Practicing GratitudeSample

If you practice gratitude every day, what do you think the result will be?

The Bible promises that seeing the good in daily life leads to peace.

“If there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.” (Philippians 4:8–9).

Medical studies confirm the link between gratitude and mental health. When test subjects wrote down three good things (Seligman et al., 2005), kept a gratitude journal (Kerr, O’Donovan, & Pepping, 2014), or wrote letters of gratitude to other people (Toepfer et al., 2012) all demonstrated improvements in levels of anxiety, depression, and life satisfaction.

The Bible and the scientific material both attest to the effectiveness of simple gratitude practices. If you want to deepen your level of peace and your relationship with God, gratitude is a great place to start.

Practice:

• Reflect on the past week. Which practice of gratitude gave you the most peace? Was it noticing something good three times a day? Finding gratitude in something hard? Thanking another person? Replacing the urge to compare with gratitude for what you have right now?
• Whichever discipline most helped you to experience gratitude, make that your practice today.
• Make a plan for the future: How can you build a practice of gratitude into your daily life?

Prayer: God, thank you for all that you’ve given me. Please give me a grateful heart and a deeper relationship with you. Grant me peace today. Amen.

If you enjoyed this plan, find more plans from the Theology of Work Project at www.theologyofwork.org/devotions