The Power of Presence, Prayer, and Perspective

• By candidasullivan
• July 24, 2025
• No Comments

How often do we put our happiness off for another time? We tell ourselves, if only this thing would happen, then I would finally be happy. But when the event occurs, we barely even pause long enough to celebrate our victory. Because we are always reaching for something else, while that is great, we need to slow down and enjoy the journey.

I’ve found that to live in joy every day, I need to live in gratitude. When I can learn to be grateful for each moment, even the difficult ones, then I can grow and prosper along my journey. If I only wait for the big moments to enjoy my life, then I will live a life of sorrow. Therefore, if I learn to be grateful for the little things in my life, then I will always have joy in my life.

So often, we survive our days without appreciating them. We eat things we’ve never even tasted because worries consume our thoughts, and then we want more because we were distracted and missed the moment. The same is true for shopping. We often buy things, but we rarely appreciate or enjoy them.

The way to overcome this type of drifting is to be aware of the present moment. In the morning, I love to enjoy my coffee. I don’t rush through it. I taste it and savor it.

Our enemy wants us to complain about our lives and our blessings. He wants us to get stuck in a cycle of pain, even when our blessings greatly exceed our heartaches. While he can try to distract us and cause us grief, he cannot make us do or feel anything. In any situation, we get to decide how we are going to think and feel. Sometimes all that we need to do to change our situation is to change our thoughts. When I have something bothering me, I like to write it down and look at it. And then ask myself these questions.

Is it true?
Does my thought align with God’s word?

Once I identify the problem, I can ask God to help me overcome it. The more I do this, the more I can see that the devil puts lots of issues in my mind. But God can help me to overcome each one.