The joy you seek, the riches, peace, love, good health and the success in life, relationship, marriage is hidden in one thing; “The attitude of Gratitude”
In a simple word, knowing how to appreciate things, people, your life, who you are, and where you are.
Being grateful will determine if you will ever be happy in life and if life will be happy with you.
Until this becomes a daily conscious habit, you will never have a fulfilled life,
No one can say I have it all, until death, man will always have desires, aspiration, and a height he is yet to climb.
The only thing that can fill the gap between the actual states of a man and were he wishes to be is an attitude of gratitude.
This makes gratitude the most powerful success secret in marriage.
In marriage your spouse can never have it all, she cannot always know what to say and how to say it,
but knowing how to appreciate the one he or she knows how to do, will help diminished, the area they are lacking.
If you deliberately develop a grateful attitude, God will be happy with you, so will human.
Gratitude is the key to happiness and fulfillment in life.
Six Characters of gratitude.
1: Magnify the positive side of your Life and spouse: Gratitude says I magnifies, I do not be little. That is gratitude slogan.
The reason for so much unhappiness in people life and homes is because of not being grateful to their spouse or where they are per time.
Humans have a nature that can easily forget, no matter the food you eat today, your body will get hungry without food tomorrow, it human nature.
God knows this nature of human. The way he handles it, is telling them to write it down or mark it with memorable structure each time he does something awesome for the children of Israel so they don’t forget.
And they did forget, no one would have expected them to complain again after that great act of dividing the Red Sea.
This is exactly what happens in relationship. You spouse will sacrifice today and your heart will say, this is the best husband in the world, few days down the line and he had not able to meet your expectations,
You will completely forget if he had ever done anything right.
The problem with ingratitude is, you never get the best out of any person you refuse to appreciate.
When you refuse to look for area to magnify and appreciate, your relationship will always remain in a state where you will find nothing to appreciate.
Then, if you stay in that part for a long time, you will completely fall out of love and you start looking for how to go out of the marriage or relationship. This is the reason for relationship failure.
Look for area in your spouse to appreciate and magnify and that will help take your attention from his negative side. Also it helps bring a side of him or her you may have never known.
Appreciation can help bring life into what is dead. No matter how dead the feeling you have for your spouse, constant attitude of gratitude will bring what is dead back to life. “Jesus lost a friend called Lazarus.
When he got to his grave he use this attitude, he says to the giver of life. “Thank you because you hear me always”.
You must know that no one can die without God’s permission. The same God that permitted the death of Lazarus have to bring him back to life because Jesus understood the secret of living. Which is gratitude
Any area in your life that look as though it dying; starting thanking the God that can make all things work and life will come back to it. Father I thank for because my marriage cannot fail.
If you want your marriage to live and be healthy, you must find a way to be grateful.
On another occasion, in Jesus ministry, there was a need, even if they had the means to serve the need, there was no were to buy as at that time. He uses the same secret.
He thank the provider and the need was supernaturally meet.
Apart from relationship, if you don’t learn to be grateful in life you will never be happy with yourself, achievement and people around you.
We all have one thing or the other individually that we desire. But do you know you are better that hundreds of thousands of people.
Learn to be gratitude to God.
Some singles are so unhappy because they are not married yet, but you still have life, go to the mortuary and see how many singles are laying there without life.
There is no hope for those people, but you still have hope, be grateful.
Until you choose to be grateful you will always have what you will complain about.
ways to magnify the positively side of your spouse
a. often think of what he or she knows how to do best. Anything you think about becomes big in your eyes. God use this method to remind us of his works. He will say remember how I parted the Red Sea, how are made the river Jordan to stand up like heap
b. speak it. Learn to say thank you, It not only when your spouse buy gifts you are to say thank you.
Thank him for the way he thinks, thank her for knowing God, thank him for loving you in spite of your shortcomings, thank her for making dinner, thank him for looking good for you.
(You think it does not make much sense, thanking your spouse because they look good. He can decide to be smelling, you don marry, nothing you fit do again.
Example of a woman that beg her husband to bath.)
c. let your action shows you are grateful. When you are grateful to your spouse, it should show in your attitude to him or her.
As a wife one of the way to show your husband you appreciate him for his effort he makes to take care of you, is giving in to have intimate time with him. If you want him to really feel appreciated initiate sex and you will see how much he will double his effort, another way to show you are grateful is to respect him
As a husband, some of the way to show gratitude is to:
i. Praise your wife
ii. Remind her she is beautiful (feed her emotional bank)
iii. Give her gifts
A grateful heart is hardly hateful.
When you learn to magnify the positive side of your spouse, the negative side will fade out. Gratitude also help to strengthen love and affection.
2: you don’t look at what is not there: another side of gratitude is, it does not look at what is yet to be available but what is available.
When you appreciate what is available it has a way of magneting what you desire.
How would it sound, for instance, you are desiring a job, wife and children and you got a job first, and say God wait first when you complete the three, I will thank you for all.
If you say that to any human being, do you think you will see the other two?
You have to be so grateful for life and your spouse for who they are now, that you learn to forget what they are not yet.
No body can meet all you desire, so you need to learn to do with what you have
3: gratitude do not overlook sacrifices: marriage is always about sacrifice. And the more you appreciate your spouse sacrifices, the more they are willing to do more.
Sacrifice is what grows love. Jesus came to this world to sacrifice his life for me and you.
For you to see more of Jesus in your life, you have to first appreciate and recognize that sacrifices, when you do, you can now have access all other benefits like healing, health, blessing, peace, joy love, authority power and eternal life etc.
i hope u know eternal life is real?
(How many of you have ever dreamt, have you notice that your body can be in your room and you will dream that you are in IMO state or in London and will be doing activities as though you are awake and in your physical body? in your dream you see your body, your spirit carry it.
Some times you see yourself happy and having fun, others times, something horrible is running after you. And when someone is about hitting you expect pain as though you are in your physical body.
That is exactly how death is, someday you will see yourself permanently in that dream form and you will never return to your body again.
Jesus is the only reason you can constantly see yourself in a happy place and not in that horrible place you see in dreams something.
You need to develop a strong alliance with Jesus today; you never know which day is that dream that will be permanent will come. The good thing with Jesus is, it not only when someone dies that he is of benefit, he can make him here enjoyable.
Also with strong relationship with him, he had the power to make you stay very long here before there.)
Back to our point
When you overlook your spouse sacrifice no matter how little it is, you discourage them from making more sacrifice and that will bring selfishness into your home.
No union is genius when there is still self.
When you get into a relationship the first guarantee for success is the word “I” should genuinely turn to “we”.
Any thing you want to do, you must consider first how it will affect your partner. That is the only guarantee for your relationship to stand the test of time.
4: Gratitude don’t compare: you can never be grateful, the moment you start comparing,
because there will always be people you think are better than your spouse. There will always be people more beautiful, richer then you.
Life is actually lonely, you are the only one in your part and lane, looking at the other person in another lane is unwise because you are not heading the same direction.
As our destiny is different so is our duration different. Some people sixty, some eighty, some forty, some one hundred and ten, some before they even start 1 day old.
Learn contentment. You are already spending out of your years on earth, don’t live it in unhappiness because you want to be like someone else or your desire has not yet come true.
When you finally get what you want, no one will not restart your years for you.
Be happy and joyful. The mad man on the street, his mother also went through labour pain.
Some people are having difficulties in their relationship because they are comparing their spouse with their EX in their heart.
If he was so perfect why did you not marry him?
The only way to be perfect is when you start improving on what you have, not what is on another person’s hand.
Every life is peculiar. Thought of comparing people should be avoided if we want to have an enjoyable marriage.
You can never get it right by comparing your spouse with someone else’s spouse.
No one loves to hear “can’t you see this person or that person”, it brings out the negative side of people.
Also you are unfair. Because you are never privilege to know the other persons weakness.
Let your spouse be the best in your world that is the only way you can keep appreciating him or her.
5: gratitude never diminished what it holds but complains do. Gratitude has multiplication power.
The next relationship you get into or the one you are in already, try this secret always look for something good to appreciate every day in your spouse, you will see, failure in relationship will be over.
6:gratitude is always joyful. When you are grateful you will be joyful. Ingratitude powers depression. Grateful people do not get depressed.
The only reason why Joseph, the son of Jacob in the bible was always joyful was because he was grateful.
As a servant, he was grateful that he is serving in a rich rulers house, when he was in prison, he was still grateful that at least that trouble with his masters wife did not cost him his life and he later become great.
You have nothing to lose being grateful, it only brings gain.
Gratitude makes you attractive, because it brightens up your countenance.
Joy makes you loveable and marry able.
The spirit of ingratitude can keep you unmarried. No man or woman wants to marry a person that doesn’t appreciate them.
Also it can make you less attractive to potential spouse.
Ingratitude have a natural companion, it name is complain. Nothing wear out a relationship or love like complains.
Complains have the grace of multiplication, the more you complain, the more you have what to complain about.
That is what surprise me with a lot of Nigerians, the rich will complain of money, the middle class will complain, the poor is always complaining. That naturally gives you more things to complain about.
We know you have need, but be grateful for the little you have, some people don’t even have roof over their head.
This teaching is not just about your relationship alone, is about your whole life.
If you can adopt this habit, you are sure of a joyful life and a healthy life.
Ingratitude dries your health.
Proverbs 17:22 says “A cheerful heart is a good medicine; But a broken spirit drieth up the bones”
There is nothing that kills your health and ages your looks like unhappiness.
When I see any person that is not happy in their marriage, I can see it in their looks.
That is why I always advice, don’t rush into marriage all in the name to run from singleness.
Wrong marriage can affect every other thing in your life negatively.
How to identify the spirit of ingratitude
i. Complains. Any person that complains alot show he or she is not grateful and sees nothing good in what is around them or with the person they are with. That is not being grateful, because there is always the positive side of a person
ii. lack. This will surprise you. Lack is a product of not being grateful. If you see any person that is constantly in lack, watch them closely. They don’t have appreciating spirit, so good things run from them.
iii. lack of joy: an ungrateful person, is an unhappy person. Because they don’t see anything to be joyful about.
iv. constant troubles. Ingratitude attracts troubles like disagreement in your marriage, discontentment, augment. Etc.
How to develop a grateful spirit.
i. always look at people you are better than
ii. Ask God for it. There what the bible called the spirit of joy.
iii. be thoughtful:
iv. know that not be grateful is a trap to rob you of the one you have.
Remember the parable Jesus made about a servant that was given one talent that went to dig the ground and burial it. It was the spirit of ingratitude. He was the only one out of the three servant that had one talent others had five and two.
But at the end of the day, the one he had was taken from him
I believe the reason the master gave him just one is because, he knew him not to be a grateful person.
The servant actually showed it in his attitude by not making use of it and bury to the ground
A lot of you have a little thing that will later turn much, but you had burial it. That is the reason you are in lack, God sees it as not being grateful.
And your mind set is looking for the big break, it may never come. Hurry and pick that little up before it will be taking from you.
And start to water it with the nutrient of gratitude it will grow.
The precedence Of God
Try and learn the precedence of the God you serve, he does not do magic.
Look at the people he refers you to look on in the bible.
a. Abraham: (Isaiah 51:2) Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you; for when he was but one I called him, and I blessed him, and made him many.
(how did that happen , he was patient ready to take risk, left the known to the unknown. He believed when nothing was looking like it. God even tested His faith, when he passed, all things became his.)
God told Abraham I will make you a father of many nations, it sounds like what will happen the next day, but it took 25 years for the first one to come. Before it became many nations that God promise him, he was no longer alive.
When he told him get thee out of your father’s house to a place I will show you, it took Abraham time to locate the place and he saw some famine long the process.
Having challenges in your life, marriage or relationship does not mean God is not with you, or he does not hear your prayers.
b. Jesus: (Hebrew 12:2) “looking unto Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising shame, and hath sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
Jesus started his ministry at 30years, he live as a man 33 years. The first 30years of His live was to build up for the 3years the world can never recover from.
That is on earth, but before he could get the crown, that name that is above other name from His father, He had to endure some things, suffering.
The reason why you are not too grateful is because, you don’t know process in always involve when it comes to God and success on earth.
See, that teaching that Joseph was in prison today and in the palace the next day, it true, not a lie but always remember to add the period he was sold as a slave, to when he was a servant to when he was in prison to the process, if not, you will be deceiving yourself.
When it comes to your marriage or relationship is becoming exactly what you desire, it going to take time. Because good marriage is built not given. Anything you learn you add it, you learn another you add.
The reason for failed relationship is the same reason for failed ideals and business. And it lack of patience.
Good things take time. Gratitude is the fertilizer to the development of your labour.