ATTITUDE

Proverbs 23:7 “For as he thinks within himself, so he is…”

Once a cranky grandpa lay down to take a nap. To have a little fun, his grandson put some limburger cheese on his mustache, right under his nose. Grandpa awoke with a snort, staggered out of the bedroom and shouted, "This room stinks!" On through the house he went, shouting louder, "This whole house stinks!" He charged out on the porch and shouted as loud as he could, "The whole world stinks!" The truth is it was grandpa who stunk. The problem was right under his nose.

Someone had rightly said that attitude not aptitude determines ones altitude in life. How important is your attitude? Your attitude is more important than: facts - circumstances - what others say - it’s more important than your past - your education and your money. Your attitude is more important than anything else. Your attitude is much deeper than just a few thoughts you might think or not think. Your attitude comes out of the core of your being. Your attitude represents your disposition, your outlook, and your very character.

Your attitudes always become actions or reactions. Let’s visualize it this way... The attitudes inside you are like a jack-in-the box. Have you ever played with one of them? You turn the little handle and then when you least expect it - he pops out. That’s a vivid picture of our attitude.

Our attitude affects every relationship in our life. And sometimes relationships will never get started in the first place -- because many times our attitude has built up walls... making it difficult for people to be around us. Bad attitudes affect our marriage relationships, our relationship with our kids, at work, at church, and with friends.

The thing that makes a bad attitude so destructive is that like a jar of water with the loose lid on it, a bad attitude is eventually going to spill out into some negative actions - destructive words and deeds. The key for us is to understand that our attitude is our choice.

Without a doubt, the human mind is the most awesome creation of God. With it, God has given us the ability to think, to reason, and to choose whether we will focus on positive thoughts or negative thoughts. In every one of our lives there is the positive and the negative. The choice as to which one we will focus on and consequently feed and nurture is up to us.

We can’t choose what will happen to us today (it’s beyond your control) -- but we can choose our own attitude - we each have the power to decide how we will respond to what happens to us. No matter what has happened to you, the attitude choice is still yours. Jesus Christ wants to help you choose and cultivate a positive attitude.

I find it both interesting and tragic that the one thing that no person or circumstance can ever take away from us, the awesome power to choose our own attitude; is usually the first thing we give away.

To blame our bad attitudes on another person or on a difficult circumstance is simply a cop-out. And if we allow events and people to cause us to be negative we are only hurting ourselves more because in addition to everything else we are know forced to live with the effects and misery our bad attitudes will bring.

A positive person is not one who refuses to recognize the negatives, but he refuses to dwell on them. Remember there are always the negative and the positive in every person or situation. What a positive person does is develop the habit of looking for the best results even from the worst conditions. It’s always possible to look for something good, even when things look bad. And the remarkable fact is that when you look after and seek good you will find it.