10 Things to be Thankful

It is time for me to give a list of 10 things I am thankful.  Being it is Sunday January 26, I will start my list with church.  Today was not exception to the rule of Steve and I living Hope and saying we love our church.  Yet this Sunday,  was even more special then usual as we were  adopted by Ron and Esther Johnston (actually unofficially, I made myself part of there family, long ago) to be part of there family so that we could go to the fellowship dinner after church.  Steve and I did not bring the 2 required dishes for the dinner but Esther said she brought enough for us, and them so they would be a family of 4 today instead of 2.  Thank you Ron and Esther.

2)  Pumpkin pie– nothing like pumpkin pie when it is not Thanksgiving plus being called a true friend by Kay because I ate 2 pies.  I was just trying to have 2 fruit/vegetables.  Kay makes a great crust too.

3) Sunday School Class– we are transitioning to the book of Daniel and today we started Daniel 2.  Learning how not to become a daughter of Babylon and be a Daniel in the present day is the challenge.  Day 4 of the homework was about choosing joy and flows back to choosing gratitude..

4)  Our cat tickles!  She is so furry.

Our cat

5) The nice weather where I can be outside typing this and trying to get some Vitamin D.

6) Singing Blessed Assurance this morning in church and all 3 verses.  Thank you worship team.

7) My husband and 3 children

8) Trees

9) Being able to walk to the post office

10) My mother

Need to add an extra one– Emily Williams.

That is my list for today.  Remember to name 3 things every day to be thankful.  Keep growing in gratitude.

The Lord be with you.

January 7– Jesus Calling = Impossible to praise and thank Me too much

Psalm 22:3
Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One, you are the praise of Israel.
Psalm 146:1-2
Praise the Lord,
Praise the Lord, O my soul.
2)I will praise to the Lord all my life,
I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.
1 Thessalonians 5:17&18
17)pray continually, 18) give thanks in all circumstances , for this is God’s will for you in Jesus Christ.
In my bathroom where I brush my teeth for 2 minutes I have the flip version of Jesus Calling. This flip version was a thank you gift from a nurse I oriented last summer who was returning to the hospital. I tell of the origins, only to remind myself and each of you who read this the importance of telling someone thank you which equals Choosing Gratitude.  Also the book I am typing this entry from was a gift from the special couple, Bob and Debbie Allison

On January 7th, as my 2 minute timer sand, drained away, I flipped to the date in Jesus Calling and read the following:

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO PRAISE  OR THANK ME TOO MUCH.  As it is written, I inhabit the praises of my people.  Sometimes your adoration is a spontaneous overflow of Joy, in response to rich radiant beauty or rich blessings.  At other times your praise is more disciplined and measured–an act of your will.  I dwell  equally in both types of praise.  Thankfulness, also, is a royal road to draw near Me.  A thankful heart has plenty of room for Me.

When you thank Me for the many pleasures I provide, you affirm that I am God, from whom all blessing flow.  When adversity strikes and you thank Me anyway, your trust in My sovereignty is a showpiece in invisible realms.  Fill up the spare moments of your life with praise and thanksgiving.  This joyous discipline will help you live in the intimacy of My Presence.  (Jesus Calling, by Sarah Young, p. 8)

My challenge to each of you readers is to fill up you spare moments with praise and thanksgiving today.   Also do not grow weary in writing or calling someone today to say how much they mean to you.

The Lord be with you.

Day 30– Pressing on in Gratitude

Life by the Spirit = Galatians 5:16-24

^–16 So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. ¹⁷ For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever^[c] you want. ¹⁸ But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

¹⁹ The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; ²⁰ idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions ²¹ and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

²² But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. ²⁴ Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. ²⁵ Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. ²⁶ Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

Well, Ladies today completes the 30 day gratitude journey which were stretched to 60, I think actually almost 90.  Ok, I guess our journey was even more fun then Nancy’s journey of developing a life style of gratitude.  How are you doing?  Do you see yourself more grateful then when we started in October 2013?  I know I am and I am attempting to write a least one personal thank you and sending it via the USPS.  If a email is how you prefer to send you notes of thanks, go for it.   Real mail, email, telephone call, a little note of thanks left for your husband, mother, father, son, daughter, brother, sister, grandma, grandpa about the house is also a way to say thank you.  A text  message is also allowable.  Nancy in her last devotional (day 30) wants each of us to make a commitment to make a gratitude know to those around us.  Also lets not forget to thank the Lord Jesus Christ and our Creator for what He has done for us.

Get stepping ladies and lets continue on in gratitude.  If any of you do read this blog, keep watching because I will keep typing away.  We are now starting Daniel.  I will blog about that some times, but I keep getting fodder sat in front of me about being grateful, so you will continue to see that topic in this blog.

The Lord be with you.

Day 29 — Growing Grateful Children

10 “And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build, 11 and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant—and when you eat and are full, 12 then take care lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
Deuteronomy 6:10-12

Deuteronomy 6:1-12 is the total text for today and teaching your children which is Deut. 6:6-8 is to be the emphasis of today’s focus. I choose to focus on the above versus because we are not to forget what the Lord has done for us. When we focus on being thankful for all the blessings of the Lord it causes us not to forget what He has done for us. Therefore, no matter what age our children are, if they see us being thankful it will help them not to forget.

When it comes to teaching children to be thankful I have to say in my experience, being thankful is easily caught by some children and other children it is hard to pound this virtue into their lives. Nancy says to teach by example. Do your children see you writing thank you notes to people or do they receive thank you notes from you for something they have given you or done for you? When you receive a note of thanks from someone in the mail, do you make sure that you read the thank you note aloud to them?

In our home we have sponsored a Compassion child since day one of our marriage.  We have received letters from the children we sponsored on a regular bases.  Unbeknownst to me, our daughter Hannah, would read these letters when ever they came in the mail and so she sees first hand what it means to receive a thank you.

The question to reflect on for today– who is in your circle of influence and sees you being thankful? When was the last time you told you pastor thank you?  The church secretary?  Your husband, parents, children, friends?

As it says on the news each night, ” do you know where your children are?”  Our question have you told someone today thank you?

The Lord be with you!

Day 28–Gratitude Accounts

Philippians 1:3 to 11
I thank my God every time I remember you. 4) In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy, 5)because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6) being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. 7) It is right for met to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart; for whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. 8) God cant testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. 9) And his is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10) so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, 11) filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ — the glory and praise of God.

Even though no one reads this blog I have to say by putting this message of gratitude in writing it has started to rewire my brain to be more thankful. Today Nancy talks about having an account. My interpretation is for us to treat gratitude the way we would a bank account. Writing checks/paying a debt to those we need to say thank you for  how they touched our lives. It is sad to think of how it use to be proper etiquette to write a thank you for a gift within 7 days of receiving it. Now days, not to throw everyone under the bus, but we do not send thank you notes for gifts we receive or like me I hold onto resentments for not receiving thank you notes for a gift I sent someone, especially if I put a lot of time and effort into the gift.   I blame it on my language of love (The 5 Love Languages), words of affirmation or should I say, I explain these resentments.  In my own heart I am working on doing things for fun or for free in regards to sending a gift or doing something for someone and this keeps me from resentments.

But back to our lesson on paying our bill or debt to someone who we are grateful.

How can we pay the bill/debt?’

1)  make a phone call to just say thank you or to say hi.  If no one answers, just leave a message of that you called to say hi and are thankful for them being them or for some special reason you are grateful.

2) write your husband (being this is to women) a note to say thank you.  Writing notes to people in your family who even live in your household is fun.  Steve and I write little post it notes to each other each morning depending who leaves the house for work first.  If it is my work day, I leave the note and if he leaves first and I am not up, he writes me a note.  On my days off during the week, I eagerly go to the kitchen to find my note.  With our oldest back in the house with us, I will leave him a note when I go off to work too, saying something I appreciate about him.

Creative notes of appreciation — I L U pens which Steve sometimes leaves on our bed in morning.

3)  Write a thank you note and send it via United States Post Office to tell someone, thank you.  You cannot be thankful enough and watch how it blesses you.

4) Tell someone verbally thank you.  If it is someone holding a door for you, someone who made you job easier, your husband who cleaned the kitchen after dinner, you child who raked leaves with you, help decorating the home for Christmas, your boss at work, the ladies in my Sunday School class.

Let me urge each of you on to tell someone thank you being written or verbally.

The Lord be with you.

Day 27– Progress Report

1 Timothy 4:15   Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress.   

We did this day in class on December 22, 2013 and each of you in class was given 2 copies of this lesson.  One to review and take notes on and the other to use for reference in the future.  This is not a report card with pass fail grades but a tool to see how we are progressing  in our lives of gratitude.  In the past I only thought of perfection in my life in all areas and I have come to see that the idea of perfection is a lie of Satan and God loves me where I am and does not love me more if I achieve perfection.   I no longer want perfection, I just want to be a person who loves God and appreciate how much he loves me.

When it comes to gratitude, I know that the more make progress or exercise my gratitude muscle the larger the muscle becomes.  In class we focused on question 7 on page 214,  “Am I reserved or eager when it comes to expressing gratitude or appreciation to others?”  The class discussion focused on how do we express gratitude to those we really do not feel like it.  As stated in the class we need to any ways.  In a future blog I will give a few ways to begin any note of gratitude ones we feel the love toward and ones we don’t or are not in the mood to express our gratitude.

For today, I have to say I still struggle with showing gratitude in my trials or rejoicing with those whose life is going easier or easier then what my expectations are for mine.  There  that word is again.  Expectations!  To be truly grateful in all circumstances I have to let go of my expectations.  What a struggle I have with expectations!   Expectations for myself, expectations of others.  The definition of expectation is a looking for as due, proper or necessary.   The synonym is hope.  Nothing wrong with hope, but the wrong hope can lead to being ungrateful because what we put all our hope in disappoints us. 

My expectations keep me from being a grateful person but in fairness to myself and to give God the glory, I have made progress in being grateful for what I do have.  In the darkness of the night when I find myself awake and mind wandering to issues that I cannot resolve, I begin my gratitude list,  naming things from A to Z that I am grateful.  Last night I made it to H before falling back to sleep.   Gratitude does give me rest.

I close for today and tomorrow I will write to you on Gratitude Accounts.

The Lord be with you.

Day 26–A Call to Gratitude (Part 2)

Yesterday I posted the scripture from Ezra about the laying of the temple foundation and the party the Israelites had to praise God and give Him thanks for rebuilding the temple.   Today in part 2 I am posting the proclamation that Abraham Lincoln signed October 3, 1863 in calling the people of America to prayer and thanksgiving.  This proclamation was the beginning of our Thanksgiving Day.

 

by the President of the United States of America

The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful years and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the Source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they can not fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict, while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the field of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than theretofore. Population has steadily increased notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.

In testimony wherof I have herunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

[Signed] A. Lincoln

The assignment for today is to write our own proclamation of Thanksgiving.  Here is mine.

I pledge to continue each day to record one thing I am grateful and to praise the Lord for the person or circumstance I am giving thanks. It would be even better if I was to write out 10 items I am thankful each day.  The country and state God has blessed me to live are full of freedoms from want.  I can so easily fall pray to indulgences of the flesh because of the bounty we receive and the ease in which we receive it.  When circumstances are not what I desire, please Lord let me first examine and give you my expectations, then help me to have the peace of mind to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and wisdom to place it all in your hands.  With this proclamation may I continue to be infused with the spirit of gratitude and become a person who has the holy spirit constantly blowing through my hair so I shine for my Creator.

The Lord be with you.

 

 

 

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Day 26–A Call to Gratitude

Ezra 3:8-13

⁸ In the second month of the second year after their arrival at the house of God in Jerusalem, Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, Joshua son of Jozadak and the rest of the people (the priests and the Levites and all who had returned from the captivity to Jerusalem) began the work. They appointed Levites twenty years old and older to supervise the building of the house of the Lord. ⁹ Joshua and his sons and brothers and Kadmiel and his sons (descendants of Hodaviah^[a]) and the sons of Henadad and their sons and brothers—all Levites—joined together in supervising those working on the house of God.

¹⁰ When the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests in their vestments and with trumpets, and the Levites (the sons of Asaph) with cymbals, took their places to praise the Lord, as prescribed by David king of Israel. ¹¹ With praise and thanksgiving they sang to the Lord:

“He is good;     his love toward Israel endures forever.”

And all the people gave a great shout of praise to the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. ¹² But many of the older priests and Levites and family heads, who had seen the former temple, wept aloud when they saw the foundation of this temple being laid, while many others shouted for joy. ¹³ No one could distinguish the sound of the shouts of joy from the sound of weeping, because the people made so much noise. And the sound was heard far away.

Corporate gratitude was being shown for the rebuilding of the Temple.  I love how we are told when this event took place, in our calendar it would be the fall.  The gather together, dressed in their best clothes and sang praises to the Lord for allowing them to rebuild the temple.  They sang and praised God so loud  that the sound was heard far away.  This reminds me of the fall football games noise I can hear from the catholic school only 1/2 mile from our home.  It is fun to be outside on a Friday night, on our patio and here the crowd cheering from the Crusader’s stadium.  I am called to praise the Lord and give thanks in my life.  The next entry will have my Thanksgiving proclamation.

The Lord be with you.

 

Day 25 — Thanksgiving Day (Deuteronomy 8:1-10)

Baby Jesus for Christmas 2013

Be careful to follow every command I am giving you today, so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land that the Lord promised on oath to your forefathers.  2)Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. 3) He humbled you, causing you to hunger and hen feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.4) Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years.  5)Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you.  6) Observe the commands of the Lord your God, walking in his ways and revering him.  7) For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land– a land with streams and pools of water, with springs flowing in the valleys and hills 8) a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; 9) a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dis copper out of the hills.  10) When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.

Being it is the beginning of 2014 I want to reflect back over 2013 and God’s provisions and to praise the Lord my God.  I so often fall short of Deuteronomy 8: 10 in praising the Lord, my God for the land/flood he has given me.  Here in the first world countries I do believe I have to start praising the Lord for giving me self control so I do not indulge in the sin of gluttony and learn that I can say no.

But gluttony can wait for another time and I will follow up on the assignment of day 25 from Choosing Gratitude.

Lord, your bounty had been abundant in 2013 with giving Steve and I health and a wonderful church family.  The advent season was such a blessing to me with each Sunday having “the Greatest Christmas Pageant Ever.”  Thank you for the Mary and Joseph’s you had each week and the authentic “baby Jesus.”

I also thank the good Lord for creative thinking and letting me see a place already set up in my home where I can easily do this writing where I do not have to put my computer away when ever I am going to eat.

This Christmas season the Lord provided me with the privilege to have all my grown children home once again for the holiday.

I would love to hear from you what your are praising the Lord for as we begin 2014.

The Lord be with you each and every day of 2014.