I love to express gratitude through gifts to people I value. Well, I value you, my readers. So, on thanksgiving day I decided to give you a gift. My belated gift to you is today’s podcast. It is a prayer model I have used for over a decade. I first learned this model through a friend of mine, Jon Young, and have slowly adapted and adopted it over the years.
The Thanksgiving Address, as Jon refers to it, is a prayerful reflection on God’s many blessing to us through all that God has created. Praying in this way regularly will transform you. You will increase your connection to everything around you because you will awaken to how each aspect of creation plays a vital role in sustaining your life. This leads to greater humility, greater stewardship, greater empathy and a deeper sense of awe at the mighty power of God to create and sustain life. This deepens your love and admiration of God.
In the podcast I walk you through what giving thanks often looks like for me. The podcast is about 30 minutes long. I know that if you use this prayer model daily for a couple of weeks you will experience change. The change may be very subtle at first. May be you notice the birds singing that you have ignored morning after morning as you walk to your car. May be you savor a breeze as you walk out to your mail box. Or, may be you truly appreciate the feel of a warm shower in the morning and do not take for granted the fact that you have clean pure water available to you at the turn of a knob. This gentle awakening of gratitude and awareness is one of the riches blessings I know.
All of that said, I hope you enjoy the podcast and give the prayer model a try. I am sorry for the lateness of the gift. Holiday travel afforded me little net access. Below is an embedded player for those who wish to listen now and a link for my email subscribers. Tip–you can right click on the link to download it to your computer or add to your mp3 player.
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Click here to listen now or right click to download.
Lastly, here is just part of my gratitude for you:
Thank you for feedback and encouragement.
Thank you for working at growing in your faith.
Thank you for being my invisible virtual brothers and sisters in Christ.
Thank you for prayers.
…for inspiration.
…for questions.
…for suggestions.
…for helping me grow in my faith.
…for valuing what I write.
…for forgiving my punctuation, spelling and grammatical errors.
…putting up with lag times when I can’t hear God clearly enough to write anything worth reading.
Thank you for trying and applying.
Thank you for sharing your triumphs and your struggles.
Thank you for being Christ’s body in a broken world.
Thank you for the huge blessing you are.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And may God bless you richly.
Your fellow servant,
John Arnold
The Practical Disciple