Danette’s Reviews > Choosing Gratitude: Your Journey to Joy > Status Update

For most people, happiness is tied to circumstances - to what is happening in their lives. For Christians, however, happiness or blessedness, … real happiness - that unshakable sense of peace, contentment, and well-being - comes as we remind ourselves of the blessings we have in Christ, and then respond with thankfulness.

Those whose hearts are tuned and alert will never lack reasons to say “Thank you!”

Every calling has its challenges that keep us humble and dependent on Him.

Gratitude is not the quiet game. It begs to be expressed, both to God and to others. “Silent gratitude,” Gladys Berthe Stern said, “isn’t much use to anyone.”

God is not pleased with technical, bare-bones attempts at obedience. We cannot expect true blessing for merely fulfilling a duty-bound sense of obligation. God’s desire is not just to see us doing grateful things but to see us doing grateful things out of the overflow of a truly grateful heart.

Gratitude is often the only difference between pervasive sadness and pure satisfaction.

It is only by recognizing that our blessings have a single source - a real, personal, living, and loving Giver - that gratitude begins its transformation into authentic, Christian gratitude: recognizing and expressing appreciation for the benefits we have received from God and others.