What Is In a Day?
This morning, the day is new. We look at the day ahead and ask, “What is in a day?” What lies ahead of us this day?
None of us know.
Here’s the good news: regardless of who you are or where you are, we each share a series of commonalities regarding our day ahead. For the Christ-follower, this is really good news. If we take time to remember a few of these things at the beginning of our day, it really benefits us; in fact, I promise it will make your day better. Notice how the prophet Jeremiah emphasizes the benefits of remembering a few of these key ideas of “What is in a day.” He writes, “This I recall to my mind and therefore I have hope” (Lamentations 3:21).
Here are a few of those key realities to remember:
God’s grace and mercy are new every morning.
Our God is a covenant faithful God. He expresses His loyal love to us daily through His mercy and grace. As we get up and going today, God’s faithfulness provides us a fresh, full helping of grace and mercy—enough to last us all day! Back to Jeremiah:
Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him.”The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him,
to the one who seeks him;
it is good to wait quietly
for the salvation of the Lord. (Lamentations 3:22–26)
God loves us and that motivates our service.
The loyal love that provides great mercy and grace every morning also serves us in another way. As we stop to remember God’s love, it serves to motivate us to serve Jesus Christ and others today. The Apostle Paul describes how God’s love for us through Christ, as we remember and meditate on it, begins to influence us and control how we respond to the people and pressures in our day. In reflection of God’s love through Christ to us, we determine to live for Him and not for ourselves (2 Corinthians 5:14–15).
We stand righteous in Christ, forgiven, and capable of honoring the Lord.
Because we have a relationship with God through Jesus, which we often call being saved, we now stand as righteous in Christ. We are forgiven of our sins and are intimately known by God. Because we are in Christ, we are no longer condemned; instead, we are now capable of honoring our wonderful Lord. Because of this possibility, we diligently seek to grow in our walk with the Lord (2 Peter 1:3–7; 1 John 2:1–2; Ephesians 2:8–10; Romans 8:1).
Both pleasant and unpleasant pressure awaits us and works for us to become like Jesus.
Without any doubt, in our day today, we will face pressure. We undergo pressures every day—both good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant, positive and negative. Yet, these pressures are not without purpose. It is in these pressures we have the opportunity to grow into Christlikeness. As we respond faithfully to them, we are blessed and grow in our character. Where we fail, it provides us opportunities to learn faithfulness through renewed repentance and commitment to grow in our godliness (James 1:2–5; Romans 8:28–29).
Regardless of the pressures we face, God limits them and provides us grace to be faithful through them.
God is faithful, and He will not allow any pressure we face today to go beyond the grace He provides to enable us to be faithful in it. In other words, God’s faithfulness guarantees the opportunity for your faithfulness. Just think about it: God limits the power of your pressures. He guarantees that all of your pressure fit in the category of “common to mankind.” But that’s not all! He also provides you the grace you need to be faithful in the pressure. Thus, God guarantees the pressure is not too great to overcome His grace, and He provides the grace necessary for you to persevere through the pressure-filled circumstance (1 Corinthians 10:13).
Throughout the day, decisions have to be made to love God supremely and others sincerely.
Essentially, our day becomes a twenty-four-hour opportunity to worship our God, seeking to live a Christ-exalting life as we walk in the Spirit. We walk with Christ. He goes with us everywhere we go. The Spirit indwells us. We live in God’s world and in His presence. We are not alone today. Instead, we are loved and enjoy the presence of the Lord (Romans 8:31–38; Galatians 6:16–26). We worship our God as we love Him supremely, known as the first Great Commandment, and as we love our neighbors sincerely, known as the second Great Commandment (Matthew 22:37–40).
The day provides opportunities to guard my heart and ask, “Who or what reigns as my lord?”
We strive then to walk in wisdom with God. We seek to remember God’s Word as we guard our hearts above everything else. Since all our thoughts, attitudes, emotions, words, and actions come from our hearts, we put the greatest effort into making sure that our hearts honor God. We seek to read, listen, watch, and consider those things that help fortify the heart toward Christlikeness rather than encourage drift (Proverbs 4:20–27).
In the process of the day ahead, I can choose to either honor and glorify God, or not. I can live according to God’s purpose for my life.
With all this truth fresh on our minds, we begin to tackle our day. Meditating on these key truths puts us in a strong position. The better and more thorough we begin with these truths and choose to intentionally remember them throughout our day, the better we will do. Our day will be better; we will be blessed. Our lives throughout the day will reflect what we remember. We will be influenced by the thoughts and intentions of our hearts. Therefore, with this in mind, we will strive to live for the honor and glory of our Lord. In other words, we will strive to glorify God by becoming more like Jesus Christ as we work through the various pressures of our day (2 Corinthians 5:8–10; Romans 13:11–14; 1 Corinthians 10:31).
So, armed with these things, we face our day.
Friends, with these things in mind—choosing to remember—we face our day. We do not know what all the pressures are in our day ahead; yet, we choose to remember these promises from God and will allow them to impact us throughout the pressure. And when the evening comes, we will lay our head down in gratitude for these truths, repenting where we need to for our day’s failures, but, more importantly, rejoicing in Jesus Christ, in whom we live and have our being.
Note: This article was originally published on KevinCarson.com