Reasons to Be Thankful

Reasons To Be Thankful-I was sitting by my bed one afternoon, waiting for
the nurses to put me to bed. My back was hurting and, I find, it is always
more difficult to be thankful when I am in pain. So I FORCED myself to think
of things that I, personally, am thankful to God for.

The primary reason to be thankful to God is simply because He is worthy of
my thanks. That doesn't change if I have a backache or any other kind of
ache. It certainly also doesn't change if my emotions are running high on a
particular day and I am expressing all sorts of negative emotions. The
bottom line is that God is just as good every single day and He is worthy of
my thanks no matter what is going on my life or how I am feeling, either
physically or emotionally.

I am also thankful to Jesus for dying  on the cross and taking away my sins
so that I am going to Heaven and not to hell. The truth, though, is I didn't
know any of that stuff when I first became a born-again Christian. I was
presented with the fact that Jesus could heal me and it just clicked in
enough for me to get saved. No doubt, he told me about Jesus dying for my
sins, etc., but I zeroed in on the healing. It was only after I had been a
Christian for a little while that I realized the magnitude of what Jesus has
done for me. Now I am extremely thankful to God for both my healing and that,
because my sins have been taken away,  I am not going to hell.

Becaus everyday I face a pretty difficult situation,I have a frequent
battle with depression. That is why being thankful to God is so crucial for
me. When I feel the depression coming on, if I have the sense to start
thanking and praising God, it isn't long before those depressed thoughts are gone.
Sometimes, though, I let myself get totally depressed and am thoroughly
wallowing in it before I MAKE myself start to thank and praise God. The key
word is "make", as when I am depressed, the very LAST thing I want to do is thank
God. Or anybody else for that matter. I wish I could say I do it all the
time but I don't. I just know that when I thank God, it takes away my
depression.

Being thankful is also important for me because it helps me to keep my focus on God and what He is doing in my life. Because of all the time that I have to think, it is too easy to let my mind go helter-skelter all over the place. I don't always think negative thoughts but too many of my thoughts are not focused on God either. I find it is easier to be thankful for the "big" answers to prayer than the ordinary ones. But my life has a lot small answers to prayer. One thing I do to keep my mind focused on and thankful to God, is every night before I go to sleep, think back over the day and think of things to be thankful for, no matter how "little". Sometimes, it is hard to think of anything specific to be thankful for but I can usually come up with something. Another thing I try to do is, whenever God answers a prayer, no matter how trivial it seems, I send an e-mail to somebody to tell them all about it.

Being thankful also helps me to remember that it could be worse. I have a friend who has a little boy with a heart condition. One thing she said in an e-mail is that when he is being a pain, she is thankful that he is healthy enough to be a pain. That made me think that things could be worse in my life.  First of all, I very well might not be here at all as I was only given a 50% chance of surviving the stroke. I had a blood clot at the base of my brain so it is possible that I wouldn't have the good mind that I do. I use my eyes a lot. Can you imagine what my life would be like if I were blind? And so on and on. You get the picture. My life is not too good but it could be a lot worse.

So being thankful is not just an option for me. It is essential if I am going to hold on until the end.