Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Progressive Christian
Thankful Every Hour

Thankful Every Hour

Last updated on: November 15, 2018 at 11:53 pm by Keith Giles

Thankful Every Hour 2018-11-15T23:53:44+00:00 Keith Giles

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Now that we’ve moved to Idaho, Wendy and I are really starting to miss our house church family back in Orange County, California.

Here’s one of my favorite memories from our time together with those wonderful people:

One Sunday, after our house church gathering in the morning, we shared a potluck lunch together. These were always pretty amazing, on both the food and fellowship scale.

On that particular afternoon, our conversation started to drift into an exploration of “What Makes Us Happy?”

Most assume that what makes us happiest is money or fame. But there have been plenty of academic studies which disprove that theory. In fact, I had just recently written a blog for my employer at the time about this topic, and so I got to bring that up in our conversation with the house church family.

So, the bottom line is this: Those who win the Lottery are typically bankrupt, divorced, estranged from their families and in debt [or sometimes even dead] after only a year or so,

So, if money and fame and wealth don’t make us happy, what does?

Well, it turns out, Jesus was right when he told us not to worry about tomorrow. This includes worrying about what we will wear or what we will eat, etc. Instead, Jesus urges us to seek first the Kingdom of God and focus our energy on things like, serving others, making people around us happier and being thankful [or content] with what we have today.

By the way: That’s exactly what all the studies say makes us happy, too.

Wealth and fame do not pull happiness in their wake. Actually, it’s being content and serving others that tends to pull success and happiness behind them.

Later that same week, several of my co-workers also began to share more about the blog I wrote about happiness and we also affirmed this principle of being thankful and how it connects to being happy.

Then, as I was leaving lunch to go back to work, I saw an email from one of our dear sisters in our house church family. She wasn’t able to join us the other day for our conversation about what makes us happy, but she had read about it on our house church page online and sent us all this note:

“Hi Fam!

Missed y’all a lot yesterday but was blessed to hear how the conversation went over lunch. It’s rad how God puts similar things on the hearts of his people… in my prayers, the word “gratitude” has kept coming up and I felt the Lord nudging me to take it more seriously and put it into a concrete discipline.

Basically all I’m doing is recording something I’m thankful for every hour. It may seem silly and at times the thing I write down are kinda silly but it’s actually become something that I look forward to every new hour and a really good reminder of God’s relentless love and provision.

Here’s yesterday’s list:

5am- a place to call home

6am-family to drink coffee with

7am- transportation through the sky

8am- best friends

9am- unique personalities

10am- the privilege of worshipping

11am- languages of all kinds

12pm- the opportunity to travel

1pm- deep relationships

2pm- rain!!

3pm- food on the table

4pm- protection from the weather

5pm- a job where I can love people

6pm- chocolate covered items

7pm- good and Godly mentors

8pm- human diversity

9pm- good tunes

10pm- time to rest

If any of you wanna join me in this, I think it’d be fun to do together. “

How awesome is that? Imagine being thankful every single hour of the day!

Isn’t that what we should be doing as followers of Jesus anyway?

Just to close the loop, I forwarded that same email to one of my co-workers as an example of how this practice of being thankful and being happy was being practiced by people in our house church.

His response was this: “That’s pretty cool. Did you hear the quote that says, ‘If you ever meet God and the only thing you ever said to Him was ‘Thank you’, that would be enough’?”

I thanked him for sharing that quote and told him that I agreed. “What more is there to say?”

Isn’t that cool?

My challenge to you is: Could you do this for a week?

Try it! Just make a list of what you’re thankful for every waking hour for the rest of this week and see how that changes your attitude and affects your level of happiness.

If you decide to do this, please share the results here in the comments section. I’d love to know how it goes!

Thanks,

Keith

Keith Giles was formerly a licensed and ordained minister who walked away from organized church 11 years ago, to start a home fellowship that gave away 100% of the offering to the poor in the community.

His new book “Jesus Unbound: Liberating the Word of God from the Bible”, is available now on Amazon and features a Foreword by author Brian Zahnd.

He is also the author of the Amazon best-seller, “Jesus Untangled: Crucifying Our Politics To Pledge Allegiance To The Lamb” with a Foreword by Greg Boyd.

Keith also co-hosts the Heretic Happy Hour Podcast on iTunes and Podbean. He and his wife live in Meridian, Idaho, awaiting their next adventure.

BONUS: Want to unlock exclusive content including blog articles, short stories, music, podcasts, videos and more? Visit my Patreon page.

Previous Post

November 15, 2018

The Crowley/Darby Connection

Next Post

November 16, 2018 Childlike Wisdom

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Art Biblicism Christian Politics Cosmic Christ Deconstruction Discipleship Dispensationalism Divine Unity Ekklesia End Time Stuff Eschatology Evergreen Following Jesus Gender General Christian Topics Gnostics God's Love Gospel of Judas Gospel of Mary Gospel of Philip Gospel of the Kingdom Gospel of Thomas Gospel of Truth Hell Historical Jesus Inner Circle Investigative Reporting Islam LGBTQ Issues Marriage Mental/Emotional Health Mystery Non-Duality Philosophy Podcast Poetry Politics Poverty Preemptive Love Prophecy Psychology Quantum Theology Racism Reconstruction Satire Sex Technology Theology Uncategorized Universalism

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

How many years did Jacob work for Rachel before he married her?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Seven Twenty Fourteen Three

Books by This Author Books by Keith Giles

See All Titles »