“Good and Bad Days”
By Dianne Prince
“On a good day, enjoy yourself; On a bad day, examine your conscience. God arranges for both kinds of days So that you won’t take anything for granted” (Ecclesiastes 7:14, MSG).
Today’s scripture teaches us how to navigate both good and bad days. Every day that comes brings with it a divine purpose. On a good day, we are to appreciate the period of peace and rest and take delight in the positive things that are going on in our lives. On a bad day, we are to pause and examine ourselves using the standards God set forth in His Word.
In an effort to build our faith and mold our trust in Him, God will allow whatever adversity He chooses to come into our lives. Our scripture this morning tells us that God allows adversity to come not because we did something wrong, but because he uses adversity to reveal to us our shortcomings.
God will permit family relationships to be strained to test our patience. He will permit finances to be wiped out to test our dependence on Him. God will permit our reputation to be tarnished, our health to be disrupted, and our peace of mind to be disturbed in order to point out those areas in our lives that we have not fully submitted to Him. God will even permit our democracy to turned upside down and our way of life to become unstable in order for us to learn to fully trust Him.
This is your reminder for today: God’s ultimate goal in allowing adversity to come into our lives is to grow our faith in Him and to strengthen our trust in His Word. His ultimate goal is to prune us of some negative things, to add in some positive things, and to build our character to be more like Christ.
During your quiet time with God today, ask Him to show you what you need to work on within you so you can grow to be more like Him. Then, thank Him for what He is doing in you. And finally, praise Him for walking with you as you work to pass the test He has allowed to come into your life. As the scripture commands us, “On a good day, enjoy yourself; On a bad day, examine your conscience. God arranges for both kinds of days So that you won’t take anything for granted” (Ecclesiastes 7:14, MSG).
