10 Blessings

Recall the gifts God has given you. Which of the blessings would make your top 10 list?

When facing discouragement, frustration, or when you just need to be reminded of God's goodness, look back at your list, pray, and thank God for these blessings. Trust me, it will help!

10 Blessings

1. My husband. In the months before I met Kevin, I prayed that God would send me a man who would respect me, cherish me, and love me for the person of faith that I was. I think he answered that prayer.

2. My home. Though we consider it more of a "first" home and hope to move to the country later, I'm very content with the house we live in.

3. Family. Not only my own family, but the family I've married into and been blessed with.

4. Provision. When I was in Americorps and supposed to be living at or below the "poverty" line, I had to learn to trust the Lord to provide. And He always has. He has never failed me in this regard as long as I have tithed faithfully. Did you know its the only place in the Bible that the Lord says to "test Him?" If you faithfully "bring the whole tithe into the storehouse (for us we take this to mean 10% of our income)," he says he will "throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it." (Malachi 3:10)

5. Along with #4, I am blessed as a wife by being able to stay at home. When Kev and I were dating I was working, and its amazing the difference its made in the quality of time we spent together. I consider taking care of my husband and my home my #1 priority (after God of course), and I can do that so much better when I don't have to spend the day working at a different job. Its a step of faith to rely on one income, but I believe its worth it (and my husband does too).

6. This may be materialistic, but I'm thankful for our vehicles. They do have their required maintenance (especially mine), but for the most part they're pretty reliable. What's really a blessing is Kev's ability to do the maintenance and repairs on them so we don't have to take them to the shop. I can't imagine how much money we've saved with him doing most of the repairs.

7. Along with #5, my husbands job. Although he does have to be on call every few months, for the most part he works set hours, and when he leaves work to come home, he actually leaves work. Besides the whole family rivalry thing, its not such a bad place to work.

8. Our health. I think its easy to take this one for granted.

9. My creativity. In college, I tried to utilize this to pursue selfish goals (to gain recognition), but at some point I decided that I was going to set that aside until the Lord showed me how I could use it for Him. Now I use my creative flair to do things like make or put together gifts for people, to cook, in decorating the house...its amazing all the opportunities there are in everyday life to express creativity.

10. My salvation, as well as my husbands. I can't imagine how different our marriage would be if we weren't both saved. At one point in my life I didn't think it was all that important to marry a believer, because after all, maybe God wants to use me to lead them to Christ. It can happen, buts its much easier for them to pull you down than for you to pull them up. God knew I needed someone to pull me up.