Pick up a yardstick to measure your life against anyone else's, and you've just picked up a stick and beaten up your own soul.

A year after One Thousand Gifts had released, Kathie Lee Gifford of the Today Show, named it one of her favorite things - the gift that will radically change your life. She shared the title with PEOPLE magazine as one of favorite books - quite astonishing for an evangelical Christian book.

I think it was simply word of mouth that made it a New York Times bestseller for more than 60 weeks, over a year. People being moved and changed and transformed by the book [ One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are] and wanting to share that with hurting people all around them.

Christian hands never clasp and He doesn't give gifts for gain because a gift can never stop being a gift - it is always meant to be given.

Remembering with thanks is what causes us to trust - to really believe.

In counting gifts, to one thousand, more, I discover that slapping a sloppy brush of thanksgiving over everything in my life leaves me deeply thankful for very few things in my life.

Life isn't an emergency. Christ is in charge of every moment of the day; nothing catches Him off guard.