Reaching Out

Attitude
By Ro Lashua

This month the theme is attitude. What a great topic. There are so many things we can discover about attitude.

Perhaps you have heard the saying that life is 5% what happens to us and 95% how we react to it. That is so true. That 95% is our attitude.

Have we ever had a rotten attitude and knew we did, but could not stop it? It happens. However, there are steps that bring us to that. We get to that point through specific steps.

Wouldn’t it be great to know these steps that happen before we get there, and then we could just stop, before we get to the bad attitude?

If we have a negative attitude, we have an attitude that is counter-productive. It is best described that it is “lacking in constructiveness, helpfulness, optimism, cooperativeness, or the like; being without rewards, results, or effectiveness” (www.dictionary.com, 2007)

So, if we have a negative attitude, we have an attitude that is not constructive, helpful or optimistic. We have all been there. But how did we get there? Was there a process that got us there? Absolutely!
The first thing we need to do is resolve to be different from the world. We must learn the way of the Lord and to follow His direction.

We must avoid the ways of the world. Knowing how the world acts and knowing that is not what God wants from us is the first step.

2 Timothy 3:2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4 treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having a form of godliness, but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.

The second thing we need to do is to determine that we will NOT conform to the ways of the world.

It is OK to question why we do things. We need to not just do things, because we have always done them that way. Question why. We are not to conform the to ways of this world.

Romans 12:2 …do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

The third thing is to THINK about our motives. Ask ourselves why we do what we do. What is our motive personally? When we have an attitude, is it a good attitude or a bad one? If we examine it we can see if it is building others up or is it tearing them down. Is it building the kingdom or tearing it down?

The fourth thing is to change. Make a commitment to change when we see that we have a bad attitude and we should be reacting differently. This is done by self-talk. Yes, talk to yourself. This is therapeutic. It gives us the talk that we need to review the options and determine ahead of time to have a good attitude.

The fifth thing to do, which is not always the last thing to do, is to pray. Actually we need to do this continually. We should be constant in prayer. There is power in prayer. When we need to overcome a problem with constant prayer. One mention here is that prayer is not always a one-way street. God uses our prayer time to also speak to us.

So let’s clean up our attitudes and we will clean up our lives!