When Crisis Comes

We presume that we would be ready for battle if confronted with a great crisis, but it is not the crisis that builds something within us - it simply reveals what we are made of already. Do you find yourself saying, "If God calls me to battle, of course I will rise to the occasion"? Yet you won't rise to the occasion unless you have done so on God's training ground [of worship, Bible study, and prayer]. If you are not doing the task that is closest to you now, which God has engineered into your life, when the crisis comes, instead of being fit for battle, you will be revealed as being unfit. Crises always reveal a person's true character.

- Oswald Chambers in "My Utmost for His Highest"