Stay happy, stay thankful!

The optimist laughs to forget, the pessimist forgets to laugh – John Mason

Special Christmas greetings to you! May you have every joy and glad tiding your heart can conceive this Christmas and beyond. Today I would like to share with you the importance of gratitude and why we need to live in an atmosphere of thanksgiving.

Is Your Cup Half Full Or Half Empty This Christmas?
During a research class, a professor presented a glass of water to his students and asked if they thought the glass was half empty or half full. Some of the students said it was half full, while others said it was half empty.

How do you evaluate your challenges? Do you see life’s cup as “half empty” or “half full.” We must train our eyes to view the cup as “half full” so that we can always be filled with hope and gratitude.

Those who can see God’s hand in everything can leave everything in God’s hand.
Maintaining a grateful attitude is like keeping a register with God. I encourage you to open a book of thanksgiving where you record every single good event that occurs throughout the year. If you went through an entire month without visiting the hospital, write it down. You commute daily to work or you took out of state/country trips and returned home safe; write it down. At the end of the year, you will be pleasantly surprised at the number of good events that have happened to you. This would help you develop genuine gratitude and give more quality thanks to God. Ingratitude on the other hand, closes the door of favour.

Thanksgiving is a very powerful tool, it multiplies results. This is evident in the Bible when Jesus was faced with the dilemma of feeding over four thousand men with only seven loaves of bread and few little fishes;

“Then Jesus called his disciples unto him and said, I have compassion on the multitude because they continue with me now three days and have nothing to eat… and he commanded the multitude to sit down…and took the seven loaves and fishes and GAVE THANKS and brake them and gave…to the multitude. And they did all eat and were filled and they took up…that was left seven baskets full” Mathew 15:32-37 KJV
What a ground breaking testimony! With THANKSGIVING, a little boys meal of fish and seven loaves of bread fed a multitude and they even had left overs.

Regardless of the challenges in the past year, you are alive today and that is worth thanking God for. If you have lost anything at all, God is the reason you haven’t lost everything. He deserves our thanksgiving so get set to take the attitude of gratitude with you into 2017. As you do this from your heart I see everything that is not working in your life begin to take a turn for the best.

Have a thanksgiving filled Christmas and a most fruitful New Year! God bless you.

A Thanksgiving Prayer and Confession
Dear Lord, I repent of murmuring and ingratitude. I recognise that in spite of challenges I have experienced You are the reason I have not lost all. Because I am alive I have hope for a greater tomorrow. I give you thanks from a willing heart even as I put my total trust in You for the future in Jesus name, Amen.

We would love to hear from you ~ visit www.globalimpactng.org or The Goodland, Ifako busstop along Ogudu-Oworo Expressway, Lagos.

@yemidavids,@Globalimpactng, pastoryemi@globalimpactng.org
See you in 2017!