What have I done with my baptism and confirmation? Is Christ really at the center of my life? Do I have time for prayer in my life? Do I live my life as a vocation and mission?

Gratitude changes your perspective about life. You see the future, experience the present, and remember the past in a dramatically different way.

God is not just one thing we add to the mix called life. He wants an invitation from us to permeate everything and every part of us.

Our goal in the pursuit of godliness should be to grow more in our conscious awareness that every moment of our lives is lived in the presence of God; that we are responsible to Him and dependent on Him. This goal would include a growing desire to please Him and glorify Him in the most ordinary activities of life.

Regardless of how helpful an item or body of knowledge may be to society, if it does not have as its final purpose the glory of God, it remains defective.

For an action to be truly obedient to God, it must be done from a motivation of genuine love and gratitude to Him.

In all of our thoughts, all of our actions, in every part of our character, the ruling principle that motivates and guides us should be the desire to follow Christ in doing the will of the Father.

But when we complain about the weather, we are actually complaining against God who sent us our weather.

Make His purpose your purpose.

In fact, there is no such thing as grudging obedience. For an action to be truly obedient to God, it must be done from a motivation of genuine love and gratitude to Him.

But note also the twofold objective of God's providence: His own glory and the good of His people. These two objectives are never antithetical; they are always in harmony with each other. God never pursues His glory at the expense of the good of His people, nor does He ever seek our good at the expense of His glory. He has designed His eternal purpose so that His glory and our good are inextricably bound together.

Matthew Henry says that to walk with God is "to set God always before us, and to act as those that are always under his eye. It is to live a life of communion with God both in ordinances and providences. It is to make God's word our rule and his glory our end in all our actions."