WEDNESDAY’S WORD – BLESSINGS – Sadell Bradley – 11/23/17 New Life Covenant Cincinnati

“Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgivings, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings.” – William Arthur Ward

I remember the old church song we used to sing, “Count your blessings, name them one by one. Count your many blessings see what God has done.”  That is one of the joys of Thanksgiving. We get to count our blessings, not our problems. Unfortunately, the busyness of the Holiday Season, the somewhat gloomy change in the weather, the arduous travel, and for some – strained relationships with families, can cause us to be distracted from giving the LORD thanks. The practice of appreciation, especially to God, is a spiritual discipline. We don’t ever have to worry if expressing gratitude is out of God’s will. “In every thing give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.“ (1 Thessalonians 5:18)

It’s amazing how quickly worry and anxiety can overtake your thought life – even during Thanksgiving season.  We are so used to inwardly rehearsing, outwardly expressing, or somehow attempting to insulate ourselves from what’s wrong; that it’s difficult sometimes to embrace that so much is going right. In fact, we often fail to recognize just how blessed we are until we encounter someone worse off than we are. Philippians 4: 4-9 instructs us not to be anxious about anything, to pray about everything, and to concentrate on what’s true, honorable, virtuous, lovely and of good report. Thanksgiving should become a life practice. Singer/Songwriter Willie Nelson, whose life has taken may turns said, “When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.”

So check your discontentment at the door. There is too much to be thankful for. The

connection between contentment and gratitude is compelling. Is what’s wrong in your life as bad as you’re making it? Are you enlarging your difficulties or taking on the problems of others? Have you become enslaved by a consumer culture where we are duped into thinking there is never enough, and we’re not enough unless we have…X? Tomorrow: after we eat the kind of gluttonous dinner which many around the world would only dream of, and after watching parades and millionaires run after some kind of ball; many of us will still get up at 3:00 in the morning and fight for TV’s and other ‘sale’ items we believe we can’t do without. Maybe a valuable change of pace would be to invest more time than just the prayer before dinner to thank God and count our blessings.