The Choice to Be Grateful

Good Morning or Good Afternoon or Good Evening, 
this post should take approximately three minutes to read from start to finish.

This post is focuses on an article from Liahona, December 2011 and it is called, "The Choice to Be Grateful" by President Henry B. Eyring. I would like to share with you some highlights while I was reading the article. 

President Eyring mentioned,
"Our Father in Heaven commands us to be thankful in all things, and He requires that we give thanks for the blessings we receive. We know that all of His commandments are intended to make us happy, and we also know that to break commandments leads to misery. So to be happy and to avoid misery, we must have a grateful heart.

We have seen in our lives the connection between gratitude and happiness. All of us would like to feel gratitude, yet it is not easy to be consistently grateful in all things in the trials of life. Sickness, disappointment, and the loss of people we love come at times in our lives. Our sorrows can make it hard to see our blessings and to appreciate the blessings God has in store for us in the future.

"Gratitude is the gateway to JOY"
- Elaine S. Marshall.

        It is a challenge to count our blessings because we have a tendency to take good things for granted. When we lose a roof over our heads, food to eat, or the warmth of friends and family, we realize how grateful we should have been when we had them.

Most of all, sometimes it is hard for us to be sufficiently grateful for the greatest gifts we receive: .. the promise of resurrection, the opportunity to enjoy eternal life with our families, the Restoration of the gospel with the priesthood and its keys. 

Only with the help of the Holy Ghost can we begin to feel what those blessings mean for us and for those we love. And only then can we hope to be thankful in all things and avoid the offense to God of ingratitude.

With our Father’s help, all of us can choose to feel more gratitude. We can ask Him to help us see our blessings more clearly, whatever our circumstances. ... I had seen hope and the pure love of Christ shining in their faces, even in their terrible trial.

And I felt the evidence you can feel if you ask God to reveal to you that the Atonement can allow you to feel hope and love. Giving thanks in prayer can allow us to see the magnitude of these blessings and all of our other blessings and so receive the gift of a more grateful heart."

Towards to the end, it shares teaching from this message and I also would like to share with you one thing that was mentioned. "Writing down our experiences and blessings can help us remember them and give us something to refer back to.

Consider asking those you teach to write down what they are grateful for to help them remember the blessings they have received, recognize the blessings of the present, and look forward to the blessings of the future."

That is all from me for now. If you would like to read the whole article in your own time, here is the link. www.lds.org/liahona/2011/12/the-choice-to-be-grateful

Stay Tuned until next time.