How’s your attitude?

When you’re cranky and irritable it’s easy to blame everyone and everything. You look around grumbling…LIFE IS NOT FAIR!!!

The fact is—life isn’t fair.

With that being said, you and I have a decision to make every day the Lord sees fit to wake us up. Will you allow negative circumstances and situations to make you miserable or will you fight self-pity with God’s goodness?

We all have uphill battles of dealing with “life isn’t fair.” But no one understands the uphill battle of dealing with “life isn’t fair” more than the Apostle Paul.

2 Corinthians 11:24-29 gives us a glimpse of Paul dealing with “life isn’t fair” ²⁴ Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. ²⁵ Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; ²⁶ on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; ²⁷ in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. ²⁸ And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.

If anybody had reason to have an attitude it’s Paul. But, Paul’s honesty about his struggles is very refreshing. He never griped about his circumstances. Instead, he chose to pen encouraging words (some from prison) to let us know that it’s because of God’s goodness and grace that we are able to adjust our attitude when we think life isn’t fair.

To be honest we get an attitude when things don’t go OUR WAY. In that moment we feel something or someone wasn’t’ being fair to us. How many times did things not go Paul’s way? But what did he do?

Adjusting our attitude begins with realizing we need a new heart.  Not a physical organ that pumps blood heart, but a new(spiritual) heart, with new desires and new passions.

When we adjust our hearts, we will then begin to look at what we feel as not being fair to how can I turn this “unfairness” to a new passion that will be pleasing to God. Paul could’ve waddled in self-pity when life wasn’t fair to him. But the attitude of his heart and the desire to please God moved him past self-pity to purpose that’s pleasing to God.

Ezekiel writes of a day where God declares, “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26). Jeremiah the Prophet wrote to God’s people, “I will give them a heart to know that I am the Lord, and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart”(Jeremiah 24:7). Meaning that my old heart of stone was too hard to receive the Spirit of God, so God gave to us who have trusted in Christ a new heart(2 Corinthians 5:17); so we can “know that He is the Lord.

Philippians 2:5,the Apostle Paul was speaking to the people of Philippi but this also applies to us on how to fight self-pity and adjust our attitude, as well as how to obtain a new heart with new desires and passions: “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.”

So, what does having a mind(attitude) like Jesus look like? What does it look like to turn that heart of stone into a heart that receives the Spirit of God?

The simple answer is: Jesus showed people God’s goodness! And we should too.

Paul went on to pen: Philippians 2:5-8: ⁵ Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, ⁶ who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷ but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. ⁸ And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 

Talk about not fair! Jesus stepped out of heaven into the limitation of time, space, and physical form because of love and goodness.

. Even when we think we can’t make an attitude adjustment, remember you’re not a helpless victim…you can choose to adjust your attitude with the help of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. Jesus says “apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5), and without Christ we can do less than nothing, however Paul wrote, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13).

Are you willing to make an attitude adjustment?

Father God in the Name of Jesus, thank You for being gracious with us when we struggle with negative attitudes, and grumbling about life isn’t fair. Please, God, give us the vision to see life from your perspective and the opportunity to embrace “the beauty” in serving You well. Give us the mindset that our attitude matters to You as much as the state of our heart as we chose to serve others for your glory.

PEARLStoPONDER: Is your attitude giving God glory?

Philippians 2:3-4-- ³ Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. ⁴ Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

Philippians 2:14-15-- ¹⁴ Do all things without grumbling or disputing, ¹⁵ that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world,

Colossians 3:23-- Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.