Gratitude: Changing From the Inside Out

Hi, Victorious Living family. My name is Sheridan Correa and I am the wellness program developer for Victorious Living. I am also a wife. I am a mother of two boys, 17 and 18. I am your sister in Christ and I am a walking and breathing testimony of God's transforming power, the transforming power of Jesus Christ. That took me from this angry, bitter, lost, empty, fearful woman eight and a half years ago to getting a new identity, to being delivered from so many things like addiction and mental illness, incarceration, abandonment, rejection, like neglect, abuse, so many things that God has done in my life and now I'm walking in victory. And so I'm here to impart things that I have learned along the way and things that I'm still learning today because we don't ever stop learning, family. We don't ever, we become a student of life, not just a student of Jesus and a student of the gospel, but an apprentice of life, an apprentice of Jesus where we are doing life in interactive fellowship with his spirit and walking out our new identity in Christ. So thanks for tuning in today, family. We are going to talk about gratitude because naturally it is November and that's what everybody does, but this, this lesson, this, um, this episode is going to be a little bit different. I think you're going to be surprised by it and I don't think it's a mistake that you are here today. And so before we get started, I just want to give a shout out to my brothers at Marion Correctional in Ocala, Florida, in RMC, the reception medical center in Maine and in West Columbia, Maine, CI Bakery Entry and Florida State Prison West. We just got done with our Florida, our Central Florida prison tour last week with Christy Overton Johnson, myself, JC Almanza with Wrong is Strong and Pat Avery and Pastor Michael Mitchell and a lot of his volunteers from Christ Church who we got to show up for six incredible, incredible events, incredible, it's hard to say events because it's really not an event. It's, it's sharing testimony or worshiping with y'all right alongside y'all being so dependent and pledging allegiance to our King who we are desperate for because we cannot do it alone and we cannot do it in our own strength.

We cannot walk out this journey called life that is full of pain and pleasure, joy and sorrow, fear and faith, like all of the dichotomies, all of the tensions that exist in life and family, brothers and sisters, we need it just as much as y'all do. You are such an encouragement to us every time that we come and we, I mean, I can speak for myself and I know for Christy, this is true also and for JC and Pat, like we, it is, it is part of our, the reason why we wake up just to tell one more person about God and about how faithful he is and about how much he loves you and wants to do life with you and how much he wants to help you and grace you from the heavenlies and provide for you and protect and transform and reform and restore and just so many beautiful attributes. That's the heart of God. God is the God of restoration, not one of condemnation. And so if you are hearing a voice that's saying, oh my gosh, you suck. You're never going to change. Oh, look, look at that. You did that mistake again. Yeah, sure. You profess Jesus, but look, you messed up. And so that makes your confession and profession not real and, and, and causing doubt. Like that is a lie from the pit of hell. That is a lie from the pit of hell. Our God's voice, our Lord's and our father's voice. It encourages us. It draws us closer. It doesn't. push us away, it doesn't discourage us, it doesn't talk negatively to us. And so I just want to encourage you, you know, your father's voice is, it's, it's small. And I don't mean that he's a small God, he's a huge God. But in the world that is screaming at us from all different kinds of ways and voices and the devil screaming at us, his shenanigans and trying to get through his schemes of discouraging us and distracting us and drawing us away from the protection and the security and the

stability of our father, God's voice can be found in the stillness. He is whispering to you even now. And a lot of times we just need to drown out the world and all the other noise and distractions that is going on to find him and to listen and to be able to draw strength from that. The Lord's voice, the Lord's word gives us strength. It gives us joy. It gives us more fortitude and, well, strength really for the journey ahead. So listen to your father's voice, listen to your father's voice and for his voice. So shout out to all my bros, it was so good being with y'all. I mean, man, I, listen, I showed up for, I showed up sick, a little bit sick already and I got sicker along the way. I got sicker along the way. So if you got sick after we came and visited, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. It's, it's, um, you know, I had to keep going. I had to keep showing up and being resilient and just wanting to share what, what God has done in my life and continues to prove, um, that he is alive and active and, and does miracles today. And I am a walking testament of that. Um, you know, those miracles, they, it's not like these big, huge things, they're little things. They're, they're, you know, the, the divine assistance from heaven, grace is a miracle. It's a miracle. And if you are alive and breathing and on the road to recovery and transformation and restoration, you are a miracle and God's miracles can be seen and can be, um, perceived every single day because he's, he's there in absolutely everything. So I hope that's an encouragement to you. Now let's get started on this and family, our, our verse that we're going to, um, we're going to soak and we're going to bathe in, we're going to meditate and just, um, have a, like a, a spiritual bubble back in, okay, is going to be in first Thessalonians 5, 18.

And it says, give thanks in all circumstances for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. Give thanks in all circumstances for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. We're going to pick apart that verse in a little bit, but first I want to, um, just say to you that, you know, as we're going to focus on gratitude, gratitude is a powerful spiritual tool in recovery and in restoration. Okay. Now this is more, when I say the word recovery, it's not just, Oh, stay sober, like addiction recovery. This is life recovery. This is trauma recovery. This is recovery and being recovered along the way and healed along the way, restored along the way to our authentic design and our identity in Christ Jesus. It is a gratitude is a powerful tool along the way. If you were like me back in the day when I'm doing all this mess and trying to live in this life for so many years, um, which was the result of trauma, which was the result of bad choices, you know, things that I even did. I can't blame it all on my circumstances growing up and in my adult life, but I absolutely fell into victimization and creating my own horrible circumstances also, but praise God that he plucked me out and he saved me and delivered me from my Egypt and, and now I'm walking and, and I'm on a different path on a more straight path, praise God, then that crooked path. But that gratitude is so powerful because in, in my brokenness, um, I was such a taker. I was such a taker. I was so, so selfish. It was all. about me, it was poor me, I would have, you know, send out figurative pity party invitations to as many people as I could and just wallowing in my self-pity and in my own brokenness and thinking I'm the victim of all situations, right, and it's everybody else's fault. Not holding myself accountable, not even knowing that I should or need to and how there's great power in that also, but gratitude was definitely not part of my language, okay, back in the

day. So, I've had to learn how to be grateful. I've had to learn how to shift my perspective and there's hope for you. Let me give you some encouragement here. It is along with the power of the Holy Spirit and obeying God's word so that we can become transformed and live underneath the covering of God's purposes and God's plan and will for our life. Okay, hold on, I forgot what I was saying because that was one fold and then I was trying to turn over the other side of the coin about that gratitude piece. Oh, yes, I know. So, the Holy Spirit's power and blah, blah, blah, all that stuff, but also it is a choice. Gratitude is not something that is necessarily automatic for us. Think of a two-year-old. We have to teach them to say thank you, to be grateful, to step outside of themselves. If you're in a flesh suit and on earth, part of your flesh design and makeup is just being selfish and not being grateful, not being others-minded and not being able to see outside of your own, where we think we're found lacking and blah, blah, blah. So, not only is it two parts, it is Holy Spirit empowered and sustained and it is also a choice because we have to have those two parts of it and it's a powerful, powerful spiritual tool just along this recovery and redemption and restoration journey that we are on. It's an attitude. I'm sure you've heard that gratitude is an attitude. It is an attitude. An attitude is a choice. An attitude is a choice, and we'll talk about that more in a minute, but it is a character asset also. It is not a character defect. The opposite of gratitude would be like complaining and grumbling, right, where we are discontent about everything or most things about things in our life, where we believe we are found

lacking, where we believe we deserve fill in the blank. So, it is not a defect. It is an asset, a character asset. The Lord cares deeply about us growing in character, okay, not being comfortable, but growing in character. And not only growing in character, let me give you more than growing in, sorry, growing in our reputation. The Lord's calling out of us being all mindful and concerned and about our reputation, but desires for us to grow in character. That took me a while to get that out. I'm so sorry. I had some distractions. So, it shifts. Gratitude has the ability and the power to shift our mindset from focusing on what's broken to recognizing what's being restored. That is very, very, very powerful. When you're coming out of the victim mindset and you're on the road to recovery and restoration, there is, there ought to be, hopefully, but there should, there's a call to shifting our mindset from what we don't have to, wow, being grateful for what we do have, because that is part of God's plan, God's blueprint, God's design, God's will for our lice, our life, not our lice, in our identity in Jesus Christ. Gratitude reminds us that God is still working, even when life feels very messy. So here's a question for you. What's one small thing you're grateful for, that you're thankful for today, even as you woke up? Even something simple, not something huge, okay? Not something very transcendent, like even the details, even something simple. For me, I'm giving you four things, because that's how I roll. I am so grateful for hot tea. I'm still not feeling well, and my throat is...

like so sore. So I am so grateful for hot tea. That makes me very happy. I am grateful for nice toilet paper. I am grateful for Kleenex that is so soft because when I was on the road and in that hotel, I brought my own box of Kleenex, but using the hotel's Kleenex, it's like a, you know, that fine grit of sandpaper almost. And so I know on one of those, one of the facilities that we showed up to, like I was so red around here because I was using that sandpapery Kleenex. And I'm so grateful for it's warming up outside. There was some cold front and it got down like 25 degrees the other night and so it's starting to warm up. Those are simple things, just simple little winks, simple little blessings that I am able to recognize and be grateful for and even share that, you know, with my Lord or with others. So let's open our hearts to God and see what he wants to show us about gratitude, family, and how it can bring freedom to us in this, in this restoration journey. So let me read again the, the scripture 1 Thessalonians 518, give thanks in all circumstances for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. So when we are, you know, pulling apart this, this scripture, Paul here is writing this book to the church in Thessalonica, Thessalonica, Thessalonica, Thessalonica, Thessalonica, one of those two. And they are a, you know, a young church and all of the churches that are found, all the epistles that are written to the churches that are found in the New Testament, if you can see this, like it is, those epistles are so good for me and so good for us because that is us. When we hear the truth and we say yes, and now we have to change the way that, you know, how we're viewing who we belong to, we don't belong to the world, we belong to God now, our new identity in Christ, what that means, and then how that even determines how we are to behave. I don't know about you, but I still need help in that space. Deliverance gets us out of our Egypt, okay, out of the brokenness and the mess that we found ourselves in, out of the addiction, out of the patterns and the cycles of destruction, of chaos, of incarceration even, of unhealthy relationships, like all of that. The Lord, the deliverance gets us out of that. But we need discipleship, we need guidance, we need correction, we need training, and we need instruction on how to get the

Egypt out of us. And you can see that even in the Old Testament as the Israelites are wandering. I mean, that's what the Lord is trying to do when he's making a nation and then even bringing them into the Promised Land. Along the way, along that journey, even in their disobedience and all the things that they experienced, the Lord is trying to get the Egypt out of them, to bring them into a state of, you know, being a holy nation set apart for God. God's beloved, right? And so that's no different for every single one of us. That's no different for you, that's no different for me. God is calling us to this life of godliness, to live underneath and in his holiness and becoming more holy. So he cares so much about that. But in this church in Thessalonica, a community, this was a church community that was facing great persecution for their faith. And Paul's letter was written to encourage believers to remain faithful, to live holy lives, and to trust God even amongst suffering. Trust God in all the circumstances. And when you have an encouragement and a call to trust God in circumstances, why do you think that is? Because the temptation to not trust God and to start complaining and grumbling and being angry and viewing life from the lens of discontentment, anger, bitterness, resentful, you know, I deserve blah blah blah, the pride, the entitlement, all of that. There is great temptation to do that. And so the Lord is trying to shift our focus here. And by listening and reading into the words of Paul, because this is a word for us in present day, God's will for us is to give thanks, to find gratitude, to choose gratitude in all circumstances, not for all circumstances, but in it. Because there are things to be grateful for in every season, even in the hard ones, even in the seasons of suffering, especially in the seasons of suffering, so that it doesn't take us out. But finding reasons to be grateful in situations, in our difficult and challenging circumstances,

it demonstrates our trust in God's larger plan. That is God's will for our life, to continue to trust him in all things, especially in the difficult things, right? Gratitude doesn't mean just pretending that the things that we're going through aren't real, that there's no truth or true experience, an authentic experience in it, but it means that trusting God is still good, even in the middle of it. That's what choosing gratitude is about. So gratitude, I'm gonna go over three little things here. Gratitude is not a feeling, it is not an emotion. I can feel grateful, I can feel full of thanksgiving, of being grateful, but it is not a feeling, it is a state of mind and it is a choice. It is an attitude that we have to choose into. It's an intentional shift of focus from what is missing to what is present. And being able to see that, being able to perceive that, the Greek word for perceive is auskouka, auskouka, and to perceive what God is doing, to perceive the blessings of God. And that takes practice, that takes practice. It's a muscle to be exercised, a spiritual muscle to be exercised. I may not be, this is a reframing of language, instead of, oh my gosh, you know, oh, it's prison bees again, here we go, I can't stand, like, whatever is found lacking,

oh, my kids didn't call me, you know, whatever, that's a reality, right? Oh, I didn't get, I didn't pass the GED and blah, blah, blah so I'm just gonna give up kind of thing, right? Kind of complaint and grumbling attitude. But shifting it, you can say, I may not be where I want to be and I may not have all that I think I should have today, but I thank God I'm not where I used to be and that I trust God that he is even restoring me along the way and that I am, I will be reclaiming territory that the enemy has taken from me along the way. That's that shift. The second thing is gratitude keeps us spiritually sober, okay, it keeps us clear-headed, it keeps us awake, it keeps us aware of grace and grace is unearned divine assistance. This is heavenly assistance that we don't deserve, that we don't deserve. And so God's showing up on our behalf all the time and giving us resources, blessing us, favoring us, showering us lavishly with his love. It is that type of perspective, that type of receiving those even truths and those experiencing his characteristics for our life. So it keeps us aware of grace and how far we've come and who brought us here. Not, oh my gosh, Lord, I've only been, I've only gone this far and so, but no,

it is a gratefulness that he's even brought us out of the slimy pit, put us on firm ground, put our feet on firm ground and that we can find our security and our peace and our stability in him as our foundation, as it says in Psalm 40. When we lose gratitude, when we lose our grip on gratitude, resentment and entitlement creep in and they start planting themselves in our heart, in the garden of our heart. And then what comes up out of bad seed is bad fruit and weeds that choke out the truth and choke out our perspective. So we want to continue to be aware. of God's grace. There is something that I have been exercising myself in for the last two weeks, and that is in my morning time, is sitting in the throne of grace, approaching the throne of grace before I even get into my pleas and petitions with the Lord and even the lamenting sometimes. Just being able to sit at the feet of the most gracious person and being in this universe, the creator of my life and the sustainer of my life and my faith, and be able to call out and sit with him and being aware and intentionally focusing on how much grace that I had the day before, how much grace I had just even waking up. And again, that is a very intentional place, and it's really been strengthening me. It's been transforming me along the way as I've been able to meditate in those places. It has strengthened my attitude of gratitude and being so thankful for the life that I do have, instead of being discontent with all these other things that I may be walking through or where God has me, because I don't partner naturally with the Holy Spirit. I start getting like, I'm not trying to do this, Lord. I want to be back in Arizona where the hiking is amazing and where I meet you in this divine place on my hiking journeys with you daily. And I miss all that, and oh my gosh, my life is hard.

I'm not growing at the speed I want, right? All of that. I have to fight in those battles too. We're no different in that, but I have to choose to step out of that kind of wilderness that I'm in and get back onto a different path. The third thing I want to tell you is like gratitude invites God's presence. It invites God's presence. Like I said, the grace, just to be mindful of his grace, it invites us into it. It invites him into our world. We are not here trying to make room for God. That's the wrong perspective. It's not our life, our world, and we're just making some room for God to like be a part of our world. No, no. It's going to be flipped. This is God's world, this is God's story, this is God's plan, and we get to. We get to be a part of God's plan and God's story and have the amazing grace of having even his presence in our life. Romans 1 100 verse 4 says, enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Gratitude is how we step into God's presence and it recenters our hearts on him instead of ourself, instead of our circumstances and our challenging situations. So how do you think gratitude protects your recovery and your new life? How do you think having an attitude of gratitude and choosing gratitude would protect and guard your transformation, your journey in restoration? How would it guard and protect that? For me, gratitude builds that humility, it builds that dependence, it keeps me dependent, it keeps me found, you know, I think of Matthew 5, poor in spirit so that I don't lose sight of it. Because when I think that I got this and I think that, oh, I'm strong enough, I know some stuff because the Lord has built me up and taught me and I can go, I can cut my umbilical

cord almost and I can go along my own way and adult, you know, and spiritually adult by myself. I've done that and I crash. I absolutely crash. Again, I just did it soberly almost. And so it keeps me humble. It keeps me found in a place where my pride is being continuously challenged because it's not about me. It's not about me. It's about God. It's about others now. And it's about recognizing God and recognizing others now. And gratitude also builds contentment within me. And so that protects me from the temptation to believe the lies of the enemy that I am found lacking, that my situation is horrible, that I'll never be out of my situation, that it's never going to be good for me. I mean, it's already good. It's just, I need to get out of the way and change the way I'm looking at it and what I'm focusing on. It also builds perspective in me. It gives me an eternal perspective. It gives me a higher and holier perspective where I can rise above my situation and circumstance and see things from the viewpoint of God, see things in light of the plan of God, the purposes for my life in my identity in Christ, and to be able to partner with that instead of resisting it, to be able to accept it and receive it and walk in that. So let's talk about how gratitude looks in real life

because that's important, right? We want to make it personal and, excuse me, we want to make it personal to our lives today and applicable to our lives today. So here's a question for you. What's something you've learned to be grateful for in your recovery, in your new life, that you never expected? What's something that you're grateful for that you never thought you would ever be grateful for? I'm gonna tell you mine is people. I have two, actually. People. People. So when God called me into ministry four months after receiving my new identity and saying yes to God, I said, I'd never heard that word before. So I was like, ministry, what's ministry? And I thought I was gonna go back to exercise and the sports world and nutrition and orthopedics where I came out of in my previous life and in my BC life. And he said, well, ministry is about people and loving people. And I was like, ew, I hate people. I don't like people. I don't trust people. I struggle with people. Like, no way.

I was really good at being independent, self-sufficient. I was really good at being isolated and surviving through life alone. And God called me out of that and said, we are created for community. We are created to do life with other people. We are created for vulnerability, to be vulnerable. We are created to share intimacy with others, soul intimacy, spiritual intimacy. And that was foreign to me. That was absolutely foreign to me. It's a very strange and extraterrestrial kind of land for me. But I have found such incredible, not only purpose, but blessings in doing life with people, in walking alongside other people and doing life in a healthy community. Wow, and that has helped. That has been a huge part of my restoration journey and my recovery journey, coming out of my own Egypt and going into my promised land. The second thing is, well, I just wanna talk a little bit more about people because listen, I need people for me so I can be challenged, so I can be G-checked all the time from other people that I have invited into my life to help restore me, to help heal me, to confess things to, like it says in James. And just to find that constant care

and that unconditional love that us as believers are called to be for each other. And that is purposed for each other, for each other. In healing, in this healing journey, two things have to be present in order for healing to happen and that is having constant care, constant care. Somebody who is always there no matter what. Yes, our Savior is like that, but we are supposed to be like our Savior. And so we are to be that way, to work at becoming that way for each other. Not to fix everything, we can't do that, but to be there, just be there. Just to listen, to encourage, to pray over, things like that. But also we need the constant care and unconditional love. I know I'm talking to, I'm preaching to the choir here, man. I know that we've all experienced conditional love and it doesn't feel good and it breaks our trust and it causes us to not trust other people. It causes us to have unhealthy relationships. It causes us to have a distorted worldview and also a realistic one because not everybody is like that. But again, as believers and as a person. One of the purposes of God for our life as believers is to become more like Him and that is to be more unconditional in the way that we love each other. The greatest commandment is to love God and love others. Love others as self. Others even come before us and so that's weird. If you're like me, that's kind of foreign and strange and how do I do that because I have not been shown that my whole life.

So that's been a journey in itself also. I think of 1 Corinthians 13 love and that is the most beautiful definition of what love looks like in action and practically. And I've done studies and studies and studies on that and I think that would be a good one for us to do together and just really pull those attributes and those practical applications apart of what love really looks like. But so people is a big deal and I still find myself challenged by people. That is, it is a challenge sometimes. And so I need a lot of gratitude and grace in that space. But I am also, that was a really long answer, I'm sorry, that I'm also grateful for conflict. I never, ever, ever, ever thought that I would be grateful for conflict because I used to run away from conflict my whole life. I didn't know how to resolve conflict. I don't, I didn't know how to resolve conflict even within myself and before I even had conflict with other people, the conflict always happens in me first. And I didn't know that until on this path to recovery and restoration and just, and finding the reconciliation, finding the peace to, you know, in those conflicted places even within my heart or sometimes even allowing the conflict to exist there without judgment until the Lord, excuse me, until the Lord helps me to, you know, deals with that with me. And I can go talk to him and, you know, reason with him about all the things. And I never win. I never win. But I never thought that I would be grateful for that. Here's another question. When life gets hard, what helps you shift your focus back to gratitude? What helps you shift your focus back to gratitude when life gets hard? For me, it is, I can, I can tell the barometer, the barometer and the temperature gauge happens when my thought life is, becomes negative. It becomes more complaining and grumbling.

It becomes, you know, when I'm starting sentences in my head with, I wish, fill in the blank, if only, fill in the blank. When those type of thoughts, that narrative is starting to be written, that is a warning sign to me, for me, that says, oh, I'm off, I'm off, I'm off in this, on this different trail, and I need to get back. Instead of, you know, being grateful for the circumstances, even in the hard circumstances, because the truth is, family, that in the hard things, that's where the most rewarding things are. That's where we have the ability and the opportunity to learn the most and to be refined by trial and to, for our faith to even be tested and proven, to be genuine. Like, that's where our character building comes into play. So life is not going to be easy. Jesus says to his disciples, to us, that trials are coming, it's going to suck, and it's going to get hard at times. You're going to have seasons of suffering and seasons of hardness and difficulty and trial. But our consolation and our assurance is in our relationship with him, that he is with us always and will never leave and forsake us. Matthew 18, 20, it says, I am with you always. Emmanuel, God with us, that is true for our life every single day, every single minute, every single second, and every season, good or bad, what we define as good or bad, because the way that God defines good looks bad and kind of feels bad and is painful sometimes, but it's in that purpose-filled, painful, hard seasons where we are becoming more like Christ and really stepping into his purposes for our life, and not just his purposes, his good purposes, as it says in scripture. So for me... that's also you know being able to rise above my circumstances and gain that perspective. Perspective is a choice. It is not something that automatically comes to us. Like hearing is automatic but listening is intentional. Listening is a choice and so that's no different with our with our perspective and even gratitude. All right so let's talk about ways that we can practice gratitude

this week and maybe for the remainder of the month as we're stepping into excuse me Thanksgiving. Gratitude isn't just a feeling it's a discipline that we build. It's a muscle that we exercise and work out. So I'm going to give you three questions and you can pause and write these down. You can journal about them. You can go to the Lord and in your prayer time in the morning or throughout the day be meditating on this. The first question is or the first prompt is name three things in your life that you're grateful for today. The second one is name one person you're thankful for and why. And the third one is name one area where God is working even if it's really hard to see you know through that right now. Name an area of your life where God is working and one percent of change is still change and progress. Okay so don't discount that. We're not going from you know Saul-Paul in one day. Don't look for the big things. Look for the small things where where he is working even maybe in your waiting. You're patiently waiting and you are partnering with God in that space of waiting. That is him still working. That is you choosing to see that even in the waiting there is purpose and he is working. So I want you to write those things down. Please share them in the comments if you're watching this on Pando. I've missed reading those. I haven't seen some for a while. So share them in the comments if you will and excuse me when we take time to name what we're grateful for, to locate it, to identify it. That's powerful. That's a confession. That's profession. It rewires our thinking. We start making and creating new neuropathways in our brain. All right and so when we're not feeding the negativity and feeding the complaint and the grumbling and feeding the entitlement and feeling the discontentment then those neuropathways start to die away and the ones that we are feeding and and holding space for and moving intentionally on those begin to grow and they go deeper. The trail becomes deeper. Gratitude actually changes our brain chemistry. It lowers stress. It increases our peace and it builds resilience. The ability to show up even among the difficulty and stay intact. Spiritually it also reminds us that God is faithful and we are never ever ever alone. Also if you want to go deeper here's an optional one. You can write a letter or a prayer of gratitude to God just for your life even while you find yourself incarcerated. Man he's there. That is evident. God is behind bars. God is behind bars and he loves loves loves loves loves the prison nation. Loves the prison nation which I am a part of. Okay so yeah maybe you want to just write a letter a thoughtful letter and spend some time writing that out and thanking him for specific moments along your recovery although it has been hard in your restoration journey although it has been difficult. Gratitude doesn't change

every circumstance but it changes us family. It transforms us our hearts and our minds. It reframes it helps us to reframe the way we are even looking at our life. It helps us to live free from comparison bitterness and even fear. Gratitude roots us in grace. I hope this has been an encouragement to you as you think about you know intentionally stepping into this choice in this way of life of becoming grateful because it is part of a restored life. And remember God is not a God of condemnation and we're not even condemning God for all the ways all the ways that we think it should be. God is not a God of condemnation but of restoration. He desires you greatly greatly desires in the heart of God for you to be on the journey to recovery and being restored. in him and through him. Let me pray over you, brothers and sisters. Father, thank you for all that you've done and all that you are still doing. Lord, we praise you for the works of your mighty hands, for the miracles that you have been, that you have been laying out and giving and blessing our brothers and sisters with along their journey. Thank you for the gift of recovery, for second chances and your unfailing grace. It never fails. Grace is all sufficient. It is sufficient for us in our journey. The divine assistance and the resources that you give us spiritually and the way that you make a way and the way that you free us and break chains, Lord, that is grace. And so we are so grateful for it. We are so grateful for it. Teach us to see your hand in every season of life,

including and especially the sufferings. It's so easy to give up and to fall into the temptation of believing that you're not good anymore. And God, the word says you are always good and your word never returns void. So Lord, we thank you for even the hard moments because you are growing us and shaping us and reforming and transforming us even in that. Help us to live with grateful hearts that reflect your goodness, Father. In Jesus' mighty name, amen. Thanks for tuning in. I hope this was a blessing to you. And let's see, stay tuned for more. Love y'all, bye. Thank you for watching our broadcast. Are you an incarcerated brother or sister who needs encouragement? Write to us at Victorious Living Correspondents, PO Box 2751 Greenville, North Carolina, 27836. Or email us at hope at vlmag.org. To view Victorious Living Magazine in its entirety, please have your chaplain contact us at 352-478-2098, or email us through our website at vlmag.org. We are happy to provide our Victorious Living Magazine free of charge, in bulk, with or without staples.