Gratitude Challenge

Yesterday I gave myself time to blog hop without feeling guilty.  While checking out the other blogs I came across Brenda's Gratitude Challenge at Garden of Learning.  This really got me thinking of all the people and things for which I'm grateful.  November is the time of year that most people give pause in their life to think about the things for which they are thankful.  I'm usually thankful each day but there are days when I get so caught up in my problems that I give in to despair. I know that God is moved by our faith and not our self pity. Right now my hubby and I are going through some personal problems and I think if I have a thankful state of mind it will be much easier to have faith.  The doom-n-gloom attitude that I fall easily into doesn't produce a lot faith.

Today is Day 2 of the challenge and as usual I'm a day behind.  So I'm going to post 2 things in order to catch up.

#1 of Gratitude Challenge
First and foremost, I am most grateful to God for sending, Jesus, His only son, to earth and sacrificing him so that I may have eternal life.  You know the scene in "Titanic" when Rose refers to Jack and says "he saved my life in more ways than one." Well, that's what God has done for me. Not only has my soul been saved but also my life, my marriage, my relationships, and my thoughts.  I may not look like it now but in my teens let's just say no one knew whether or not I was going to heaven or hell. I believed in Jesus, but I was under the pharisee-type of thinking where we earned our way into heaven - we had to do good to get good.  Growing up a certain religion I was taught about the fiery damnation of hell and continuously aware of breaking some of the 10 commandments. In fact, when someone is constantly telling you (at home) that you are going to hell it certainly doesn't make you stop what you are doing. In fact, it makes you shrug your shoulders and say "Well, I'm going to hell anyway...." and continue being bad. This is deeply personal but I'm going to share that I also had a lot of suicidal thoughts and life felt hopeless and bleak.  But God is so good and merciful He patiently waited on me to open the door of my heart to allow Him into my life.

This leads me to #2 of the Gratitude Challenge.  I am thankful for God's undeserved favor and grace!!! As a believer I am no longer under the law. I don't have to do good things to earn God's love and I can't do anything that would make Him not love me anymore. He wants to bless us and He wants a relationship with us.  Even though I still make mistakes and fail miserably He doesn't cast me out.  I've had to train myself not to hide from Him when I miss the mark.  It's really the time to run to Him.  After all the years of being conditioned with wrong ideas of God it is so wonderful when one grasps the true knowledge of God's favor and grace. An example of God's grace is a child.  When our children do something that hurts themselves, do we punish them or do we scoop them up into our arms to console them? We pick them up and try to soothe away the hurt. Why? Because we love them and we want to help them. Then we teach our children how to avoid getting hurt again. That's how God is with us.  He's not looking to punish us. And the wonderful thing is that no matter how many times we fail the test God allows us to take the test over and over again.  We don't even have that kind of patience with our own children. In fact, God loves us more than we love our own children and that's a lot of love! GOD IS TOTALLY AWESOME! !