Your Attitude will Make You or Break You

Next to knowing Christ as Savior and Master, nothing is more important than having a GOOD, POSITIVE, MENTAL ATTITUDE.  Your attitude will heal you or hurt you.  It can make you friends or enemies.  Your attitude can make you miserable or happy; it will lead you to failure or success. Your attitude can MAKE or BREAK you.

When we begin to feel that things stink, the problem is not w/ the world or w/ others, but with ourselves.  Invite God to change your negative attitudes into positive ones, and it will result in your changing your world.

Your attitude is more important then your past, your education, your financial wealth or poverty, or any other conditions surrounding your life.  Attitude can literally MAKE OR BREAK YOU.  When God created the human mind, He gave us the ability to use our minds to think, reason and decide whether we will focus on positive thoughts or negative thoughts.

Have you heard the story of Victor Frankl, a courageous man who survived the Holocaust?  Under the glaring lights of the Gestapo court in a Nazi concentration camp, soldiers took away all his remaining earthly possessions - his clothes, watch, and even his wedding ring.  Frankl said that he stood there naked, lacking everything except for one asset.  He still possessed something that no one could steal or exploit.  At that moment, he realized that he still had the power to choose his attitude.

We are NOT responsible for other’s dispositions or behavior.  We ARE responsible to God for our own thoughts and actions.  No matter what others do, the attitude we adopt is our own responsibility.

Many make the mistake of allowing negative, unhealthy, or sick people around them shape their outlook.  Rom. 12: 2 reminds us, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world.”  Don’t let the world squeeze u into its own mold.

Your attitude affects ALL YOUR RELATIONSHIPS.  A friend once shared, after he’d listened to a sermon, the Holy Spirit showed him what a destructive attitude he had carried toward his father, and how it’d been a detriment to him his entire life. 

Only one person has gone thru life, never having a bad attitude.  I know people who always have a bad attitude.  I know some those w/ a good attitude most of the time.  The ONLY person who ALWAYS SHOWS a shows a gracious, loving, positive, healthy attitude is Jesus.  That’s why Philippians 2:5 tells us that our “attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus.”  Although He was the same nature as God, He lived on earth in human likeness.  As our ultimate role model, He showed us the attitudes that we can adopt to succeed in G’s eyes, no matter what circumstances we face. 

Choose to have a good attitude, because your attitude will make or break you.

Christmas With the Shepherds.

It’s finally here.  The event we’ve been waiting for – the birth of Mary’s son, Jesus.  At first, Mary and Joseph had their baby all to themselves.  Then Luke 2 says that an angel appeared to the shepherds in the field, announcing the birth of God’s Son.  So the first visitors to the humble birthplace were shepherds.

In ancient Israel, shepherds were dirty, unclean and thus not allowed to enter the temple.  Shepherds were not trusted; they were not allowed to testify in a court of law.  Shepherds were looked down upon by good, upstanding Jews.  You wouldn’t want your daughter to marry a shepherd, or even bring one home.  A shepherd could follow you into a revolving door and come out ahead of you – that’s how shifty they were.  If a shepherd appeared in your front yard, you’d look around to be sure that everything was still there.  Shepherds could not be trusted.

Yet God’s messenger trusted the shepherds with the message of Jesus’ birth.  Shepherds were the first to hear the great news of a Savior born for all the world.  Think of someone that you look down upon, someone who’s not on your level.  Then tell yourself that God’s angels first told people like this person; they were the first to hear the Christmas news.  If we want to see what God is doing, maybe we need to pay more attention to people like the shepherds.  Let’s spend part of our Christmas with someone like a shepherd.  

Why Did God Allow the Ice Storm?

For many of us here in SE Oklahoma, we’ve spent much time digging out, surviving without electricity, and cleaning up after the ice storm on Dec. 5-6, the worst to hit this area in many years.  What does this mean, in terms of Christ’s coming to earth at Christmas?  Was this ice-meggedon a random freak of nature?  Is it possible that God was trying to get our attention in or after the ice storm?

God allows the earth to reflect sin’s consequences on creation, in much the same way that God allows evil people to commit evil acts. According to Romans 8: 19-20, the fall of humankind into sin affected everything, including the world we inhabit.  The creation is subject to “frustration” and “decay.”  Ultimately sin causes natural disasters just as it causes death, disease, and suffering.

We can understand why natural disasters occur in terms of weather-related factors, but we do not understand is why God ALLOWS them to occur. Why did God allow those we love, struggle after this ice storm. For one thing, such events shake our confidence in this life and force us to think about eternity. Churches attendance usually increases after disasters as people realize how tenuous their lives really are. What we do know is this: God is good!  Rev. Gary Sweatman of Sanger, TX, rallied his church to help motorists stranded on I-35 by the ice storm.  Natural disasters can cause people to reevaluate their priorities in life.  It can also be an opportunity for us to help our neighbors.  God can bring good out of disasters. 

In Haggai 1: 9-11, God Himself caused a terrible disaster because God wanted to get his people’s attention about the way they forgot Him and his business and focused exclusively on their own.  Is it possible that God caused this recent ice storm to get our attention?

Some say God is too loving, too kind, too compassionate, too gentle to ever cause a disaster.  This reminds me of an old story about a farmer who was out in his field working a stubborn mule.  The mule sat down in the mud and refused to budge.  The farmer pushed and pulled, threatened and coaxed, but couldn't move the mule.  A neighbor who was watching nearby came over to offer advice. "I've been watching you for a while," said the neighbor.  "And I think you may be going about this the wrong way."  In frustration the farmer quipped, "Well then, how would you get this stupid mule out of the mud?"  "Well," said the neighbor, "you need to use kindness, you need to be loving, gentle and show compassion to the dumb animal.  Let me show you how it's done."  So the farmer moved aside and the neighbor took a baseball bat and hit the mule square in the head. "What are you doing?" shouted the farmer. “You said to be kind, to be loving, to be gentle, to show compassion” . "I’m going to," said the neighbor. "But first I’ve got to get his attention."  Maybe God was trying to get our attention with this ice storm.

God wants to bless us with an abundant life.  But if we insist on ignoring God, rejecting HIS ways, and living OUR ways, then we separate ourselves from the very Source of all blessings.
 God loves us too much to leave us that way without using whatever means necessary to shift our attention from ourselves to Him.

I hope and pray that this ice storm in Advent will make us refocus our attention on God and how He wants us to live.  Let’s submit ourselves to God, confess our selfish sins, and pay attention to what God is doing in our lives.  God's going to do something grand on Christmas!

An Advent youtube: on renewing a life of prayer.

I met Kirianne at a conference last month & thought this is a great Advent reminder - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRENUH-mxC4 

Advent usually makes the Martha part of me stronger, but God keeps sending msg's like this one & messengers like this one.