Attitude Check: 2 Challenges To Your Attitude

Read Phillippians 4:6-9.

Introduction

A family who had twin boys wanted to teach them a lesson about attitude. They took each boy and placed him in a room by himself. The room was full of horse manure. They told the boys they had to stay in their rooms for an hour, then they would come get them. When the family returned to the first boy’s room, he was sitting in the corner of the room just watching the clock, but when they returned to the second boy’s room, he was shoveling the manure out the window. “why are you doing that?” they asked. He replied, “With all this manure in here, there has to be a pony at the bottom of the pile.” The boys were in similar situations, but took completely different approaches.

Attitude determines how we approach life. Our attitude determines the approach we take to life. In the passage we just read, we find two challenges concerning our attitude.

Challenge 1: Adopt the right attitude

Paul, the writer of Philippians, gives three suggestions to help us take the right approach.

A. Don’t Worry (Philippians 4:6)

Do not worry about anything. A scholar did a word study on “anything,” and discovered it really means, “any thing.” Don’t worry, that sounds an awful lot like what Jesus says, “do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.”

We see this idea lived out in nature all the time. Jesus uses birds for an example; they do not go out and sow seed in the spring, and water the seed all summer so they can reap a harvest in the fall. They don’t do that, yet they still have food to eat. God provides for them, and if he will provide for birds, why wouldn’t he also provide for us?

When we worry, we are actually putting God into a box and slamming a lid on it. This problem is too big for me to handle, so it has to be too big for God. We can’t go there; we can’t raise that much money. In all honesty, that is what we – myself included – think sometimes. Yet, Ephesians 3:20 says God is capable of doing immeasurably more than we can imagine.

Think about that for just a moment. Immeasurably more than we can imagine; you can’t measure something that is immeasurable – it is impossible, and we can imagine some pretty big things. That means God is capable of doing immeasurably more than we can comprehend. When things come up that are too big for us, we should be asking, “How big is God?” The answer is, he is capable of doing immeasurably more than we can imagine. Jesus says if we seek after the Kingdom first, all of our other needs will be met.

Stop and think. There is not anyone who has added time to their life by worrying about it. Jesus says we shouldn’t worry about tomorrow, because today has enough troubles of its own.

B. Pray about everything (Philippians 4:6)

Instead of spending time worrying about tomorrow, Scripture suggests that time would be more wisely spent praying about it. Paul says the result of carrying everything to God in prayer is that his peace will guard our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. A peace that we know no matter what comes our way, we’ll be able to get through it with the help of Jesus. We may not understand it or comprehend how this is possible, but we know that it is true. We should not worry about anything, but carry everything to God in prayer through Christ.

C. Be Positive (Philippians 4:8)

We should have a positive outlook. We are encouraged to dwell in the following territory;whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.

Every adjective in this list points to something good, something positive. The opposite of things that are good and positive are things that are bad and negative. The question is, which one are we going to concentrate on – the negative or the positive?

Two men attended the same church service on the same Sunday morning. The first man noticed the organist missed a note during the prelude, the music was too loud, and the preacher had a slip of the tongue six times. The second man enjoyed the prelude because it was one of his favorite hymns, was deeply moved by the music, and listened intently to the sermon because it answered a question that had bothered him for a long time. The difference between these two men is what they concentrated on. The first man took a negative outlook, while the second man took a positive outlook. Which outlook in life are you taking?