Thankful Thursday

 

There is tremendous power in practicing being thankful. Oprah (whom you'll not often read me talk about) said it herself years ago when she aired her show on the practice of gratitude and keeping a journal. More than her talking about this, the Bible talks about how we are to always give thanks to God, if we are believers in and followers of Him. I thought I'd share a few here.

Praise the Lord, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures forever. (Psalm 106:1)

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. (Hebrews 12L28-29)

Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind. (Psalm 107:21)

And my favorite—

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. (Colossians 3:16)

When we focus on all the things we have to be thankful for, our eyes stay fixed on Jesus. I've experienced this in my own life many, many times and I know some of you have as well, which leads me to this blog post and a new thing for me. I'm joining in with my friends Rebecca Jo from Knit By God's Hand and Leslie from Once Upon A Time & Happily Ever After for a once a week link up. Read my post, read their posts and then join us in your own! Link up with us each week and then make sure and link your blog back to each of ours, then settle in for some great blog reading. I've come to love the blog communities I'm in and consider each of these ladies personal friends. I'm excited for y'all to join us! For now, we do not have a graphic for you, so feel free to find or make your own.

One thing I am thankful for this week is the fact that I have the gift of time. Most of you know that I have a new (to me) car—I had to spend several hours in the dealership this week with it. They had to replace the whole side mirror on the passenger side because the blind spot sensor was not working. It's an easy fix, but the calibrating part is hours long and because of other vehicle issues this week and the crazy work schedule of my husband, I was forced to stay there and wait most of the day on Tuesday. I literally thanked the Lord for the fact that I had the time to do this. It's no big deal for me to throw a bunch of things into a bag and take it all with me to keep me busy while I wait. I took my lunch and I worked on this blog post, all while I sat and waited.

(I feel so techy, too—I have the hotspot on my phone turned on and my laptop is running off of that WiFi. I had to brag on myself, because I am NOT AT ALL techy.)

I'm smiling as I write that.

I am also thankful for my new (to me) car! I don't love car shopping and my sweet husband did this for me while I was out of town a couple of weeks ago. I'm thankful that he was able to find something dependable, pretty and that drives so well. Like houses and employees, there is high demand for used cars right now and as I sat and waited, a salesman came and talked to all of us who were waiting about them buying our used cars. 

I'm thankful for godly friendship. I am always thankful for this and talk about it often, but I'll never grow weary of this topic. It's so important for us to have friends in life. Family is great too, but it's not quite the same as friends. If you're not a regular attender of church services, what is stopping you? I encourage you to go and to get plugged into a small group. That's where relationships are formed and you can't do that if you don't faithfully attend each week. 

I attended a fascinating meeting after church last week and we talked about the core group of a church—it's a very small few group of people who are at and do everything. The next "core group" is a bigger number, but they're not at all the things as that small inner core. The next group are church attenders who consider that church their home, but who go once or twice four to five weeks, or even every other week.

I mention godly friendship because several times this week, I've had the privilege of praying for friends. They pray for me as well, and there is a very small number of people who truly know everything about me and my daily struggles in life. These are the people who know all of my faults and love me anyway, without pointing them out on a regular basis. I pray for each one who reads this, that the Lord will grant you this wonderful gift of godly friendship. Trust me when I say I don't take this lightly! I know the gift this truly is and I thank the Lord for it every day of my life.

I'm saving the best for last—I am thankful for my wonderful husband. He does so much for us! He is my husband, of course, but he is also my best friend, the greatest dad to our sons and my personal hero. There is nothing he can't do! He is the hardest working man that I know and his work ethic is a beautiful thing. He's crazy busy at work right now, for which we are thankful, because the Lord has provided this work for our family business, but he also desperately needs another employee to replace the one he lost recently. If you want to know the truth, I am praying that the Lord would turn Jonah's heart to go to work for Todd. He would be so good at it, but we don't want to put any pressure on him. If someone pressures him in any way, he will want to do the exact opposite, because he is stubborn like that. 

So I'll wrap this post up with that last one. I hope you join in with us for Thankful Thursday! Add your blog to the Inlinkz at the bottom of this, then link your blog back to one (or all!) of ours. Thanks for reading and thanks for joining us! Love to all. 

(Just click on this blue button below.)

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter