Articles
Winning Wednesday
For several weeks I have been doing a zoom session with William Pearce. Due to his cancer and chemo treatments he is restricted from face to face meetings. William is an amazing young man. He is only thirty-five years old. He is accomplished in many areas. He has competed world-wide in triathlons and won. He is an ER Doctor. He has been married for seven months now. Now he is fighting for his life. In one of our Wednesday sessions, I asked him how he was doing. He said, “Winning Wednesday.” In other words, “I am just trying to make it win today.” He then said, “Sufficient is the day its own troubles.” He just tries to win each day at a time. Each day has its own anxieties. He spends his day with God and his word.
As an accomplished athlete he knows that to win the day there are certain steps that have to be taken. Before we talk about the steps, I wonder how many of us take the day for granted. I know I do. Life has a monotonous routine to it. Life can rock us to sleep. We drone on day after day. In most cases nothing out of the ordinary happens. Life passes one day at a time, and it passes so quickly we are at the end of another year before we have taken the time to look up. William does not have that luxury. Each day is a gift to him, and he knows it. Each day is a fight. He cannot put the fight off for tomorrow or the day after. There is an urgency for today!
Each day we must win the day. Winning does not merely occur when we cross the finish line. It starts early in the morning. Jesus would arise early in the morning and spend time in prayer. Beginning our day with the Lord sets us up to win. That does not mean today our lives will be trouble-free, but instead we have asked for His care through the day. Whatever happens to us that day, He is faithful to provide for us. Spending time with our Father allows us to “win the morning, win the day.”
The next step to winning the day is we need to provide nourishment. Jesus said, “Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word of God.” It is not just our breakfast, but what we feed our minds early in the day too. We need to go to God’s word so we can begin the day thinking on things that are noble, just, lovely, and of good report (Phil. 4:8). We begin the day by making God’s thoughts our thoughts. Fox News and CNN are toxic. They will poison our minds daily. We win the day by feeding our minds from the word of God. We make His thoughts our thoughts.
Further, to win the day we must make wise choices throughout the day. When Jesus had momentous decisions to make, He went to His Father in prayer. If we began our day communicating with God and reading His word, we have given ourselves a better chance to make wise choices through the day. The wiser the choices we make, the more successes we experience. Failures will come, but we must have those moments of success to celebrate throughout the day.
Finally, and this is by no means an exhaustive consideration, to win the day we end the day like we started. At the end of the day, Jesus would close His day in prayer. As we began the day asking for God’s guidance, wisdom, and protection, now we go to Him in prayer thanking Him for His care for us today. We think back on those moments and how we saw His handiwork in our lives that day. We celebrate the win for today.
William is fighting to win every day, not just physically (though that is ever before him) but spiritually, because he knows that is the ultimate victory!
Thanks, my friend, for reminding us to Win The Day!
Rickie Jenkins
