Revolutionize your life—choose this.

Revolutionize your life—choose this. Colossians

Apprehending this one thing . . . 
will change your life.
It will change your relationships, your health and wellness, your personality and satisfaction in life.

But first, I want to ask you to be honest with yourself for a moment:

>Are you pleasant to be around?
>Do you like your perspective on things?
>Are you a glass full or glass empty kind o’ person?

Turns out that whether or not you are a glass half empty/glass half full guy or gal is dependent on you and your thinking.

Will you pray with me?
Search us, O God, and know our hearts
Try us and know our thoughts
Look inside and help us to do the same
Show us if there is something we can change … Amen.

You can become a glass-half-full person and revolutionize your thinking by letting this one thing color it all. I mean, there is a lot of talk about CHOICE today, right? So, let’s choose to be thankful!

Tis almost the thankful season, right? Why not get a jump on it? 
Ah . . . gratitude. Gratitude is good and good for you, it seems! 
While gratitude is good, maybe even great, we will see that it falls short.

In a 2017 study published in Emotion, gratitude opens the door to more relationships, improves physical health, improves psychological health, enhances empathy and reduces aggression, and get this--grateful people sleep better! Gratitude improves self-esteem and increases mental strength.1

Being grateful is good, but being thankful is even better.
‘You know why? Being thankful is directed toward a person. And when thinking of the many reasons I have to be thankful, I think of the One who gives all ~ God. When I stop to think about how grateful I am for life, for instance, it leads me to the Source of life . . . it also gives right perspective of my humble place before God.

Looking to the scriptures, we find thankfulness gets the most mentions in Psalms—because of its size. Second to Psalms is Colossians, the little letter we have been considering, written by brother Paul, who wrote, “As therefore you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so live in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”2

Let’s abound in giving thanks!
Let’s be people who think often throughout the day ~ of the people and things
for which we have to be so very grateful.
Let’s give God ‘thanks’, not stopping at being merely grateful.

After all, God said, “But giving thanks is a sacrifice 
that truly honors me.”3

Here’s what I’ve noticed: when I thank God for his goodness to me,
naming things in my life, one by one – taking stock as I go, 
I am a whole lot less likely to think of what I lack,
what I do not have … or to compare myself or lot
to others. 
Let’s see our glass half full, giving thanks to God; let’s choose a new outlook, one of thankfulness, and be a person others want to be around. What do you say?

Christine Todd DiGiacomo

PastorWoman.com

1 – Psychology Today, Amy Morin
2 – Colossians 2.6-7
3 – Psalm 50.23a