This week, Victor and I dive into the heart of Thanksgiving—not just the turkey and football, but the true meaning of living a life of gratitude every single day. In this special Thanksgiving episode, we reflect on the importance of being thankful for everything—both the joys and the hardships—and how gratitude can transform our lives, bring us closer to God, and even unlock true joy. 🙏

Oh, and big news! We’re announcing our 2025 Footsteps of St. Paul Pilgrimage to Greece and Turkey! Get ready for an incredible journey through biblical history, breathtaking views, and moments of spiritual renewal. 🇬🇷🇹🇷

Get all the details (and special Black Friday savings!) here

PS – Advanced giving with #igivecatholic on #givingtuesday is now LIVE 🚨

You can give today. Your support creates safe, transformative spaces for men in need. 👉 https://bit.ly/40TfJHs

  Will welcome back to the pew everybody. I’m your host, John. Edwards and here across the table from me as always is my co hosting cohort, Victor Adams, John. I just love wearing this shirt. It’s my favorite shirt. You had it on for the last two, two weeks. Yes, it has been washed, has been washed. That’s right.

Well, actually we filmed these back to back. It’s probably not going to serve the reels. Well, when people are going to look at like, Oh, I already saw that because we’re dressed the same, but. Just give us a chance, but no, man, I’m excited. It’s Thanksgiving week, dude. It is. It is. And, uh, we have a lot to be thankful for.

And sometimes we forget to be thankful for things that we have in our lives. Yeah. I mean, thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. Like I’ve always loved it. I have always enjoyed it. Um, you know, I, it’s the last, it’s really the only time that my, so my mother’s family, she was the only child. So we don’t have a lot of family on that side, right?

At all. Like just like third and fourth cousins and people you never see, but like three times you’re like a funeral or something, you know, uh, for somebody you probably never met, you know? But, um, my dad’s side, he’s got all his brothers and sisters that are still alive and they have kids and they have kids.

All that stuff. So we actually get to see everybody on thanksgiving because we’re we’re we’re converts So we’re we’ve come from protestant family. So we don’t I only have one sister. You have two sisters Yeah, so a lot of our friends that we know have like multiple. Yeah, well my cousin like or my uncle, uh, My dad’s brother and his wife.

They were catholic. So they’ve got like seven kids See, you know and they were all older than me, right? You got a baseball team right there. Yeah, that’s right That’s right or a good story. That’s right So it’s like, yeah, we never, we never, uh, had to search for people to play hide and go seek or anything.

Well, count the parents, you know, there’s nine of them. Yeah. But no, I mean, there’s a lot to be thankful for, and I’m excited to get into talking about that this week. We’re going to be talking about Thanksgiving, like living a life of gratitude, which is a lost art for a lot of people in this world, including myself sometimes.

But before we do that, like I have a big announcement, Victor, I wanted to make and something I’m grateful for too. Do I know about this? Uh, yeah, we’ve talked about it, but I forgot to tell you I was doing it Um, but we are announcing another pilgrimage. So, uh, we were supposed to, in 2025, go to Mexico and then to the Holy Land.

Obviously with the Holy Land, there’s still a lot of things going on there. We don’t think it’s going to be ready to go. So we’ve moved that to 2026, uh, in the hopes that we could go there. And then we had a trip to Mexico, but some things didn’t work out with the dates and things I had scheduled. So that one didn’t work as well, but it didn’t work out in the long run.

But we did just now schedule another pilgrimage, uh, with our good friends at Select International Travel to Dita and Matt and all those folks over there. They’re a great company. We love to travel with them. But, uh, I’m announcing that Father James Clark, who went with me to Italy. So for any of you that went with us to Italy, uh, Father Clark is going to return as a spiritual director in this time, uh, September 9th through the 20th of 2025.

So next year, September 9th through the 20th, we will be leading together a pilgrimage to Greece and Turkey to follow in the footsteps of our boy, St. Paul right here. Awesome. Yeah. So dude, I’m so excited. Like you’re going to get to go to the seven churches of revelations. You’re going to get to go to the churches that Paul wrote letters to.

Smarter than Philadelphia. Yeah. Ephesus and Corinth and all those places. It’s a land and a sea trip. So we’re going to go, obviously you’re flying over there and then we’ll have days where like in Thessalonica and we’re traveling by bus to places. Uh, but then there’s a four night, a GNC cruise. So you’re on the ship for four nights.

So you’re not having to move hotels all the time. You’re actually on a boat. You’re going to go to all these beautiful islands. And one of them is Patmos. So we’re going to go to the island where St. John was exiled and wrote revelations. Uh, actually going to be at the grotto where St. John wrote revelations, which is freaking amazing.

I can’t wait to be there. Um, also we’re going to go to Mary’s house. So the light where she was said to have lived out the last days of her life Before her assumption we’re going to get to go there and all the places that paul preached with silas and all these other Followers of his it’s just i’m so excited.

St Paul is the patron saint of our ministry as you know victor And I just love it because some i’ve been to the holy land and now you get to go and continue the new testament By walking the footsteps of St. Paul and seeing the early church rise and to, to grow into what the reason we’re here today. So folks, that’s going to be available.

It is, it is actually now on the select international website. There’s a link in the show notes. It’s on all of our social media as well, and our website. So you can go there and find the information. Um, it is going to be limited to one bus, so it’s going to fill up quickly. That’s 50 people or less. So it’s going to fill up quick.

September 9th through the 20th. It’s a beautiful time of year to go to Greece and Turkey. You’re going to get to see some of the, the Greek, uh, uh, history there too. Like some of the Greek mythology stuff and some of the, some of, uh, the sites of just some of the Greek ruins and things like that. So it’s going to be an amazing trip.

Plus you get all the food and some of the most beautiful, breathtaking places in the world on some of these islands. So I hope you’ll consider joining us and here’s the big news. All right. If you’re listening, listen to this. This Black Friday through Sunday night, so basically Thursday night at 12 a. m.

when the clock turns to Black Friday until midnight on Sunday night. If you sign up for our trip, if you register and pay online with a credit card, your deposit, right then and there. You’ll receive 250 off per person. So if you’re a couple that wants to travel, you’re going to say 500 bucks by signing up this black Friday through Sunday, if you miss that, and you want to sign up on cyber Monday, you can save a hundred dollars off that day.

But if it were me, I’d want to save 500 instead of 200. So folks. Excited about this wonderful trip. We love to lead pilgrimage If you if you haven’t been with us I can tell you all of our pilgrims say that they feel seen loved and heard That we don’t over bear, you know burden them with talk after talk after talk when we speak when we’re inspired somewhere When we feel the holy spirit move us and it’s really something that’s practical that can be used in your life That goes along with the sites and the places that we are father clark is an amazing spiritual director His homilies are fire The masses are awesome, and he’s just a ball of fun to be with.

So folks consider joining us and going on not only the the land part, but the C part. It’s all one trip. Uh, we’ll wind up in Athens before we head home folks. It’s gonna be an amazing journey. So you can go to select international.com and select and, and search John Edwards. The trip will come up. You can register and put your deposit there and save the $500.

If you’re a single, you can save the two 50. But folks, it’s going to be an awesome trip. So please, if you want to go with us, we’d love to have you sign up on Black Friday because people are going to be able to save money and that trip is going to fill up quick. So you want to go with us, get on the stick, uh, right after Thanksgiving, Black Friday to that Sunday night.

So Victor, how’d you get that out there, man? Hopefully no one skipped over that because it’s important. I hope so too. I mean, if they did, we’ll put it in, we’ll have plenty of social media and there’ll be emails going out as well, too. Right. But. But yeah, that’s something definitely think about, uh, people skipping through it, but, uh, you know, sinners, you’ll have to go to confession.

But anyway, let’s jump into the episode. I’m thankful for the savings people are going to have on that pilgrimage and for the opportunity to go to Greece. So that’s one thing right there that I am in Turkey that I’m thankful for. But. You know, Vic, it’s, it’s, it’s Thanksgiving week. As we said, it’s a holiday.

We both love, I mean, the food, the festivities, all that, but it really is centered around Thanksgiving, right? It’s it’s the whole reason for the holiday. As we know, the pilgrims landing here being thankful for a new start, grateful for a new life and freedoms that they didn’t have. Uh where they came from overseas and and so that’s how the whole thing got started and all of that But you know, it seems like it’s kind of lost It’s just a lot of that the gratitude piece kind of gets lost in all of it as you say is unique to america.

Yeah um because people were leaving other places to come to a place where they could uh have freedom and you know, and that was the subtext or pretext of kind of like What we became today as a government, you know, democracy, freedom, you know, and being able to, to worship you want to worship, you know, and, and find yourself in the country like this with the freedom.

Um, and also freedom to worship is not given everywhere, you know, and, and that’s, we should be very thankful that we can go to church. We don’t have to worry about like any violence or being threats against us because we, uh, Or Christians living in a Muslim country or Christians living in a communist country or Christians live in a dictatorship because, um, a lot of those things are pretty much, uh, secret and, and by going out and doing stuff that you, you risk your, your life.

Right. Well, and I mean, the holiday is awesome. Family, all that stuff. But it’s all right. I get too dark. No, no, no. You’re good, man. No, you’re good. The, uh, you know, you, you know, that’s true. Like we live in a great country and that was something I was going to talk about too, You know, even the least of us here in the United States have it better than a lot of people around the world.

Like you go to a third world country where people don’t even have a roof over their heads or anything to eat every day or clean water. Like, and we talk about like how bad it is for us when something doesn’t go our way that day, or we didn’t get the promotion we wanted or, or, you know, they didn’t have.

Whatever we wanted when we wanted it, right? Apple was out of the newest whatever iPhone or whatever And so we when we don’t live lives of gratitude man, like everything in our life gets shaded And so thanksgiving is a great reminder That we need to be thankful for what god has done for us in our life and what he does and that includes everything The good the bad the ugly All of it, the indifferent, we need to be grateful for all of it, but not just one day a year, 365 days a year, we need gratitude because people are always like, well, I’m not joyful.

I’m not happy. Well, when’s the last time you’ve been grateful, right? When’s the last time that you’ve actually stopped and gone, you know what, I’m going to quit focusing on all the negative. Cause we have such a proclivity to the negative, right? It’s just like, I’ll tell a joke. Um, sometimes when I’m speaking.

And just say, you know, when I could do a, you know, get finished talking and 99 percent of y’all say, man, that was awesome. Good job. But wow, you changed my life. Or, and then one of them go like, eh, what do you think I’m going to think about all day? Like all the way home, the plane ride, the two hour car ride back to the airport.

I’ll be like, man, I’m terrible. And I suck. And like, I should just quit. Because we, we focus on the negative and we do that a lot in our, a lot in our lives, a lot, like what I didn’t get, what, what should have been mine, uh, what somebody else has that we don’t, we get very envious in our lives. And we don’t often just take time to thank God, even for the small things, like the fact that I woke up today, right?

The fact that. You and I are sitting here with, with all this stuff and able to just sit here and, and, and, and to, to speak to people around the world, uh, to try to help them. Like that’s something to be grateful for. But so often, like I said, we all focus on the negative and what hasn’t gone our way. And you know, what, what, uh, what hand we were dealt that we didn’t appreciate or whatever.

And we live that way, man, we’re missing out on the call of Christianity and the opportunity to be The, the light of, of the world in all circumstances. Right. And before, you know, the show we were talking about, cause we do a lot of prep, you know, sometimes it seems like we just, John has a lot of great notes and I just try to follow his lead, but we were talking about this, like some things we, we, some things that could have been maybe tragic, something that.

It wasn’t good at time, but it gives us, uh, a proceeding process to come to God. Um, and what I say, because if you listen to several of our shows, you know, I, I, I allude this all the time where, you know, when I was 20, I had, you know, after two years of pain, they discovered a tumor in my spinal cord, a swanelman.

Spinal cord sheath, um, and it was one of those things where it’s like either I’m going to walk or I was going to be in a wheelchair rest of my life, depending on how well the surgery went, you know? So I had to come to grips as to kind of like, you know, what, what my will is, you know, and be at peace with it.

And, and once I did that, like that was what, that was my initial pool to really defining myself as in, in Christ. Who am I in Christ? You know, am, am I going to throw myself into Christ’s heart to where I allow him to dwell in my heart? Or am I going to be the master of my own heart rest of my life? And so that allowed me to be, you know, uh, more open to kind of realizing that when I’m not in control of my life to, uh, I, I need help.

And three, I love God. And, and I will serve him the rest of my life. Um, and so that tumor, I call him Charlie, by the way, because he, that, that, you know, that tumor, although it grew probably since I was an infant, uh, pushed me. Um and prodded me to kind of really get away from my own self destructive attitude or my thoughts And and of course correcting me to kind of be more direct in what my life is to be how to live how to treat others How to be a responsible person in this world um, and You know, a lot of us are kidding around these, these tragic things that happened to us, maybe it was a car wreck or like you lost your mother, you know, a parent, um, we’ve, we’ve probably were felt abandoned by a parent that left a divorce, whatever, and went their own way, but stayed in touch with Christmas cards and phone calls, you know, like that, um, a lot of things that were hard for us to deal with.

Um, but the, the thing is, you know, some of those things that happened to us, strengthen us. It allows us to say. This is what I want to do when I have kids or, or I will never do this, you know, um, and we have to kind of really be thankful for that. Even those bad things happen to us. Suffering allows us to be course corrected to, to really understand who we are in Christ.

Yeah. I mean, even the bad, we can be grateful for the lessons is I agree a hundred percent. I mean, people all the time. Um, there, because I share my story everywhere I go basically as part of what we do, uh, along with the other talks and things we give, um, you know, people are like, man, don’t you wish you could have just skipped all that or don’t you wish that didn’t happen or don’t you wish.

And I used to say, yeah, like, of course, man, who wants to go through all that pain? Like I, hell yeah, I would have rather just been a good person and like not screwed up and all those things. But that’s not the hand I was dealt and I wouldn’t be the man that I am right now if it wasn’t for those things.

Right? Like, yes, I would, do I regret the pain I caused my wife and my children and everybody else in our family and, and all the embarrassment and all those things? Of course I do. Uh, especially the pain I caused to myself too. Like, you know, and, but at the end of the day, God used that suffering for something else.

And, and now I know that like, I never want to become that person again. And now I know what it’s like. To be in those positions to be able to help others get out of them It’s one thing to say like hey You shouldn’t be doing drugs and you shouldn’t be in this place and you shouldn’t be in the situation You are and you just need to get out of it for somebody who’s never been in it, right?

He’s never experienced it But part of the reason this this podcast works That this ministry works is because I can look people in the eye and be like I know i’ve been where you’ve been And there is hope and there’s a way to come out of it. And because of Of, of the great, the gratitude I have to God, it spurs generosity in me to want to give my life back to God to go to help other people.

I’m not trying to say, look at me, but that’s the thing, right? So if I hadn’t gone through those terrible things, I wouldn’t understand what so many other people have gone through and be able to relate. And this ministry wouldn’t be in existence. And I don’t know how many countless people, I mean, we’ve been listening to by over a million people now around the world, just in this podcast, not counting videos and.

Other people’s stuff we’ve been on. I mean, Matt Frad’s show has got over like 70, 000 views than when I told my story the second time. Like, all of that came out of it, and people’s lives have been changed. They’ve emailed, they’ve, they’ve donated, they’ve done all these things that let us know like, hey, you’ve made a difference in my life.

And none of that would have been possible if it hadn’t been for that pain and that suffering and those hardships that you and I both have gone through in our life that made us stronger. So like, gratitude is not just about like, oh, I got a new, I, I, I show up to work today and my boss gave me a thousand dollar Christmas bonus.

Like, thank you Jesus. Yeah. Be grateful for that. That’s an awesome thing. But we have to be grateful for all of it. You know, and that’s where a lot of us mess up. And here’s the thing, like, a lack of gratitude Leads to a damaged and forgotten relationship with god That’s what happens like when we forget to be grateful and we just start like the things in our life We just start taking as windfalls of our own merit or of coincidence We forget there’s a god in heaven that loves us and wants to bless us I’m not talking about like in the prosperity gospel.

I just mean that there’s a god who’s responsible for everything That’s allowed to happen to us in our life good and bad And when we do that It leads to an unholy like self reliance, right? And so we start going, you know what? I did this. I made that this, I’m the reason this happened. This house is because of my work, right?

That we have, or this family has what it has because of what I am and who I am and what I’ve done. So it leads to self reliance, which leads to pride, which leads to destruction of relationships of family, friends, everything else. And that’s the danger of not living a life of gratitude because you start to think, man, it is, it is on me.

It’s the same thing with being like a speaker. I can go somewhere and I can easily forget, you know, if I’m not careful. Somebody goes, man, that was, thank you so much. Like, thank you for helping me. And that podcast, like last week, it literally kept me from taking my life. I’ve heard that before. Right. And I could go, well, man, I am, I am hot.

You know what, right? I am, I am all this in a bag of chips and easily start to move away from God and think it’s all about me. And that’s the same thing can happen to any of us when we forget to be grateful in our lives of what’s happening. Right. And really remember who is. The star of the show in all of our lives God and his son Jesus Christ So the thing is man, we have to realize good or bad.

Everything is gift. Everything is gift That’s john paul ii for you the theology of the body. We are gift. Everything is gift. God is gift Our life is gift. We have to live that way that everything is a gift good and bad or in the middle Right. It’s something that god uses to as we talked about in the previous episode to help mold us to help rebuild us to help Restore us and when we live that way You We live good lives.

We live joyful lives and we don’t. We, we, we, we find ourselves away from God and forgetting about who he is and who we’re supposed to be in him and what we’re supposed to be doing. And we fall right into the devil’s hands. And so there’s a lot of saints that talk about this, like even in adversity, you know, St.

John of Avila says a single blessed be God in adversity is worth more than a thousand acts of thanksgiving and prosperity, right? That, that thanks that gratefulness in, in the moment, the joy, the, the, the Job moments, right? Blessed be the name of the Lord, right? When he’s sitting there just getting pummeled, right?

Blessed be the name of the Lord is what he keeps doing and keeps doing in the midst of losing everything in his life. Um, you know, St. Gianna of, uh, Molia. I can’t ever say that name right, but I’ll just say St. Gianna. The secret of happiness is to live moment by moment and to thank God for all that he in his goodness sends to us day after day.

That’s another, another good advice. St. Ambrose, no duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks. So this isn’t just about a day. Like in november where we get to go. Let’s have a turkey and make all the fixings and watch football and get drunk Or whatever else you’re doing, right? It’s it’s a day to that should spur on like man We need every day should be thanksgiving in our lives for what god has done for us First and foremost the fact that god cared enough as we’ll see in advent to take on flesh and to choose to come willingly from the throne of heaven down here to live as a man and to go through what he went for us.

Like that point alone, we should always be grateful for regardless of anything else in our lives. Well, you know, we talked about gratitude and I think, you know, for me, my, I’ve, I’ve, Boil gratitude down to even something like, you know, thank you for the breath in my lungs. Thank you for my heart beating today.

That way I give another day of gratitude towards you allowing me to be here. Allow me to be a husband to Christy. Allow me to be a father to Lily and Ella. Allow me to be friends to my friends, you know, and allow me to do work to help others with their needs. Find, you know, recovery or define healing, um, you know, and, and I think a lot of us, we, we kind of tend to forget what gratitude is and how to be grateful in many aspects of our lives because we think that we, we’re not, we’re not performing any type of ministry.

You know, our job may not be doing something, but we say this all the time. Like if you have coworkers, you know, and you know, something’s going on in their lives, let’s check in with them. Yeah. Find out how they’re doing. Are they, they need help? I mean, I mean, our, our neighborhood’s amazing where when someone’s sick, you know, you’re going to have 12 casseroles.

Yeah. You know, like all the time. I’ll move over there. Right. Yeah. Actually, I don’t want to get any fatter. Yeah. But I mean, that, that, that is what a caring community, that’s what a caring individual, and that’s how we operate if we’re living in, in the grace of faith and, you know, with Christ in our heart and, and, and doing everything we can to, to make our neighborhood, our world, um, our city, um, a little better place to live.

Yeah. Well, and that’s the thing when you’re living in gratitude, you’re willing to take on the hardships that come with it too. When you’re living in true gratitude. I mean, people will ask me, Dude, it’s gotta be hard to like quit a job and take, you know, a million percent pay cut and, and worry all the time, right?

Like there’s always turnover in the ministry and is there going to be enough money and donations? And is there, you know, what’s going to happen here? Is somebody going to call for work? And those used to be worse early on. We started now, you know, we’ve, we’ve established a ministry and there’s, there’s a lot of work that we should be grateful for that we have piled up as I talk about all the time while we need more support to hire people.

But, um, but the thing is, man, like At the end of it all in the hardships is what spurs that gratitude. Like people will ask me, John, like, why do you take on all that? Like, just, you could just go get a sales job and like be comfortable again, but I wouldn’t be happy. And it would be contrary to God’s will.

Because at the day, this is what I tell people all the time. Like God, Jesus Christ, it’s other for me. I could not do for myself. And that great gift deserves a response in my life, right? And the response has been i’m going to quit everything and i’m going to and i’m going to walk Behind you beside you wherever you need me to go.

Jesus. I’m going to do my best to try to to give back to you I’ll never be able to fully repay you but i’ll do my best For the rest of my life that I have on this earth to do what you’ve asked me to do as a disciple. Now that doesn’t mean that everybody out there needs to go quit their job and, and, you know, we’ve got to have to have prudence and the right call and discernment, but at the same time, to your point, how can you live that gratitude in your life every day?

How can you meet that person at the water cooler and, and be there for them in a moment when they need it? How can you, um, do some act of kindness, right? And. Like, we’re going to go tomorrow night in our men’s group, you know, we’re going to have, um, a service night and we’re going to serve, we’re going to make sandwiches for St.

Mary’s Soup Kitchen. Very simple thing to do. Go spend 185 or whatever at Sam’s on bread, peanut butter, and Ziploc bags. Uh, the soup kitchen goes through 600 sandwiches a day, especially at this time of year when it’s cold or when it starts to get colder. So we’re going to sit there for an hour and a half.

We’re going to laugh. We’re going to enjoy each other’s company. We’re going to make fun of each other. We’re going to lift each other up. We’re going to do all the things that guys do in a good Christian way in a room while we’re getting peanut butter all over ourselves, all over the table and all over the bread, hopefully mostly on the bread.

And we do, we do clean up the tables for the kids. Yeah, that’s right. All these peanut allergies and such that didn’t exist when we were children. But, uh, but yeah, we’re, we’re going to do all that and, and we’re going to throw in 10 bucks a piece and we’ll spend an hour and we’ll have five, 600 sandwiches to take to the soup kitchen.

It’s one day. You know, but it’s gonna feed a lot of people and we do it out of gratitude, right? Because our faith is not a sit back and just take for granted what’s been done for us It’s how do I go out and now live as the hands and feet of christ in the world? So that’s what we’ve got to do and the joy that so many people say they’re looking for like i’m just not happy I’m, just I don’t have purpose.

I don’t find joy. It’s because a lot of times we’re not living in gratitude We’re taking everything for granted, right? We just we just we just take everything for granted and nowhere else in the world as much as this country Right where everything’s handed to us. Everything’s easy not for everybody But but you have opportunities that aren’t there for a lot of people in other parts of the world um We don’t know what it’s like to go and have to live in the in the garbage heaps of guadalajara Digging through the garbage for food, right?

So um This Thanksgiving week, you know, we’re not trying to depress everybody. It’s just trying to bring a reminder back that, that this week is awesome and go and enjoy it with your families. I know I’m gonna, I’m going to go to my dad’s for like the entire week and I’m going to be writing on the book and thanking God to have the opportunity to be able to do that and a job that I can work from anywhere and in the kids that are going to go down there and see their cousins, they never get to see, I’m going to be grateful for all of that stuff.

But in the midst of it, my hope in my own heart, and I’m sure in yours, is that this is a reminder that like every day We need to be grateful. It’s not just when there’s a, you know, a deep fried turkey hitting the table or whatever else But every day of our lives that we need to spend it in gratitude No matter what place we’re in a place of despair a place of joy a place of hardships a place of comfort Um, we need to always remember why we’re there in the first place And in that gratitude even in the difficult things like lord, I don’t understand this I don’t understand why like I lost a parent or I lost a job or anything But As far as the parent, Lord, thank you for giving me the time and the memories I had with them.

Thank you for letting me experience that wonderful person. It took me a long time to get there with the birth of my, not the birth, but the death of my mom. But now I can look back and instead of being angry at God as I once was, I can say, Lord, thank you for, for giving me the, the time. years I had with her on this planet to see what an angel she was, or the jobs I had for a certain amount of time that provided for my family before I had to, I’m in this hardship of trying to find something new now, Lord.

And when you live in gratitude, the Lord is going to continue to give you a fish instead of a snake, as Jesus says in the gospel and your, your faith and your gratitude is going to be rewarded and you’re going to be able to go out and live in generosity and help others in the name of Christ so that they too can live in gratitude.

And it goes on and on and on and on. So Victor, before we jump into how to use any final thoughts here. No, I mean, like I said, you know, gratitude is, is a, is a powerful way to live in a daily aspect of your faith. And, um, you know, just, just make it happen, you know, like find the littlest things to do, you know, and, and do something without being asked to do.

And then you’ll find that’s how it starts. And then just remember to folks to be grateful when you turn on your regular cable programming to watch football and it’s not there because they decided to share all those. Thanksgiving games on Netflix. If you don’t have Netflix, just be glad that, that you’re there with your family.

Right? So just kidding here at the end guys, but look, there’s so much to be grateful for, we got to spend less time thinking about the things we didn’t have, the stuff that doesn’t go our way, the issues in our life, the, the things that, you know, the, the, the, the ball that didn’t bounce our way, all that stuff.

We have to stop thinking about that stuff and we have to be grateful. And so how do you do that? One, thank God for giving you life each and every morning. As Victor said, thank Him for giving you breath each and every day. Thank you for waking up. That in itself is a gift, that you get to spend another day on this earth with people you love, the people that love you, and you get a chance to live out this wonderful thing we call life.

Two, look back over your day and give thanks no matter what happened. Right? The examination of conscience. At the end of the night, it’s not just examining, like, what did I do bad? It’s what did I do well? And you can look at both of those things and go, Lord, thank you for the experiences I got today. That trial or that tribulation, I didn’t respond well today.

So thank you for letting me learn from that so I can be better next time. Right the gift that I got that unexpected amazing thing that happened today lord Thank you so much for being a blessing and a good father in my life All those things we can look at and be grateful for Then stop counting what’s missing right?

Like that’s the worst thing you can do is start looking around being envious being jealous of what everybody else has Comparing what you have or don’t have while somebody has a leg up or you don’t nobody gets any better and nothing changes that way You have to sit there and go Lord the lot I’ve been dealt is what I have and I want to make the best of it and Lord and help me to Live in that gratitude and be thankful for everything.

I’ve been given no matter how much or how little it is Three or four sit down and take your inventory of all you’ve been blessed with right just my kids my wife my everything, right? My friendships my relationships the church I get to go to the food on the table Whatever it may be and then three five or five.

I keep saying three five Finally make a commitment to look for opportunities to be a blessing to somebody else in your life If you want gratitude to continue to be a repetitive and to continue to be birthed in your life each and every day Go be generous your gratitude spurs generosity. It makes that joy That’s where you find that joy when you find joy not in doing for yourself, but for doing for others So when you live in that gratitude You find that generosity that you want to give to other people.

And then the, the rep, the, the reprocity in that, the gift you receive back is the joy that you’ve been looking for. So make a plan in your day, no matter what you’re doing, like to make some small act of generosity out of your gratitude. You know what? I’m going to do something nice for somebody today. I’m going to quit thinking about the things that, that I’ve been thinking about that didn’t go my way or whatever.

And I’m going to get out of myself and go do something for somebody else. And I promise you, you’re going to find the joy that you’ve been having trouble finding in your life. So folks, again, uh, just want to thank everybody for tuning into the show today. Uh, thank you to all of you that have given for giving Tuesday.

We still have that available up until December the 3rd. We’re trying to hit that 50, 000 goal so we can bring on people to help in this ministry so I can be grateful not to have to travel every weekend like I have over the past year. Um, so I can have somebody else to be grateful for being a blessing in the ministry.

Uh, they can go out and help other people and also so we can build that platform, uh, where men could find continued, uh, Growth and content and ways forward in their own faith life Uh, and finally too don’t forget tomorrow’s black friday save that 500 or 250 On the trip to greece and turkey with us, please sign up tomorrow I’d love to meet you to travel with you and to be a blessing in your life I’d be grateful if you do so victor Let’s take it to prayer in the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit.

Amen. Heavenly father You So many times in our life, we can look at the negative things. We can look at the way that the ball didn’t bounce our way or something we didn’t get or something we lack. We can be envious as we look at others or jealous of what they have we can covet their relationships or their things Lord this thanksgiving help us to remember that it’s not just about one day of being grateful It’s about every day in our life about waking up and remembering that we are heirs to the kingdom That we are your beloved sons and daughters, and that that in itself is something worth being grateful for.

Help us to look at all the things you’ve given us, good and bad, as opportunities to grow into the people that you’ve called us to be. And Lord, help us always to return thanks with our gratitude and let it spur generosity in our lives so that we can go and find the joy and give joy to people who have none.

In your most holy name we pray. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.