David comes home to smoke: Ziklag burned, families taken, and his own men talking stones. It is the lowest hour of his wilderness years, and the text gives us his survival secret in one line: but David found strength in the LORD his God.

Then he asked, pursued, and recovered all. Learn that sequence today, strengthen, ask, pursue, while a donkey carries the true King into Jerusalem.

Everyone at Ziklag had the same catastrophe; only David had a practice for it. Finding strength in the LORD is not a mood that descends; it is a discipline, rehearsing God's character, praying honestly, asking for orders, until the soul can stand up. Then, and only then, came pursuit and full recovery.

Mary's poured-out nard shows the same heart in a sweeter hour: extravagant devotion before the crisis, fragrance that filled the house and, in a sense, never left. Build both habits now, worship that spends freely in good times, and the muscle memory of strengthening yourself in God, so that when your Ziklag smokes, you know exactly where to turn.