Embracing the Gratitude Challenge for Personal Transformation

when Dallas Willard was dying of pancreatic cancer a few of us were sitting with him and he was looking off in the distance and he said something that's always haunted me said I've wasted so much of my life and of course all of us thought this is a brilliant philosopher he's learned more than most of us could ever possibly imagine he writes books he goes around teaching people and talking with them and making things with his hands I've never known anybody waste less time like if he's wasting time the rest of us might as well pack it in right now but I think but I think but I think what was going on inside of his mind was he was thinking what life could be [00:01:22]

you know Psalm 103 says bless the Lord O my soul and all that is in me bless His holy name bless the Lord O my soul and forget not all of his benefits or forget none of his benefits how many benefits has God given to us we're going to talk about that idea of benefits as we work together in gratitude what would it be like for me to remember all of them a lot of gratitude has to do with remembering [00:02:00]

or Paul when he sung to the church at Ephesus he says uh sing and make music in your heart to God always thanking him for everything for every good gift and I think when it comes to gratitude what we want to be thinking about is not how do I do compared with other people but what might life be like if I'm actually living with a grateful Spirit from one moment to the next if I cultivate The Habit the lens the perspective of gratitude like my old friend quig would say we have so much to be grateful for [00:02:47]

he wrote If you exercise no control your mind which she pictured like kind of a garden that's why I'm standing where I am today if you exercise no control your mind will become a weed patch and a source of Shame and misery if you exercise wise control then it will be filled with God's Miracles and become a place of indescribable Beauty you are free to choose which [00:03:30]

simply for example develop a habit of looking at each thought as you would have planned if it is worthy if it fits the plan you desire for your mind cultivate it if not replace it how do you get it out of your mind simply by putting in its place two or three thoughts of Love or worship for no mind can dwell on more than two or three thoughts at a time circumstances Outside The Garden of Your Mind do not shape you you shape them [00:03:56]

so what we're going to do today is to take a moment to reflect on how grateful am I and in doing this I will not compare myself to some other person I know to be grumpier or crankier than me man I won't compare myself to somebody who's way better than me when I started lifting weights many years ago I worked out with a guy named Doug Doug literally his true story was Mr Universe 40 and over three times in a row it was terribly intimidating doing this with him [00:05:21]

so I want to invite you to start by doing a gratitude assessment if you want to take this a little further I'm going to do it right now verbally you can go online at our website website website become new or you can sign up for our emails and now tomorrow day three of the Gratitude challenge we're going to begin to do gratitude journaling you don't have to do that you can just tune in and I'll talk you through stuff but if you'd like to take another five or ten minutes per day to really try to cultivate gratitude in your mind gratitude journaling has been found to be quite a powerful thing [00:06:16]

here's a few questions you can respond on a seven point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree one I have so much in life to be thankful for how would you rate yourself there another one when I look at the world I don't see much to be grateful for and we will talk about gratitude and suffering and pain as we walk through the challenge together another question long amounts of time can go by before I feel grateful to something or someone just honestly how true is that of me [00:07:13]

I often reflect on how much easier my life is because of the efforts of others and you might just take a moment to reflect as you go through these questions how truly grateful of a person am I how much is gratitude a part of my life and what I like to cultivate it in the garden of my mind I know you do I know you do I do I have found a strange thing in this season when life in the garden has been harder for me my gratitude threshold has gotten lower in my capacity for gratitude has actually grown but I'm not nearly satisfied [00:08:37]

I would like to have that so much more so that I could overflow and be more generous in the lives of others so if you want to do more work on this go to the website get our emails you can take that little gratitude survey we're actually going to try to find out how we do together as a community in The Fellowship of the withered hand and to see can we grow in gratitude together as we walk through this journey so that I can tell my friend Sam yep it actually makes a difference in people's lives and then he can be grateful too [00:09:26]

this is the Gratitude challenge it is not the Gratitude lecture it's not the Gratitude classroom we're not in this to learn about gratitude although there's a lot to learn about it we're becoming more grateful people that's the invitation that we have from God and so today I want to do an assessment exercise I want to give you a picture in your mind of what a grateful mind can look like how to cultivate gratitude and then I want to ask you to do a little gratitude assessment [00:00:33]

my friend Sam when I was talking to him a month or so ago about these talks said you know you do these talks and that's fine people may like them they may feel good for a moment but how do you know it's making any difference what if it's just hot air what if what if you're just blowing a bunch of gas now you may Wonder did Sam really talk to me like that no he did not I actually had to make it considerably more polite because there's kids that watch this but that question of are we actually changing that's the deal and particularly when it comes to gratitude [00:01:02]