Proverbs 24:9-10

A foolish scheme is sin,
and the scorner is an abomination to people.
If you faint in the day of trouble,
your strength is small!

We all have those days. You know, the ones that seem to never end. The ones that you start and then when you lay down, you feel like you’ve been awake for a week. The kind that when you think back to when the day started, it seems like a lot more than a day that went by. I’ve had those days. You get up, work real hard for a long time and by the time you lay down, you’ve worked harder than you knew you could work.

On those days, something clicks inside us. Something that lets us know that this day is different than a normal day. Which means we’re going to have to work really, really hard. But, in the end, it will be worth it. In the end, we will have grown through our efforts. We will have expended a lot of energy, but we will have also grown.

We don’t have those days all the time, but when we do, we know that we need to step up.

But what if we don’t? What if we sit back and just let the day go by without taking full advantage of it?

I’m afraid that’s where many of us are. For some reason, we’ve stopped viewing the days as opportunities an instead view them as obligations. Because of this, we never grow, we never step up, we never move beyond who we are today.

The key to having strength when the day of trouble comes, is to push yourself today. The key to being able to take advantage of the opportunities when they come your way is to make sure you’re taking advantage of the opportunities that come your way today. Some of them might cause you to have to work a little harder. Some of them might push you beyond your comfort zone. But, if you allow yourself to be pushed and strengthened, then when the day of trouble comes, you’ll have what you need to get through.

What I see as one of the reasons so many people are in crisis is because they’ve stopped taking advantage of today. View today as an opportunity. View the challenges that come today as opportunities – not obligations. If you do that, then when the day of trouble comes, you’ll have all the strength you need to shine.