{"id":37839,"date":"2025-10-22T22:00:55","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T05:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/?p=37839"},"modified":"2025-10-14T15:19:37","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T22:19:37","slug":"251023-gratitude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/251023-gratitude\/","title":{"rendered":"Choose Gratitude"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"flex_column av_one_full  flex_column_div av-zero-column-padding first  avia-builder-el-0  avia-builder-el-no-sibling  \" style='border-radius:0px; '><section class=\"av_textblock_section \"  itemscope=\"itemscope\" itemtype=\"https:\/\/schema.org\/BlogPosting\" itemprop=\"blogPost\" ><div class='avia_textblock  '   itemprop=\"text\" ><p style=\"text-align: right;\">by Max Lucado<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-37841 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/251023_1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/251023_1.png 600w, https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/251023_1-300x150.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Make a list of your blessings. We cannot be anxious and thankful at the same time. God\u2019s pathway to peace is paved with thoughts of appreciation.\u00a0Practice Picky Thinking when you\u2019re tempted to grumble. Choose gratitude.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes God calms the storm. Sometimes he calms the child. No storm ever hit harder than the one that raged through Gethsemane\u2019s garden. And no prayer was ever prayed with more passion than the one Jesus prayed. The cross was part of God\u2019s plan to redeem his children. God did not calm the storm. But our Father calmed his Son, and Jesus marched to Calvary in peace.<\/p>\n<p>You can find this peace. Trust God. Tell God. Thank God. I pray God calms your storm. If he does not, may he calm you. And may you find the \u201cpeace of God, which surpasses all understanding\u201d (Philippians 4:7 ESV).<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-37832 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1-line_1-300x34.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"34\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1-line_1-300x34.jpg 300w, https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1-line_1.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<h3>God Made Our Brains. He Can Retrain Our Brains.<\/h3>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-37576 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/time.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"198\" height=\"300\" \/>Stuck in your head? Hounded by regrets? Weighed down by worry? Change is possible! The thoughts that have characterized your past need not characterize the rest of your life.<\/p>\n<p>In\u00a0<em><strong>Tame Your Thoughts<\/strong><\/em>, Max explores three key thought-management tools and then applies them to the most common thought problems: worry, guilt, anxiety, and other types of mental quicksand that threaten to trap us. God loves us too much to let us lead a life marked by poor thinking. He has not left us alone in this battle of the mind.<\/p>\n<p>shared with permission<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cGod raised Christ from death and set him on a throne in deep heaven, in charge of running the universe, everything from galaxies to governments, no name and no power exempt from his rule. And not just for the time being, but forever. He is in charge of it all, has the final word on everything\u201d (Ephesians 1:20-22 MSG).<\/p>\n<p>Christ runs the show. He has authority over the world, and he has authority over your world. Your date of birth, your date of death. Your mood swings, sleep patterns, eating habits, your salary. He\u2019s never surprised, he\u2019s never caught off guard. He\u2019s never ever uttered the phrase, \u201c Now how did that happen?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Uproot your fear of pandemonium and replant the assuring promise: \u201cGod makes everything work out according to his plan\u201d (Ephesians 1:11 NLT).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37841,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-upwords"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37839"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37842,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37839\/revisions\/37842"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}