music :: worship :: life
Here’s a report on some scientific research into the benefits of gratitude:
Gratitude Theory: Researchers find the virtues of gratitude include good health.
And a blog that references the article:
more on gratitude ~ “Gratitude Theory”
Here’s another article on the psychological benefits of practicing gratitude:
Cultivating Gratitude: An Interview with Robert Emmons, Ph.D.
In 2005, about a month after the hurricane, I did some exercises from ReflectiveHappiness.com, which focused on recording and describing a list of blessings experienced each day. I can verify that doing this on a daily basis for several weeks brought me quickly back from a very dark depression. The immediate aftermath of the storm had been a period of intense activity, excitement, and camaraderie with fellow early-responders. But after a month, the glamor wore off and the sense of adventure paled. Driving around this devastated community, I was pummeled by an awareness that things would never be back to the way they were, and the life I knew would never be the same. I grieved intensely for what was already lost, and for what in my prescience I could foretell would soon be gone. There had been much to lose, after all. Little of it was material—not the important parts, anyway. I saw it slipping away.
Anyway, it was a very depressing time for me. Developing the practice of “counting my blessings” every day quickly alleviated the dark mood and enabled me to carry on with renewed strength. i have continued the practice off and on since then. And in October, 2006, I started keeping a book to record miracles and special blessings whenever they occur.
Gratitude works!
John Henry Jowett, the English pastor who served for many years at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, said, “Gratitude is a vaccine, an antitoxin, and an antiseptic.” Researchers are now beginning to discover scientifically a truth that religious leaders have taught for millennia.
And gratitude is the beginning of discipleship. In Romans 12:1, Paul says, “And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him.” Gratitude is the end of religion and empty ritual, and the start of a genuine relationship with God. In gratitude for all that God has done for us, to give ourselves wholly and without reservation to him, is true worship. Only then we can begin to experience the benefits of the indwelling Spirit of God:
But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
—Galatians 5:22-23
Gratitude is the key that unbars the gates to God’s favor, and releases the flood of blessings that God has in store for those who love him. Gratitude births joy and wholehearted love for God, the qualities that made David a man after God’s own heart. Gratitude enables us to live the kind of life God blesses.
Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
—Colossians 3:12-17
Henri Nouen (whose birthday is today) said: “God is always active in our lives. God always calls, always asks us to take up our crosses and follow. But do we see, feel, and recognize that call or do we keep waiting for that illusory moment when it will really happen?”
What are you waiting for?
The biggest enemy of God is not active evil, but complacency. Satisfaction, complacency, apathy, indifference, self-assuredness—this is passive evil. These are the lukewarm whom God despises:
I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.
—Revelation 3:15-16
Active evil has momentum. Active evil has energy. And like a martial arts master, God can flip active evil and use its own force to create good. My testimony is living proof of that. The active evil of all the antagonists in my life, the very passion with which they sought to ruin me, provided the energy and momentum God used to produce an explosion of blessings like I have never seen before. The very fire with which they hoped to send me down in flames, God tranformed into a rocket to shoot me into a new level of victory far beyond my expectations.
There is nothing to fear from those whose hearts are bent and whose minds plot evil and destruction.
But, God save us from the satisfied!
The comfortably numb, the placid, the complacent, the dispassionate, the lukewarm—the time to spit them out is now!
If God is the potter and we the clay, and he is continually kneading us, reshaping us into the form he needs us to take, it follows that the process can only succeed as long as we remain malleable, flexible, soft. The moment we harden into some fixed shape, God’s efforts to shape us will fail. We will simply shatter.
That doesn’t mean we cannot be repaired once broken. But it does mean that God will have to soften us up first.
And the softening process is very unpleasant indeed. . . .
A hilarious spoof of the Mac vs. PC commercials, pitting an uptight “Christian” against a more unpretentious “Christ-follower.”
I was reading Psalm 20:7 today where it says “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.” And the footnote in my Life Application Bible said “David knew that the true might of his nation was not in weaponry but in worship; not in firepower but in God’s power.”
Alexis de Tocqueville in his travels through America was impressed by the morality of the American people, by the churches, and temples. He wrote, “America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”
Whenever I turn on the TV and flip through the channels, noticing the stuff the public views as entertainment, or read the news (lately debates among politicians over whether we should be allowed to torture people, or imprison them indefinitely because someone thought them suspicious), I wonder whether that time has come: the time when America has ceased to be good.
I wish I was as smart as my cat.
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