{"id":18835,"date":"2021-12-01T09:56:08","date_gmt":"2021-12-01T15:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.momstoolbox.com\/blog\/?p=18835"},"modified":"2021-12-01T10:18:02","modified_gmt":"2021-12-01T16:18:02","slug":"enter-his-gates-with-thanksgiving-and-reap-the-benefits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.momstoolbox.com\/blog\/enter-his-gates-with-thanksgiving-and-reap-the-benefits\/","title":{"rendered":"Enter His gates with thanksgiving (and reap the benefits!!)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>This morning, before I launched into my reading, I decided to enter His gates with thanksgiving and praise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I first started praying quietly, thinking of the positive things that happened yesterday and thanking God for them. No, yesterday was not an outstanding day. Actually, it held a lot of exhaustion. But tiny reasons to be thankful just kept creeping into my brain and then I realized bigger things were mixed in there, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I pulled out my journal and started simple:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">Thank you, Father, for meeting with me again today. Thank you for getting me out of bed and aligning my life so I can spend time with you. <\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>(I told you I started small.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then I opted to take the bullet point route, as I recalled little and big things from Tuesday. Off I flew, listing so many things that I appreciated.  Here&#8217;s a sampling:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>an enlightening conversation with an advisor<\/li><li>a chat with my son<\/li><li>my daughter&#8217;s display of character<\/li><li>help in decorating for Christmas<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>On and on I went, going into more detail after each item.  I even listed appreciation for the inspiration and ingredients for a super easy and healthy meal I pulled together&#8230;  and that my family enjoyed it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes, I did eventually make it to my Psalm reading and yes, I took so much time that I had stop, get kids to school, do some work and then get to my Advent reading  (And this post for you) later in the morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Starting my devotional time in praise and thanksgiving, and really taking the time to write my prayers and thoughts down on paper, was super fun. Plus, it was a great way to start the day. It definitely set the tone for the day in a better place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Psalm 100 we are told to enter his gates with thanksgiving and praise. Today, that certainly made a difference in my prayer time and it has made a difference in my day. I&#8217;ve been exhausted and overwhelmed a bit lately. (SOOOO much to do!!!) This helped me not only to see the gifts, but also be a kinder and gentler mom in driving the kids to school at 5:30 this morning. I think I&#8217;ve also been more positive diving into work, as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m ready to do it again tomorrow. Wanna join me?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In love,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This morning, before I launched into my reading, I decided to enter His gates with thanksgiving and praise. I first started praying quietly, thinking of the positive things that happened yesterday and thanking God for them. No, yesterday was not an outstanding day. Actually, it held a lot of exhaustion. But tiny reasons to be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[438,365],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal","category-inspiration-joy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.momstoolbox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.momstoolbox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.momstoolbox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.momstoolbox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.momstoolbox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18835"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.momstoolbox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18838,"href":"http:\/\/www.momstoolbox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18835\/revisions\/18838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.momstoolbox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.momstoolbox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.momstoolbox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}