What if you woke up tomorrow and had only the things you thanked God for today?

 This quote has been attributed to Christian writer Max Lucado:

What if you woke up tomorrow and had only the things you thanked God for today?

This is an amazing question! All too often we take for granted the everyday miracles - for example, our eyesight (however imperfect it is), our hearing, our loved ones, the food that we are eating, no matter how ordinary it is. There are countless things we take for granted that we really ought to thank God for because He is the one who put them there.

What would you have if you woke up tomorrow with only the things you thanked God for today?

You might be wondering at this point, what about all the bad things that might have happened to you? What about sickness and evil deeds? I have written before that when in doubt, I find it's safest at attribute the good things to God and the bad things to Satan or to bad choices made by myself or by others.

So yes, it's completely OK to thank God whole-heartedly about all the things we're grateful for each and every day. We don't need to "mentally subtract points" because of all the things that are going badly - usually those things are not from God.

At my worst, I have sometimes misclassified God's good things as a negative situation. This is a very wrong thing to do, but it can be human! It's particularly common with first world problems. We need to catch ourselves when we do this and change our mindset. One concrete example was coming back to the grocery store one time, I struggled to fit things in the freezer because it was so full. Then I realized that instead of being annoyed, I should be thankful that I was so clearly not suffering from a lack of food in the home. Instead I should be grateful to God that I can buy groceries to cook food for my family.

So let's credit God and thank God for what He has given us. This does not mean our lives will be perfect here on Earth. Earth is not Heaven. But we should always thank God for what He has given us instead of focusing solely on what's going wrong. It's easier to remember to do that when we ask ourselves the question:

What if you woke up tomorrow and had only the things you thanked God for today?

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