Appreciating Every Area Of Our Life

Wherever you are today, ask God to show you the blessings in your life. When you learn to value what you have, you’ll be prepared to receive all of His promises!

Put God in remembrance of what He promised, not what you feel like, not what you deserve, not what a relative said, but what God said. Psalm 86 says, “God is full of kindness, great in mercy, the Lord is good to all.”

Hi. This is Victoria. Thank you so much for downloading this podcast.
I believe God has amazing things in your future. I hope you enjoy this message.
I just wanna talk to us today about appreciating every area of our life.
You know, when we appreciate something, we bring awareness to it.
We bring value to it, and we are less likely to take it for granted.
In deuteronomy 10 through 12, god was taking the children of Israel to cities they had not built He said, I’m giving you homes filled with great treasure.
He said, I’m giving you vineyards.
You didn’t plow, but I’m giving them to you so that you can work them.
I’m giving you homes with great treasure in them so that you can live in them.
And he went on and on to tell all the wonderful gifts that he was giving them.
But then he warned them. He said, I have to warn you.
I’m giving you all of these things, but don’t take them for granted.
He said, don’t take them for granted, and don’t forget who gave them to you.
Don’t take them for granted and not honor me. See, the same thing is happening today.
God has given us things a great country to live in. He’s given us homes.
He’s given us family friends, jobs.
And he is saying, don’t forget who gave it to you and honor me in it.
You see, I believe when we appreciate god, when we appreciate the things that god has given us, we’re honoring him.
You see, appreciation is a language, and it honors god.
How many of us seen videos or visited impoverished countries and realize how blessed we really are.
We have running water. We have great grocery stores, restaurants, whatever we need, it’s basically at our fingertips.
And we see these these impoverished countries and people, and our heart goes out to them, and we feel so compassionate, and we feel so blessed, right?
Then we get to our jobs, we get to our homes, We face life, challenges, decisions, things go wrong, and we forget about those things.
We forget how grateful we should be.
We get comfortable, uninterested, We take things for granted.
It’s easy to do, and we all do it.
But can I tell you that we’ve gotta learn the language of appreciation Have you ever heard yourself say I have to go to work?
Oh, I have to go pick up my kids. I have to make dinner.
Have to clean up after my husband.
See, the language of appreciation says this.
It says I have I get to go to work because I have a job.
I’m so blessed to have my children. I’m gonna go pick them up now.
I have a house. I get to clean it. See, that’s the language of appreciation.
I was talking to a man the other day, and he was telling me he actually showed me a list of jobs that he had had ever since he was a teenager.
And he began at thirteen years old. He was a paper boy.
He went on to 15, and he started mowing lawns. 17. He was shoveling snow.
Then he went on to be a plumber. Then he went on to be a pipe fitter.
Then he went on to be a contractor. Then he went on to and he was going on and on.
I thought, dear lord, how many jobs does this man had?
But the purpose of showing me this list was this.
He said, I went back through my life, and I looked at every job that I’ve ever had.
And he said, I thought about it. And he said, what did that job show me?
What did that job give me? And he assigned a word to each one of those jobs.
Words like commitment, perseverance, integrity, responsibility.
He said, Victoria, you know, some of those jobs at the time, I couldn’t see how they even made sense.
He said they were difficult. They were hard.
He says, but when I made this list, He said, what it did is it showed me how grateful I could be for each and every one of these jobs and how it developed my character and my resolve for the next job.
You know what he was doing? He was adding value to his life. He was mining the gold.
See, sometimes we get stuck in those places, and we make excuses why we didn’t get to the next place.
See, we had to do this. Our parents didn’t bring us up right.
Well, if I had an opportunity to go to college, well, if I didn’t have to work this job, You see, this man told me, I read this list often.
He said, because it helps me be very aware and conscious of where I am right now and the blessings in my life.
See, this man is a is a top executive now at a $1,000,000 company.
He said, I read it often. I never wanna take this for granted.
You see, we should all dig the gold out of our life. Yeah. We’re gonna face challenges.
We’re gonna face challenges. Things aren’t always going to be easy.
But when we begin to look for the lessons, when we begin to look for what can build in us, you know, that’s where we’re gonna find the value when we’re gonna find the purpose.
You see, when you’re appreciative and you look for the value in something, what you’re doing is you’re adding to your life.
Sometimes we run around thinking there’s a missing link.
If I could only find that thing, and when you have an attitude like that, you are lacking And when you’re lacking, it’s hard to find purpose.
That’s why wherever you are today, no matter how difficult it is, Ask god to show you.
Where’s the value in this god? How can I appreciate this? Because it’s something you’ve given me.
You see, the happy people are the people that can be appreciative of what they have right now on the way to where they’re going.
Have you ever heard that song?
You don’t know what you got till it’s gone? I think it’s a country western song. It sounds like it.
You know, it’s unfortunate that some people have to lose something before they recognize the value in it.
You see, we shouldn’t have to lose something to begin to appreciate it.
I was talking to a man the other day, and he was telling me how he had struggled with this long battle of cancer, and his recovery had been very difficult.
He said, but let me tell you, Victoria, I see the world in a completely different way.
How I viewed my life before cancer is totally different than how I viewed my life now.
He said the important things to me are my friends and my family.
He said this that I thought it was so good.
He said, you know, when you’ve had cancer, he said, you realize that a bucket list is overrated.
He said experiencing and appreciating what you have every day is what’s important You see, we don’t wanna have to almost lose something to appreciate what we have.
We cannot get so comfortable and so accustomed to the blessings in our life.
Someone gave me a sculpture and, uh, I liked it. It was really pretty.
I put it up in my home.
And that that sculpture was right where I went to put my Christmas tree.
So I took the sculpture down and I shorted in a back closet in my home.
I put all my decorations up. Okay.
Don’t judge me, but I put my Christmas decorations up a week before Thanksgiving, but I take them down right after Christmas I was digging in a closet just not long ago, and, uh, I noticed, uh, a sheet in the back of that closet.
And I thought, what is that? And I pulled off the sheet, and it was that statue.
Now that statue had been in there about 2 years.
And I thought, oh my gosh, I forgot all about this statue. You know, sometimes you get so much stuff.
Maybe some pretty things you forget about what you have. So I kinda just forgot all about the statue.
So I tossed the sheet back over it because I was in a hurry, and I left.
Well, a few days later, I was with some friends of mine, and we were on a project, and we were staging a table.
And so we had the table looking really good.
And somebody said, you know, we need something special on this table.
We need something to set this table off. And So we were looking for all these things.
What what can we just top this table off with?
And in my mind, I thought about that statue in my closet with a sheet on it.
I thought, man, that might just look good. So I had someone bring it where I was.
And so we put the statue on it, And all the girls were like, woah. That is beautiful.
That is the most perfect thing ever. That is so gorgeous.
And I stood back and I thought, that is pretty, isn’t it?
It’s amazing how I valued the beauty in that statue because everyone else did.
So on my way home, I was thinking to myself, I gotta find something like that because I want my statue back.
So I got home, and I got on the internet, and I started looking looking.
What what can I get that’s like that? What can I get that’s like that?
And to my surprise, I realized that that statue was a limited edition.
The artist only made a few, and you couldn’t get it anymore.
And then I found a gallery that was looking for that specific statue they wanted to buy it.
I was like, oh my gosh. This is something so valuable. I want my statue back.
I want my statue back. It’s all I could think about was getting my statue back.
You see, sometimes we don’t appreciate things until someone else sees the value in them.
You see, what you’re taking for granted today, someone else may be praying for.
Some things can’t be replaced. They’re one of a kind.
Your mother, your father, children, your spouse, don’t neglect it.
Don’t get so used to it that you forget the precious gift that it really is.
You see, I believe the happiest people are the people who appreciate what they have right now and place value on it.
Because when you place value on it, it places value on you and your life. Listen.
God’s taken us to great places, but he never wants us to take for granted everything that has given us right now.
Amen? Amen. Thank you for watching this message.
We’d love to connect with you in the comments to hear your prayers and your testimonies.
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