Get Still: Week 1 of The Uncommon Normal #GratitudeRipples Challenge

We begin here, expectant and still. Gratitude gives us permission to hit pause on the relentless busy. To slow breathe in God’s abundant goodness and grace and exhale thanks.

Let’s practice with the following breath prayer. As you slowly inhale, pray, “God, You’re infinitely good.” Then exhale as you pray, “Today I say thanks.”

Are you ready?

Inhale: God, You’re infinitely good.

Exhale: Today I say thanks.

Sometimes I need the simplicity of a breath prayer to remind me that God is near and I can always talk to Him. That He cares about the smallest things—like the overwhelm I feel when the calendar is busy. That He meets me in the midst of what feels impossible.

Do you need a break from the pressure to say yes to all the things? Some time to unwind and reconnect with God?

That’s what this first week of the #GratitudeRipples challenge is designed to do. To still your heart so you can hear what you miss when life’s busy and loud.

Gratitude gives more than it takes, so if this challenge feels like one more thing to do, let’s step back. Say the breath prayer again. Drop your compulsion to make your gratitude posts Pinterest-worthy.

This is about you. And God. And God rippling out through your life to touch the people around you.

Stillness leads to awe, and awe, thanks

Gratitude runs counter to the rush and pull of to-do lists, ladder climbing, and approval seeking. It strips away the farce that we aren’t good enough, fast enough, successful enough. Gratitude says there are gifts everywhere, and we are one of them.

When I still, I see how I am small and God is not: “Long before you gave birth to the earth and before the mountains were born, you have been from everlasting to everlasting, the one and only true God” (Psalm 90:2 TPT). Awe paves a way to thanks.

My finger finds the verse I read this morning—the one tucked at the very end of an often-forgotten book: Jude.

Now, to the one with enough power to prevent you from stumbling into sin and bring you faultless before his glorious presence to stand before him with ecstatic delight, to the only God our Savior, through our Lord Jesus Christ, be endless glory and majesty, great power and authority—from before he created time, now, and throughout all the ages of eternity. Amen!

Jude 1:24-25 TPT

This great big God deserves endless glory, and yet He chooses to delight in you and me. Think on the gravity of God’s limitless love being directed towards you.

Friend, God doesn’t discount you. He doesn’t write you off. He doesn’t overlook you, reject you, or wish you were someone else. He invites you to be part of His touching and transforming others’ lives. And maybe we need to slow down long enough to see it.

The gratitude challenge begins November 1

As we begin the #GratitudeRipples challenge today, we remember that gratitude affects more than just us. Close your eyes for a moment and picture a ripple expanding across water. The thing about a ripple is it begins with something very small: a pebble, a coin, a leaf.

Keep this picture in your mind throughout the week as you seek stillness and the gifts it uncovers. Remember that small things can create an astronomical ripple effect. That no thanks is too small to change the posture of your heart. And we lead and love from the overflow of what’s inside our hearts.

What do you notice as you linger?

Where do you see God diligently at work?

What do you hear Him saying?

The gratitude prompts for this week are designed to slow your talking and fine-tune your listening. We’ll look for gifts with wide-open eyes, seeking what’s easy to miss when we stay busy. Then we’ll note what we notice, turning our attention to Christ who gives only good gifts, and gives them abundantly.

Our prompts for this week are

Glimpse – 11/1

Rest—11/2

Altitude—11/3

Today—11/4

In Tune—11/5

Trace—11/6

Until—11/7

I encourage you to sit with the word for each day for a few minutes. Savor the slow. Embrace the stillness.

God can be most busy inside us when we’re most still. It gives Him an open canvas on which to work. Throughout the rest of November, we’ll unpack more heart postures that will help us practice gratitude that ripples out beyond us into our homes, neighborhoods, and communities. But for now, we simply get still.

A prayer of blessing as you get still

May you feel the weight of worry, the grind of busy, and the fleeting satisfaction of success diminish as you come into Jesus’s presence, small and still. May you know the way you delight His heart. May you see the ways He’s hard at work in places you’ve overlooked. May you find Him in the little gifts he gives simply to make you smile.

As you remember how small things can create a ripple, may you know that you are significant. You have a purpose. You have a mission.

May you praise Him in the presence of others. Praise Him when you feel discouraged and weary. Praise Him when it’s a sacrifice to pause. Praise Him on the days you can’t see how you too are a good gift given by a good, good God.

May the gratitude inside your heart grow—grow you in the right direction—and may it ripple. May it never cease to ripple.

As it says in 1 John 4:19, May “[your] love for others [be your] grateful response to the love God first demonstrated to [you]” (TPT).

---

By the way, if you don’t have the gratitude challenge graphic yet, right-click to save your preferred size to your device. Want to know more about the gratitude challenge? Check last week’s post to learn more about how gratitude can have a ripple effect.

Just a friend over here in your corner,

---

10 Things You Might Be Doing That Keep Your Friendships Shallow

(+ 1 Simple Habit to Shift Your Direction)

If you long for deep, meaningful relationships, this is for you!

Change your actual life in less than 5 minutes per day!

You can change your actual life in less than 5 minutes a day because baby steps truly can change the trajectory of your life. If you want 2021 to be the year you actually start living on mission in your neighborhood, this little book (available as a paperback and on Kindle) will help you get there. Each of the 30-day devotions takes but a few minutes to read, but they will lead to lasting life change.