In the Morning You Hear My Voice

In the Morning You Hear My Voice
By M.T. Clark — P-2037 | 08/08/2026 – Today’s Audio Podcast
Today’s Message on YouTube:

Today’s photo of Edvard Munch’s 1904 oil painting “Girl Under the Apple Tree” featuring a young girl in a straw hat and white blouse standing in a garden with a handful of flowers, a great swirling apple tree above her and a yellow-gabled house behind, all under a restless blue sky — comes to us from yours truly, as I captured this wok of art at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA, with my wife TammyLyn by my side, on July 9th, 2023.

Well, it’s Saturday, and I share this photo of Munch’s “Girl Under the Apple Tree” to remind us that God has hidden beauty in the most ordinary corners of life. It’s a wonderful thing to meet His beauty out in nature, but art can hand you that same joy. Art can capture the imagination of the artist or an ordinary moment in time, such as a girl under an apple tree with a few flowers. Caught with oil on canvas, the moment or the artist’s vision is held so the rest of us can stop and really see it. There’s a whole quiet world on a canvas like this: there’s the moment, the one who painted it, my wife and I standing there looking at it, and the Lord whose beauty runs through it all. God fills ordinary life with things worth seeing, and we can enjoy them if we’ll slow down long enough and look up from our busy lives. Speaking of looking up,

Our series, “Win the Morning, Renew Your Mind,” continues today with the oldest morning habit in the Bible.

In the Morning You Hear My Voice

Long before anyone wrote a book about morning routines, David had one, and he tells us about it in Psalm 5:3 (NKJV): “My voice You shall hear in the morning, O Lord; in the morning I will direct it to You, and I will look up.”

Notice that David says morning twice in a single verse, as if to make sure we do not miss when this happens. And notice the two simple motions in it — he directs his voice to the Lord, and he looks up.

That word “direct” is worth considering. In David’s world it carried the sense of setting something in order, arranging it deliberately, the way a priest would lay the wood and the offering on the altar in the morning, piece by piece, on purpose. David is saying that his morning prayer is not a vague, half-awake mumble tossed in God’s general direction.

David’s prayer is an ordering of his day before the Lord. He lays out his requests, his fears, and his hopes the way you would arrange an offering, deliberately, first thing, and then he does the second thing — he looks up. He lifts his eyes off the trouble and onto the God who is over it, and then he waits and watches to see how the Lord will answer.

Here is what I love about this, and it is a mercy for the busy and the burdened: David’s morning habit is not complicated. There is no elaborate system in this verse. There is a man who has learned that the first thing to do with the day is to hand it to God and lift his eyes to the Lord. That is a habit any of us can keep. You do not need an hour or a perfect quiet house or a certain feeling to do this. You need a voice directed to the Lord and eyes willing to look up. On the fullest, most ordinary day, in the middle of a life that does not slow down, that much is available to you.

And notice what David is doing underneath the prayer. He is deciding, first thing, where his attention will go.

Our minds are always aimed at something. Left to themselves, they aim at whatever is loudest — our desires, our worries, our pain, or the things that have gone wrong. There is a plain truth about how we are made that even the world has noticed: we tend to find whatever we have trained ourselves to look for. Look for problems in the morning, and you will get very good at finding problems all day.

But David is training his eyes on purpose. Before the trouble can set his gaze downward, he directs his voice to the Lord and looks up, and the whole direction of his day changes — not because his circumstances changed, but because his vision did.

This is why the morning is so important. It is the time that our perspective and priorities get set. David is not pretending that he has no troubles. If you read the rest of the psalm, you will find that he has real enemies, real pressure, and real danger in his life. He is not looking up to the Lord because there is nothing on the ground to look at. He is looking up because he has decided that the God above the trouble deserves his attention before the trouble does. That is not denial. That is his faith putting the day in the right order.

I have found this to be one of the most steadying habits a person can build, and I say build because it does build. The first few mornings that you decide to pray and be in God’s presence, it can feel like you are talking to the ceiling.

But the God who says His mercies are new every morning is not distant. He is a loving and caring Father who listens to you, and God’s word has told us plainly that in the morning He hears our voice (Psalm 5:3). The looking up gets easier as you continue to pray faithfully, because you begin to see that He really does answer our prayers. The day handed to God in the morning goes differently than the day you try to carry alone.

So keep it simple this morning. Direct your voice to the Lord. Lay the whole day out before Him. Give Him your needs, your hopes, and your fears – all of it — and then look up. Take your eyes off your circumstances and put them on the God who is over and above them. He hears you in the morning. He has said so Himself in His Word. And a day that begins with your gaze lifted to Him is already headed in a better direction than one that begins with your eyes fixed on your troubles. Every step we take toward the Lord is a step in the right direction.

Keep on walking and talking with God.

— M.T.

*******************************

Check out our past Podcast series or teachings via The MT4Christ247 podcast playlists on YouTube at MT4Christ.com!

The MT4Christ247 audio podcast is available on YouTube, Apple, Amazon, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Podbean, Audible, and many more podcast platforms!

Subscribe to The MT4Christ247 Channel on YouTube!

Email me at m.t.clark@mt4christ.com with any questions, comments, or to inquire about our Christian Life Coaching or Prayer Ministry Services.

“The views, opinions, and commentary of this publication are those of the author, M.T. Clark, only, and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of any of the photographers, artists, ministries, or other authors of the other works that may be included in this publication, and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities the author may represent.”

Encouragement for the Path of Christian Discipleship

Support MT 4 Christ Community Freedom Ministry!

To give via PayPal, go to the MT4Christ Donations Page

Or Give Via Venmo or the Cash App by scanning the QR Code below: