I have a picture in my home with the title, “Start each day with a grateful heart”. I really love it, because it’s a reminder to start each day with the right perspective.
Choosing to be grateful, to look at the world and see all that God has done, is such a powerful thing. It changes our focus, our attitude, our mood, and our outlook on the world. Especially in a time when bad news is flooding in constantly.
It’s not always easy to be grateful, and it might not change your mood right away. But try it with me. List out loud the things you are grateful for every morning. You will start to notice a difference. Let’s count our blessings together.
Meditating on the breakthrough
I like to go deep and really meditate on what God has done. When God comes through for us in one way or another, it’s always about more than just us. Think about your salvation. How many people did God need to move, in order for them to pray for you or reach you with His love? It happened little by little, at different times in your life, until you were finally ready to receive His salvation. And that was just the beginning of your journey. Then God moved others to help you grow and learn about who He is.
Even if you grew up in a Christian family, like I did, many people were involved in teaching you and leading you to Jesus. And what is the story of their lives? How did God move people to touch them? And so it continues.
What about the times God came through financially? Sometimes He moved individual people to give, but who knows what that required. What struggles they might have had? Maybe it was a check in the mail or a refund from a gas or electricity company. Was it a mistake they made? Or did God maybe guide you to spend less on electricity that whole year, just so you could get the refund you needed today?
Meditating on how much God has done to come through for me, helps me see it in a whole new light. I am so grateful!
What do I allow into my mind?
I have also found that to stay in a place of gratitude and joy, I need to control what I allow to enter my mind. Looking at the news every hour and checking social media all the time, doesn’t really help me. Of course I want to stay current on what is going on in the world. But looking at the news once a day is fine for me. And reading, rather than watching, the news also gives me the ability to skip anything I actually don’t need to know about.
I know social media isn’t always bad news, and it’s a good way to keep up with friends. But have you ever noticed the spirit of comparison that is going on there?
Comparing our lives to others will also steal our joy and our ability to be grateful. God created you and me exactly like He wanted us. If He had wanted us all to be the same and have the same experiences, He would have created us like that.
Controlling what we allow into our mind, is a great tool to keep peace and joy. You might not need to do it the way I do. You might have other things that steal your joy. But just knowing that we can actually control it, and doing something about it, is a great start.
Keeping our peace and gratitude turns our focus back to God. And that’s where we can find joy every day.
