Chuck Swindoll has been known to say, “Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond.”*

I don’t think he was quoting a scientific study. My sense is that he was making a general observation: Your life isn’t all about what happens to you, but how you respond to what happens to you.

It’s a good point. Every single day things happen which have an effect on us. The economy takes a turn, a pandemic hits, and it rains or snows. Maybe we get sick (through no fault of our own), have to deal with a challenging person (through no fault of our own), or get rear-ended by another car (through no fault of our own).

We don’t always have a say in what happens to us, but we can have a say in how we respond.

So respond well.

In one of the world’s most inspirational pieces of writing, Paul said, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?”

“No,” he replies. In fact, “in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:35, 37).

More. Than. Conquerors.

Life happens. I get it. Here in the 2020 that will never end, we’re all having more bad days than we’d like to admit. 

But if life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond, remember that, in Christ, your ninety percent is pregnant with the love of an unconquerable Lord.

By Matthew Ruttan

–*Quoted in: Craig Groeschel, Liking Jesus: Intimacy and Contentment in a Self-Centred World (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2015), 31.

–Bible quotes are from the NIV.