Devoted Devotional: Rainbows in Bubbles - Seeing God's Goodness Everywhere

We explore the transformative power of thankfulness, sharing biblical insights and practical ways to cultivate gratitude in everyday life. From discovering rainbows in soap bubbles to understanding how thankfulness centers our relationship with God, this devotional unpacks how gratitude shifts our perspective from circumstances to God's unchanging goodness.

• Discussing the challenge of listing 1,000 things to be thankful for from Ann Voskamp's book "1,000 Gifts"
• Examining Psalm 106:1 and how thankfulness is rooted in God's character, not our circumstances
• Exploring the ACTS prayer model (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication) 
• Understanding how thankfulness connects to our victory in Christ (1 Corinthians 15:57)
• Finding God's peace through gratitude amid a chaotic, noisy world
• Recognizing that thankfulness requires intentionality and "eyes to see" God's gifts

Seek God, love your spouse, be thankful and stay devoted.

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Website: This Devoted Life
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Transcript

Introduction to Devoted Life Podcast

James 0:01

What started as a Saturday morning coffee date turned into a podcast where we chat about things like faith, family finances and so much more.

Shanda 0:09

In a world that is encouraging you to live your truth and to follow your heart. We want to encourage you to live devoted to the truth.

James 0:18

The Bible has a lot to say about how to live a victorious Christian life, and we want to share practical insight in how to apply those truths to your life, as we endeavor to apply them to our own lives as well.

Thankfulness Devotional Begins

1,000 Gifts and Finding Gratitude

Shanda 0:31

If you enjoy this podcast, please leave us a review and share these episodes with your friends so that you can help them live this devoted life too. Welcome to another Devoted Devotional. In these devotionals we talk about a topic that we go to God's Word and just see what His Word says about this. In our last full-length episode we talked on the topic of thankfulness, so we thought it would be really good just to do a devotional on this where we just pull several verses from God's Word and just see what exactly does the Bible say on the topic of thankfulness and just see what exactly does the Bible say on the topic of thankfulness.

Shanda 1:05

And as I was preparing for this devotional, I just was reminded of a book that I read several years ago Like I'm talking like 10 years ago. I read the book 1,000 Gifts by Ann Boskamp, and in that she was trying to list 1,000 things that she was thankful for.

Shanda 1:22

And yeah, it is a lot and it was funny because, like I thought, oh, surely, like you know, I can make, I could make that list. And so, you know, as I was reading the book, I thought I'm going to start making my list too. Well, I mean, you get to 100, 200, 300, and then you start going.

James 1:35

It's really hard to come up with things to be thankful for, I mean, I was probably part of the first 50 or so, wasn't it? Yeah, you were for sure top 10.

Shanda 1:44

But it just reminded me that we have to have eyes to see the gifts that God has given. You know, in the last episode that we did, we talked about the stray gifts that God leaves throughout our day. And you know and she mentions in it that when she got to like that several hundred number, she really started struggling with the things, or with finding things to write down in her journal, because she just kept a gratitude journal. But one day she was washing dishes and you know she had a sink full of water. There were bubbles all over and you know this very mundane task that she had probably done thousands of times, usually one that a lot of people do begrudgingly right.

James 2:21

It's just like I have to wash the dishes again. I can't wait till we wash the dishes again. Begrudgingly right. It's just like I have to wash the dishes again.

Shanda 2:25

I can't wait till we wash the dishes again. She noticed in the bubbles that there was a rainbow and she wrote down in her journal that she was thankful for the rainbow in the soap bubbles, that that was a stray gift that God had left her in her day just to remind him of his covenant promise to you know, yeah, that's really cool.

James 2:43

I mean something so simple, but I mean it really shows the level of gratitude that she had and just the exercise of looking for things and really how powerful it turned out to be.

Shanda 2:55

Yeah, Just having eyes to see those things, that's kind of what I pray every now and then is I just? I'm like Lord, give me eyes to see the things that you have put in my path today.

James 3:03

Yeah, in the midst of all the chaos and sometimes frustration, whatever, yeah, that's really good.

Shanda 3:08

Yeah, so I thought we would look at. You know five verses. I don't know if you want to read the first one, but it's Psalm 106, 1.

James 3:15

Yeah, so 106, 1 of Psalms. It says Praise ye the Lord. O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endureth forever.

Shanda 3:32

I wanted to start with that verse, specifically because it says that we are to give thanks because he is good. It has nothing to do with our circumstances. It has everything to do with who God is and his character and the things that he is doing and the things that he has done, and so just starting off with that mindset allows us to be thankful for everything you know, and everything, give thanks, and it's not that we necessarily have to be thankful for all of the really bad stuff in the world, but we can be thankful because he is good.

James 4:00

Right, exactly, even amidst all of the bad things in the world, he still is good, absolutely so we can praise him for just because of, like, who he is. I really loved that.

Shanda 4:11

Philippians 4, 6 says be careful for nothing but in everything. By prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God, and I just. You know, something that I try to teach our children is don't just go to God with a list of wants. You know, we should go to him with our thanksgiving, first and foremost because once again it's he is good. I love the acronym ACTS, like A-C-T-S, because you pray with adoration.

James 4:39

I thought you were going to start with A-X-E. Oh, I'm going to AX it. I'm going to AX it Way to derail that. No, I just kidding.

Shanda 4:45

The biblical axe the biblical axe A is for adoration. We should start with adoration of who God is and thank him for the things that he's doing, things he has done and just for who he is. C is confession. You can confess your sins. Make sure that you don't have anything that is hindering your prayers. T is thanksgiving and then S is supplication.

ACTS Prayer Method

Shanda 5:12

And that's when you bring your request, but it's not until you've spent time adoring God, confessing your sins and thanking Him for the things that he's doing in your life. That's when you move on to your supplications and I think the reason that you do that and like this says by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, it's a mindset thing, how you are approaching God with the requests that you have, you're centering your mind on him, first and foremost.

James 5:40

Sure, yeah, no, that's good, and good job remembering what ACTS is for, because those are not in our notes.

Shanda 5:47

No they are not, but they are ones that I actually do teach our children when we talk about prayer and whatnot. No, that's good 1 Corinthians, 15, 57 says what?

James 5:56

But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Shanda 6:02

Yeah, once again, we are not living from a place of defeat, we're living through a place of victory, and we did talk about that a little bit in our last podcast as well. But we can give thanks, because God has already given us a victory through his son the Lord Jesus Christ. And he, ultimately, will have the final victory when he comes a second time as well.

James 6:26

Yeah, philippians 2.10.

Shanda 6:27

Yeah, so we can live from a place of victory and I just I love that because I mean we talk about that, I mean it's literally in the intro of our podcast that we want to live a victorious Christian life, and we can do that because of Jesus.

James 6:40

Christ, absolutely. Yeah, no one's perfect, including us, for sure, but because of him we can live a victorious Christian life.

Shanda 6:47

Yep, exactly All right, so can you read the next one.

James 6:50

Yes, so it says Colossians 3.15,.

Shanda 7:05

And let the peace that we live in, especially in the age of, just like social media and you know, we see more than I think we're even meant to see- in this world, I mean we're. We don't even just know what's going on in our community. We know what's going on in our nation. We know what's going on globally.

Living from Victory, Not Defeat

Shanda 7:23

And that can give us some hesitancy, right Like it can cause some anxiety, it can cause some stress, but this verse reminds us that the peace of God can rule in our hearts because we're called to that and we can be thankful for that, that he ultimately is our peace and he gives us peace and he left peace with us when he went up to heaven.

James 7:48

Yeah, and again, we weren't really planning on saying this, but when you just said that, it made me think of turning off the noise, and you know the scripture that says be still and know that I am God. And it's just so powerful and, like you just said, sometimes it's hard to see through the noise and to be, you know, have clarity through the noise and all of the negative things. But you know, if we can try to just turn that off and focus on God, it definitely helps us have a spirit of thankfulness.

Shanda 8:19

We have such a busy lives that that does take intentionality you know, and so like. This whole idea of thankfulness is something that we have to cultivate in our lives, because it's not something that comes easily. It's something that we have to be intentional with and make sure that we are taking the time to be still and know that he is God and just to thank him for who he is and what he's done.

Finding Peace Amid Chaos

James 8:43

No, that's really good. Yeah, Great reminders. And again, you know it can be difficult to remember this in the midst of that chaos.

Shanda 8:50

Yeah.

James 8:50

But hopefully this is helpful.

Shanda 8:52

Yeah, we're going to keep this one real short today because we did do a full length podcast on this. It's helpful. Yeah, we're going to keep this one real short today because we did do a full-length podcast on this. So if you're wanting a little more meat on the bone than just the scripture that we talked about here, definitely go and listen to the podcast that we recorded before this. So, anyways, unless you have something you want to add, we'll kind of wrap that up you covered it All right.

Closing and Podcast Information

Shanda 9:10

Well, until next time, we want to encourage you to seek God, love your spouse, be thankful and stay devoted. Thank you for tuning in to this Devoted Life podcast with James and Shanda. We appreciate your support in sharing biblical, uplifting truths with the world. If you found value in this episode, please leave us a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback helps us to improve the show and we'd love to hear from you. Be sure to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. To learn more about how to live a life devoted to God and family, head over to thisdevotedlifecom. You can also follow me, shanda, on Instagram at devoted underscore motherhood. Thank you again for listening and we look forward to seeing you next time on this Devoted Life podcast.