We look in the wrong direction. At the earth. Horizontal.

We notice people God has filled with His Spirit and His blessings, and make them our “inspiration” — because they do set us great examples, and through them we can see what God can do in a life.

Then, too often, we go from horizontal to down — feeling incapable of lives so filled.

Yet all real inspiration comes ultimately from God, and begins with Who He is…

We look at gifts He gives us, and work to build gratitude.

Which is good and right, but difficult in flesh alone.

Again, we need to lift our eyes and heart: to the source from which all those good gifts come — and not just thank Him for the gifts, but praise Him for all He, the Source, is. In and of Himself. Period.

 

That’s when grace and glory and gladness stir inside, and rise and grow, and soon burst forth–

an exuberant lifted-high sacrifice of praise.

…

It began with a song. This song.

She sang it at the church. She sang it in her head and heart. And she sang it back home later.

…

The song had a seed. This seed: “Ten thousand reasons for my heart to find…” (…to bless, to praise, to worship the Lord).

And the seed words received a skeptical response, in this case from a little brother:

“No one can know ten thousand reasons,” he said.

…

I give you her inner response (in green):

…

That got me thinking.

I bet there are ten thousand reasons.

I bet there are ten thousand times ten thousand reasons.

I don’t know if it’s possible for me to know them all, but if it is, I want to.

I want to find ten thousand reasons. Ten thousand reasons to bless the Lord. Ten thousand reasons to just worship God.

I wanted to go deeper than that, though.

I’ve been learning a lot lately about how God-centric the Gospel is, how He does everything for His glory.

As of last night, I’ve counted 7239 gifts, 7239 reasons to worship God. And that is a good, and wonderful, and God-honoring thing,

But…

This time I want to count reasons to worship God for who He is — For the amazing things that He has done that I am completely incapable of. For His love and His justice. For parted waters and a sun that stood still in the sky.

I don’t want to stop giving thanks for the beautiful, everyday miracles, for the endless, abundant graces.

But I do want to dig even deeper,

To count something different,

To know Him even better.

So began her own self-challenge, to count “God-centric” reasons to praise and worship Him — ten each day of Lent, adding up to 400 by Easter. They had to be verifiable by scripture, not just something she “made up” from her head.

I read about this on her blog. (And you can, too, here.) And I thought, “What a great challenge!” and decided to take it up for myself. Mine got started way later, so my numbers are way behind hers, but I found, in any counting session, I could seldom stop at ten! Once reasons got rolling, they wanted to snowball, and was that ever glorious!

My intent: to keep going beyond Lent, and see if I can eventually count 10,000 reasons…

Do you think there are that many? Want to help gather the praises together?

She added a link-up, so you can connect your counting posts. I didn’t see it right away. But I’ve been counting — not just gifts but reasons. And tomorrow I’ll be linking at Mary’s.

I hope you’ll join me, counting REASONS (you decide how many) to worship Him for all He is, with scripture references to verify. Wouldn’t it be great to see this get snowballing…!!

Link up for bloggers here.

{For readers who don’t blog, send Mary a comment listing your reasons and scripture refs.}

Let’s “make His praise glorious!”

[10,000 REASONS LINK-UP SPOT]

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