thankful 2What are you thankful for? That’s a question we get asked a lot in the month of November, but I wonder how often we ponder it the other eleven months of the year.

Gratitude can change the attitude of an individual and the atmosphere of a room or workplace.

You may not be where you want to be in life or things may not be going your way right now. You have a choice. You can focus on the negative and be all doom and gloom or you can choose to be positive and look on the sunnier side of life. There has to be something in your day you’re thankful for, if you think about it long enough.

If you’re a fan of the Bachelor, you would recognize the name Trista Sutter. She was the first Bachelorette. She’s recently released a book, Happily Ever After, that focuses on gratitude. In it she shares,

My husband recently told me that he wasn’t a ‘glass-half-full kind of guy.’ He said, ‘I prefer to chose the right size glass so that it’s always full.'”

Well played, Ryan. I agree. We can choose to focus on the negative, because there will always be negative things around us, or we can choose to celebrate the positives and be grateful for them. Whatever you focus on will have an impact on your outlook throughout your day as well as your interactions with others.

We all have something to be thankful for, whether we acknowledge it or not. People constantly post pictures on Facebook with captions written across them or under them. I’ve come to learn these are called memes (Yes, my son had to enlighten me.  Don’t laugh. You’ll get older one day.). They’re usually funny but sometimes thought provoking. Yesterday, I saw one that read,

What if you woke up today with only the things you thanked God for yesterday?

I found myself looking around my home wondering what would be missing from my life. What do I take for granted day in and day out that I should be thanking God for? I thought about my sweet friend who is at the hospital, sitting at her son’s bedside as he recovers from surgery. Do I take for granted that hospitals exist and will be there when and if I need them, or do I thank God for them? Do I take my home for granted on nights when the temperatures don’t dip below freezing? What about my family and friends? Do I thank God for them daily? Do you?

God’s word is clear about a thankful heart [Colossians 3:15, 4:2, and Hebrews 12:28].Thirty-three times you’ll find the words give thanks in the Word of God. Psalm 100:4 says,

Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; give thanks to Him and praise His name.”

When we open our eyes in the morning, we have the opportunity to focus on our many blessings or our many problems. Which will you choose?

Leave a comment sharing five things you’re thankful for today.

Here’s my list for this morning:

  1. I am thankful for Jesus loving me and dying on the cross for my sins so I can live with Him eternally.
  2. I am thankful for my husband, who is my best friend, an amazing father, and a man of faith and integrity.
  3. I am thankful for my children and that they choose to spend time with me and call me friend.
  4. I am thankful for my health, even with minor struggles like plantar faciitis, because it makes me appreciate when I’m able to walk/run without pain.
  5. I am thankful Rescuing Hope was published last year and is impacting people’s lives, spurring them to join the fight against sex trafficking in America.

Now it’s your turn. Go!