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    Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For
    Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For
    Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For
    Ebook142 pages2 hours

    Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For

    By Jackie Hill Perry

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    • Faith

    • Grace

    • Sin

    • Spiritual Warfare

    • Spirituality

    • Divine Intervention

    • Chosen One

    • Mentor

    • Journey

    • Self-Discovery

    • Wise Mentor

    • Spiritual Awakening

    • Inner Struggle

    • Promised Land

    • Test of Faith

    • Wisdom

    • Love

    • Prayer

    • Worship

    • Intimacy With God

    About this ebook

    Upon Waking is a USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Publisher's Weekly bestseller! Join the thousands of others who have picked up Upon Waking to help start their day.

    What do you wake up to each day? What do you discover once your eyes have opened and you put your feet to the floor? A mountain of notifications? An endless feed of headlines that make you angry? A flood of tasks that you can’t possibly get done in the next twenty-four hours?
     
    What if you could wake up each day to discover something so much bigger—and so much better for you—than all that chaos? What if you could discover God? What if you could discover yourself in light of that God? What if your eyes could be opened to the things that really mattered? What if, in one simple devotional a day, you could glean principles from timeless wisdom to sharpen you for each day's inevitable challenges?
     
    In her lyrical, compelling, and poignant voice, bestselling author and Bible teacher Jackie Hill Perry offers sixty short, daily reflections on specific passages from Scripture to help you awaken to the God you were made for, the life you were made for, and the person you were made to be.  
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBH Publishing Group
    Release dateOct 3, 2023
    ISBN9781087783727
    Author

    Jackie Hill Perry

    Jackie Hill Perry is an author, Bible teacher, and hip-hop artist. She uses her speaking and teaching gifts to share the light of the gospel of God. Jackie is the author of Gay Girl, Good God: The Story of Who I Was and Who God Has Always Been and Holier Than Thou. She and her husband, Preston, have four children.

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    Reviews for Upon Waking

    5/5

    16 ratings3 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I absolutely loved this book. It is full of wisdom and it gives you a hunger to read the word
    • 5/5
      This book made me reevaluate how I listen to the Lord. I may start over. I certainly recommend this book
    • 5/5
      Jackie words the excistance of a being human to become holy . pure, before Father.
      Spirit breathed
      Her pen is real and raw.

      Excited for this devotion each and every day .

    Book preview

    Upon Waking - Jackie Hill Perry

    Day |1

    And when He had given thanks, He broke [the bread] and said, Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you. 1 CORINTHIANS 11:24 NKJV

    Before work or whatever it is that obligates our time after waking, we eat, even if we ate six to nine hours before. Before bed we eat to cease the hunger. After the risen sun and early yawn, we do the same. This is science. Biological. Human. Fuel is a perpetual need to which our bodies would break if kept from it. On those spiritual days when we fast, withholding food from the body, we taste what starvation does to us. The mind twists and turns. Our emotions sway and, if turned in the wrong direction, tempt us to burn everything to the ground. Monday through Sunday we are largely controlled by our stomachs and if anything is in it. So much so that its contents determine if we will be a Monster or a Mercy.

    I don’t find it odd, then, that our Lord uses food as a metaphor for Himself. The most memorable being that of bread. The whole subject began when Jesus told Israel the Father has bread to give them that is true (John 6:32). Figuring that Jesus’s preaching about bread must mean He had access to a better manna, they heard this and contemplated a different miracle. One of constant sustenance. Sir, give us this bread always, they said (John 6:34). Always. They supposed Jesus was offering to fill their belly and not their soul. With a product made of wheat, planted in the soil, grown from the ground, harvested by human hands. That might’ve been bread, but that bread was not the better manna. The true bread was and is Jesus, He who said, I am the bread of life and I am the living bread that came down from heaven (John 6:35, 51).

    You may be wondering where I am going by saying all of this. Wondering how my original point connects to my most recent, and it is this: in the same way our bodies need a constant diet of food, our souls need God like this always. Upon waking, we are hungry for heaven, and yet we fill it with a scroll or many. As the day moves forward and the belly still empty, we fill it again, when a person gives us a measure of love, a like, a look. Before bed, the soul, if visible, would be skeletal. Barely able to stand on its own or smile with all of its teeth. The body who holds this almost-dead thing feels alive because it depends on every other bread except the One the Father sent.

    But the Lord’s Table has been set, so sit. Revive yourself in His life. Fill yourself in His love. Scrape the plate and wipe it clean. We need the Bread of heaven because truly no other food will do.

    Day |2

    Devote yourselves to prayer with an alert mind and a thankful heart. COLOSSIANS 4:2 NLT

    No one likes to be bored. Especially now, in this age, with a million ways to be entertained. Things like the optionality of commercials reinforces our impatience. When only a decade or so ago, sitting through an advertisement with twiddling thumbs was an obligation. Now it’s a choice no one makes. Keep the entertainment going we say.

    Then there’s the wonderfully terrible invention of social media that entertains without ceasing. Like the Colosseum in our hands. In one swipe, videos of a recipe, a twelve-second sermon, a slam dunk, a knee on a neck, an article about nothing or everything, a riot at the Capitol and a dog singing Sinatra.

    It’s no wonder that when it’s time to pray, the length and consistency of the prayer suffers under the weight of a mind that’s completely uncomfortable with boredom. In whatever quiet place you’ve chosen, in your car or in your closet, you sit or lie, kneel or stand. Closing your eyes, you begin, as usual, Our Father or something like it. Then you remember you forgot to get some paper towels for the kitchen. Who art in heaven . . . Then there’s the online meeting you have on Thursday. Hallowed be Your name. And why didn’t Daddy buy the bike you asked for when you were twelve? At this point, you have two options: keep sitting with God in the silence of everything, or give into the noise in your mind, which, if you’re honest, feels more entertaining than intimacy.

    Think of boredom during silent prayer as an act of purification, one pastor recommends. In this uneventful moment, God purifies us of the false god of good feelings. Silent prayer is often something I want to avoid because it forces me to exorcise the demons of excitement, stimulation, and distraction.² On some level, regaining discipline over your prayer life will happen as you rediscover the beauty of boredom. As long as you need to be doing, writing, reading, laughing at, watching something to have joy, prayer will be of no interest to you. But if you pause and remember the beginning of the prayer again—Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Your name—you will remember God, the aim of every prayer. Whether in a closet or a car, the One to whom you speak is holy in heaven, transcendent in nature, yet relational and therefore near to you, His child. He is most interesting. Most intriguing. Not entertaining per se, but completely worthy of your mind’s focus. And trust me, distractions will happen. It’s a part of what it means for you to be you. But every time your mind wanders, just find your way back to God again and again and again.

    Day |3

    So I say, I am grieved that the right hand of the Most High has changed.I will remember the Lord’s works;yes, I will remember your ancient wonders.I will reflect on all you have done and meditate on your actions. PSALM 77:10–12 CSB

    God’s Word and God’s nature must inform your emotions. In saying this, I don’t mean feelings are unnecessary when, in fact, emotions are useful for many things. As utilitarian as they might be however, they become a danger to us and the world whenever they are detached from God’s Word.

    For example, think of the ten spies who looked at the giants in Caanan, felt fear, and forgot God. Or consider David who walked his roof, observing a woman in covenant with another, feeling passion, and forgot purity of heart. Or Peter who inhabited a garden not only with his Lord but also with the men into whose hands his Lord had been delivered, and as his Lord was being taken, Peter felt a lot of things. Maybe fear, maybe zeal. Either way, after a sword was raised, an ear was removed. Feeling what he felt, he forgot the kingdom. When emotions are given underserved supremacy, they can lead us to respond to ourselves, others, and our circumstances in ways that reflect the emotion more than it does their Creator.

    At this point, by singling out the negative influence emotions can have, one might see emotions as an enemy of faith. That too would be an irrational, or even emotional, way of seeing things. Emotions are good, for not only did our Lord make them, but He also has them. The issue then is not simply what or how we feel but how what we’ve inherited from Adam leads us to respond to said feelings.

    To say it another way, emotions aren’t the problem; the flesh is. So then, in becoming more holy, doing away with emotions won’t serve us. What will is that God-breathed Word, both written and living—written in every narrative, epistle, prophet, and psalm, and living in the enfleshed God of heaven. Who, after ascending to that glorious right hand, together with His Father, sent their Spirit who once hovered the waters to not just hover over but fully indwell the people for whom Christ died. These people will feel all kinds of ways all of the time, but they can and they must reflect God’s nature when they do.

    Day |4

    My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? PSALM 22:1

    While reading the Psalms, I’m struck by how often God is questioned. Why He’s allowing this. Why He’s forsaken that. Suffering makes you curious, and to me, it seems, being inquisitive is in fact a healthy part of prayer. Even Jesus, in His dying hour, asked God a question.

    I’m not sure who taught us to deny God our questions. If I were to guess, it must’ve come from the elders of Israel who didn’t want us to be irreverent. They knew God was a consuming fire, who descended onto mountains that couldn’t be touched. Every generation after them is just as stiff-necked as they were and therefore prone to testing God like their soul wasn’t on the line. So I won’t deny them the dignity of having good intentions.

    But neither should we deny Scripture’s testimony regarding this subject. Godly people ask God questions, and why shouldn’t they? His ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts. The way God moves doesn’t often align with our own logic since He doesn’t share our nature or essence. We run from pain; He uses it. We hate our enemies; He loves them. We try to hold onto our life with clinched fists, and He commands another way. The way of death which somehow, someway, causes us to find the life we thought we were losing.

    Life with a transcendent God isn’t always going to make sense, and if that is the case, questions will be commonplace. When our aversion to prayerful curiosity has lifted, I often wonder if we will discover what we’ve withheld from God. And by what, I mean our very self. Avoiding curiosity can be a luxury in some sense. To ask anything at all, you have to acknowledge your intellectual limitations. But not only that: to ask

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