My life goal is to see the world's one billion people with disabilities embraced and encouraged by the church.
Joni Eareckson TadaRead
AS a matter of fact, God isn't asking you to be thankful. He's asking you to give thanks. There's a big difference. One response involves emotions, the other your choices, your decisions about a situation, your intent, your 'step of faith.
Interpretation
Gratitude is about making a conscious choice rather than just feeling an emotion.
Joni Eareckson Tada's quote highlights the distinction between simply feeling thankful and actively expressing gratitude. It's not merely about having positive emotions; it's about making deliberate choices to give thanks, which reflects intention, faith, and engagement with life's circumstances.
In practice
In a motivational speech about the importance of gratitude in achieving success.
My life goal is to see the world's one billion people with disabilities embraced and encouraged by the church.
Heartache forces us to embrace God out of desparate, urgent need. God is never closer than when your heart is aching.
...we will stand amazed to see the topside of the tapestry and how God beautifully embroidered each circumstance into a pattern for our good and His glory.
My wheelchair was the key to seeing all this happen—especially since God’s power always shows up best in weakness. So here I sit … glad that I have not been healed on the outside, but glad that I have been healed on the inside. Healed from my own self-centered wants and wishes.
If you truly believe in the value of life, you care about all of the weakest and most vulnerable members of society.
God deliberately chooses weak, suffering and unlikely candidates to get His work done, so that in the end, the glory goes to God and not to the person.
Strawberry Fields is anywhere you want to go
There’s only one thing in life, and that’s the continual renewal of inspiration.
I believe that the message of Apollo XI was that in the spirit of Apollo, a free and open spirit, you can attack a very difficult goal and achieve it, if you can all agree and work together to achieve that goal.
This faith transforms the whirlwind of despair into a warm and reviving breeze of hope. The words of a motto which a generation ago were commonly found on the wall in the homes of devout persons need to be etched on our hearts: Fear knocked at the door. Faith answered. There was no one there.
Hope works in these ways: it looks for the good in people instead of harping on the worst; it discovers what can be done instead of grumbling about what cannot; it regards problems, large or small, as opportunities; it pushes ahead when it would be easy to quit; it lights the candle instead of cursing the darkness.
Once you become a professional athlete or once you do anything well, then you're automatically a role model ... I have no problem being a role model. I love it. I have kids looking up to me and hopefully I inspire these kids to do good things.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.