drawn into the self-giving love of the Trinity.

After you’ve made the sign of the cross, place your hands and forehead on the floor.
This is the bodily act of worship, which we call prostration.[vi]

The magi, the leper who Jesus healed, the blind man to whom Jesus restored his sight, all fell down and prostrated themselves before Him (See Matthew 2:11; John 9:38; Matthew 8:2).
This is bodily worship.

The Lord Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, moments prior to being betrayed, prostrated Himself before God His Father praying, “Not my will but Thine be done” (See Luke 22:42).
To prostrate oneself before God as Jesus did, is to express total submission to God and His Holy Will.

 

4. Go To Jesus

Jesus is the first person to address.
Why?
Because He is the Way to God the Father[vii] without Whom no one has access to God.[viii]

He lives always to make intercession for us.[ix]

He is the bridge between God the Father and us.
He is the human face of God and the divine face of man.
He became what we are in order for us to become what He is.

Ask Jesus, the one who is consecrated to God to consecrate you to God.
He is the consecrated one who consecrates.[x]

To be consecrated is to be “hagios” —different than the world and the worldly, sacred unto the Lord.

You can phrase your request to Him how you like. For example:

“Lord Jesus, Son of God, and God the Son, I offer myself to You; in union with Your incarnation, Your life, Your sacrifice, your crucifixion and resurrection; in union with your continual offering of self at every Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, for the conversion of sinners, the reparation of sins, for Your Kingdom to come, and for the love, honor and glory of Thee. Please consecrate me to the Father. I am all yours. Amen.”

Or:

“Lord Jesus, I offer myself to you. Offer me to God our Father. Amen.”

 

5. (With Jesus) Go to the Father

Often, we address our Heavenly Father in passing. We almost don’t notice that we are addressing Him specifically.
Yet, Jesus’ primary reason for His incarnation and crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension is to present us to and reconcile us—in Himself—with His Father.
He wants His Father to be “Our Father.”

St. Paul encourages us to address the Father as Jesus did:
“Abba, Father.”[xi]

Abba does not merely mean “Daddy.”[xii]

Abba is a tender, affectionate submissive Hebrew term of endearment that conveys the idea of trust in and intimacy with The Father.

Our Lord wants us to submit ourselves entirely to God the Father with abandon and unreserved trust.
We “go to Him with words” (Hosea 14:2; Joel 2:12-13):

“Abba, Father, I surrender my soul to you. All that I am, all that I have, I am yours. In Jesus, with Jesus, through Jesus, I abandon myself to you.
Do with me what you will that I may be your son with whom you are well pleased. Amen.”

Or:

“Abba, I abandon myself into your hands. Do with me as you will. I trust you. Amen.”

 

6. Ask the Father and the Son to Anoint You With the Holy Spirit

God gives the Spirit to those who ask.[xiii]

The Holy Spirit is “the promise of the Father” (See Luke 24:49).
Those who live by the Spirit, God gives them the power to be sons of God.[xiv]

The Holy Spirit is the “Lord and giver of life”[xv] and all virtue (The Latin word virtus means power).

If you want God’s life and power to be unlocked in your life, asking for the Holy Spirit’s anointing is essential.
Those who ask will receive. Those who seek find. Those who knock the door will be opened. God gives the Spirit to those who ask. [xvi]

For example:

“Come Holy Spirit. Veni Sancti Spiritu.
Grant me the power to become a holy and living saint—a true son of God. Amen.”

 

7. Consecrate Yourself to the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph

Jesus entrusted Himself to Mary and Joseph.
Mary and Joseph did for Jesus, what Jesus as a toddler could not do on His own.
Mary and Joseph consecrated Jesus to God.[xvii]

Mary and Joseph are Jesus’ parents.[xviii]

Jesus allowed them to consecrate Him to God the Father.

We are spiritual toddlers as Jesus was.
Mary and Joseph are your parents in the order of grace.
Ask them to do for you what they did for Christ.

“Most Holy Virgin Mary, St. Joseph her most chaste spouse, my parents in the order of grace, do for me what you did for Christ; consecrate me through Jesus, with Jesus and in Jesus to God the Father. Obtain for me the Holy Spirit that I may be formed into the son, the husband, the father, the man of God that God has called and destined me to be. Amen.”

 

8. Ask God to Bless the Work of Your Hands

Before closing your prayer by making the sign of the Cross over your body, ask God as the psalmist, to “bless the works of your hands” (Psalm 90:170).
Why?
The sole motivation of desiring His blessing to be upon us and our work is to glorify God.
“Not to us be the glory, but to Your Name” (Psalm 115:1).
This is the ultimate purpose of your morning offering…
That every breath you take, every action you make, that every word you say redounds to the honor and glory of God.

Glorify God and He cannot help but to glorify you.

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[i] See Matthew 7:24-27. “Everyone therefore that heareth these my words, and doth them, shall be likened to a wise man that built his house upon a rock, And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded on a rock.  And everyone that heareth these my words, and doth them not, shall be like a foolish man that built his house upon the sand, And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall thereof.”

[ii] See St. Theresa of Avila; The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila; Volume Two; ICS Publications; The Interior Castle 1.1; pp 283-287

[iii] ibid

[iv] Tim Ferris, The Four-Hour Workweek

[v] John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, trans. by M. Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 2006): 203.

[vi] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostration

[vii] See John 14:6 “Jesus saith to him: I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”

[viii] Ibid: “No man cometh to the Father, but by me.”

[ix] See Hebrews 7:25: “Whereby he is able also to save for ever them that come to God by him; always living to make intercession for us.”

[x] See Hebrews 2:11” For both he that sanctifieth, and they who are sanctified, are all of one.”

[xi] See Romans 8:15 “For you have not received the spirit of bondage again in fear; but you have received the spirit of adoption of sons, whereby we cry: Abba (Father)”.

[xii] https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Abba.html

[xiii] See Luke 11:13 “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father from heaven give the good Spirit to them that ask him?”

[xiv] See Romans 8:14 “For whosoever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.”

[xv] Nicaean Creed

[xvi] See Luke 11:13 “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father from heaven give the good Spirit to them that ask him?”

[xvii] See Luke 2:22-40

[xviii] See Luke 2:48 “And seeing him, they wondered. And his mother said to him: Son, why hast thou done so to us? behold thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.”