April Gratitude Nudges

From Ann Voskamp at A Holy Experience

Mid-Week Question: Is Spirituality a 7th sense?

A Mid-Week Question to Consider:

Is spirituality a 7th sense? Is gratitude an 8th sense?

~~~

Other Questions to Consider

This Weekend~Easy Weekend Activity~Pause

This Weekend~Pause for Gratitude-Quickly compose a mental list of 20 items

Picture first seen at http://moneysavingmom.com/

Previous Weekend Activities

This Weekend~Easy Weekend Activity~Bask In It!

Something good stupendously great happened to you this week.
It was and is the culmination of many, many prayers.

Do you remember?

Our tendency is to want, want, want something, be relieved when we get it, proceed to receive it, and maybe feel grateful, eat a little brownie sundae, dance and smile and laugh…

For awhile

And then we move on…

And we continue on the path. Our path. We “do the next right thing”, “show up and suit out”, “keep moving forward”.

We stay in the moment, until the moment passes.  And we are on to the next push. The next step.

But, this weekend, just for a short while….Bask In IT.

Return and Reclaim that moment when your learned that your miracle happened.

Just for a little moment, Bask in the miracle that happened this week for you.

Stay put.

Stay in the hug of the revelation of it. Stay amazed. Stay as amazed as you were when it happened. Stay in the Christmas morning moment of it. Stay with it. Replay the good of it in a gratitude loop to Him. Relive the sparkle and twinkle. Praise and thank Him all over again.

Too often we replay the bad, the uncomfortable, the fear and doubt.

This weekend, stay in the loop of your latest wonder. The one He gave, Because of Grace.

~~~

Hold Fast to the Good. ~1 Thessalonians 5:21

Previous Weekend Activities

Revisiting Rethinking my belovedness

Revisiting belovedness==He Started It

“Once you become aware that the main business that you are here for is to know God, most of life’s problems fall into place of their own accord.”
–J.I. Packer

Sometimes we can’t pray away the pain…we have to go through healing first.

The worst thing about believing the lies of another person is the internalizing of the pain of being wrong about them.
I wondered how I could have been so stupid. So blind.

And so willing to believe.

The other worst thing about believing lies is the assault to my confidence. Maybe you have felt this loss too.

Our society deems some sins and some lapses of judgment worse than others. If I listen to these voices of condemnation, mixed with voices of the liar, then these voices can drown The Voice of Grace.

I wrote then, “Knowing the truth of your story is a powerful antidote to the shame, doubt, and the negative voices of others that have infected the story you tell yourself. God wants you to know the truth.”  And so He does. And there is more. There is The Voice of Grace.

And as I retrain myself to listen to the voice of Grace, I remember and re-learn about my Belovedness. Beloved becomes my Focus Word, a sort of “take that” to the lies and the liar.

But…all too soon my focus becomes a spiritual “nanny-nanny-boo-bo0″~~~more about me and less about Him:
A sort of: Sticks and Stones may break my bones but I am Beloved so you can’t hurt me.

The potential quicksand of this is that I may begin to believe more in my belovedness instead of  who died for me and who is The Beloved.

Deceiving voices will twist the best of intentions (recovery) into idolatry (the belovedness of me to the exclusion of the Belovedness of HE). It is essential for me to wait for the sound of His voice before I make decisions and before I believe too exclusively in the exclusive sparkle of my own Belovedness.

In spiritual dyslexia, I reversed the order of Proverbs 3:5: Trust in the Lord with all your heart… And do not lean on your own understanding. It becomes time for me to center and reacquaint the focus word Beloved as being about Him and not me.

Security comes when we bring the empty well of our hearts to Jesus and ask Him to fill and fulfill us with the security of His unfailing love. ~Renee Swope

Possible ways to Stay Centered in or Reacquaint with His Belovedness

1. Know the names of the Beloved. Repeat and Claim the names.
2. It’s finals week all the time. Return again and again to give our whole heart to The Beloved. This is not a one-time only “Shazam” prayer or practice. We will eventually come to a place of complete trust, but some days, for me at least, requires a minute-by-minute recall
3. Study the words of The Beloved. Read the prayers of The Beloved. Read the prayers of the leaders in the Bible. Put these prayers into practice.
   For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the LORD and to practice it, and to teach His statutes and ordinances in Israel. ~ Ezra 7:10
4. Baste every hour with Gratitude
5. Share with others close to you The Truth of The Beloved. Remember, He started it.
6. A mature man in the faith admonished me to reach out to others in spite of my own pain, “Invest in someone else,” he said. I did not realize what a place of healing and comfort that would become.

Because of Grace, i have received shared belovedness from The Beloved. Step 7 in this list is empty. Might you also share through a comment your step 7 here?

To the Only God

More of You Less of Me

This Weekend~Easy Weekend Activity~Exhale Thanks

That’s when I learned that unexpressed gratitude must be exhaled for us to ever fully take a breath it in again.~Jenn Gibson
from an insight suggested by Garrett

Idea: Might you join a Gratitude Community today? (It is another Easy Weekend Activity!)
:)
~~~~~~~~

Other Weekend Activities

The Day After Thanksgiving

I hope Thanksgiving gave you big bear-hugs and  pleasant memories.

And if there are a few bitter memories, my wish is that you will toss them out along with the turkey carcass.

And I wonder, this Day After,  What if  we embrace gratefulness beyond tokens of thanksgiving, dutiful gratitude journals, and a few hastily written thank you notes?

What if we Remain Thankful?

What if gratitude became as natural as speaking?

Gratitude is a language you speak with your hands, the way you form the vowels and spaces of your life and we could all learn it together. ~Ann Voskamp

How to I begin to speak the language of gratitude?

For me, perhaps it is by allowing myself to Remain. By easing up pace just a bit so I can mindfully notice the miracles, and loiter, and dwell in them. And then sharing those miracles in community.

The key to a thankful heart is focusing more on what God HAS DONE for you rather than on what you need. ~Rick Warren.

I want to Remain Thankful and continue the process of Thanksgiving so the language of gratitude becomes my default setting.

Write items you are grateful for on tags or leaves, then add to tree.

Day 28~Gratitude~Be Gentle, Be Love

created by Helen

Always let your prayer take the form of thanksgiving, on the assumption that God is giving you great and wonderful things. ~Dr. Norman Vincent Peale

Day 28 Be Gentle, Be Love eCourse, eBook

Visit the wonderful Gratitude Community at We Love Gratitude!

Gratitude May Not Be Enough

Why is gratitude strengthening? Because it recharges the soul. Anyone who is grateful is focusing on what is good, and ultimately all good things come from God. This means that the thankful person is aligning himself with the most powerful force in the universe and is drawing strength from it.

But the benefit of  just coasting on the feeling will wane like the Oscar enthusiasm has waned this week.

For a sustained benefit, any time I feel a blast of appreciation or a sudden surge of gratitude, I must remember to translate it into action.

※ Write that note
※ Make that phone call
※ Send that small gift or flower
※ Twirl
※ Act as if the impulse to act were a divine command.

It’s a necessary step to take, because it completes a circle based on a profound yet simple spiritual law, the law that says seek and find, search and discover.

In this life, if you steadfastly affirm goodness,
goodness will be there.
If you affirm love, you will find it.
And if you affirm thankfulness, blessings will flow *

  One Gratitude community that is supportive and fun resides on the “Good List Daily” website. Members and guests may post gratitude lists. Even if you choose not to participate, just reading the lists of others places a canopy of thankfulness over you, helping to salve the wound. The community at Good List Daily is also kind without intrusion, supportive without interfering.And that feels good.
Seth Godin wrote, “Self sufficiency appears to be a worthy goal, but it’s now impossible if you want to actually get anything done. All our productivity, leverage and insight comes from being part of a community, not apart from it.” 

 

 *(I originally read this sentiment  in a Guidepost magazine article)
**Isaiah 43:18-19