A Gratitude Challenge
By: Susan Deborah Schiller
What if there was a bridge to an abundant life and it was called Gratitude? Whatever we focus on magnifies! Our beliefs create thoughts. Thoughts are energy. Energy draws from heaven and brings it to earth.
I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
 ~G.K. Chesterton
When I was a young girl, God began to show me how to get out of the pits of despair, and the first thing He taught me was the power of gratitude. I had been praying all the memorized prayers I learned in Sunday School, but it always felt to me that something was missing… that there ought to be something more.
I asked my dad, who was a wise and learned man, "Daddy, should I pray with my fingers pointing up, or closed? Should I kneel or bow down or stand up?" I don't think my dad was aware of how very important it was to me, to know how to pray. He responded, "I don't know, Susie."
It seemed no one knew if there was a "right way" to pray, so I went straight to the TOP. I figured that God himself might be interested in showing me how to pray! Little by little, I began to discover that whenever I went to God directly and asked Him a question, a quiet but confident thought would appear in my mind. Those small thoughts led me to chatting with God, who patiently answered my persistent questions.
One day it all came together, as I said to God, "I've said the Lord's Prayer and Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep over and over again, back-to-back – do you have some other prayers I can say?"
"What are you thankful for?" It clicked. I could go on and on and on and on with things I was grateful for! Magnifying glasses, turtles, and caves… and rabbits and trains… Until finally, I discovered that God just wants to be our Father. And fathers are delighted to spend time with their kids. Good dads want their little girls to cuddle on their laps, wrestle with them on the floor, and dance.
Gratitude is the foundation for all the virtues… it's the door that opens our hearts to all that is possible. It's a connector and it escorts us into God's presence!
Whatever you appreciate and give thanks for will increase in your life. ~Sanaya Roman
Gratitude opens the door to…the power, the wisdom, the creativity of the Universe. You open the door through gratitude. ~Deepak Chopra
When you are grateful, fear disappears and abundance appears. ~ Anthony Robbins
Writing Prompt: Have you considered a "gratitude page" for the people who have helped you to move forward? It's amazing what happens when you fill a page or two with gratitude.
Gratitude is a bridge that connects us to God, the source of life. It's a state of being FULL of LIFE. It's a state of abundance and gratitude is the door that opens us to the abundant life Jesus promises us.
My challenge to you is to write a thank you page, to add to your life story book!
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With all my love,
Sue
Susan Schiller knows how it feels to lose everything: marriage and family, church and reputation, finances and businesses, and more. Susan's upcoming, interactive memoir, "On the Way Home," tells the story of how she came to be known as "the most abused woman" her counselors had yet met and how she learned to navigate to freedom and fullness.
Today Susan helps people write their life stories, unearthing the treasures of their past and sowing them into their future, creating new family legacies.
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