Take Control of your Attitude

We all have tremendous potential. Each of us has the ability to put our unique human potential into action and to acquire a desired result. But the one thing that determines the level of our potential and also produces the intensity of our activity and predicts the quality of the result we receive is our attitude. A lot of people in life are not necessary doing something wrong or saying something wrong but they just have a wrong attitude. The bible says ‘Humble yourself therefore under the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you in due time’. It really matters what we are looking at in our life. We can take an example from race runner, it does not mean first to start is always first to finish. Attitude is your way of saying what you want to say. We can say something that is right with a wrong attitude and that destroy the right things we want to say. A lot of time we hear wrongly not because what we say was wrong but because we have a wrong attitude in listening and reading. The problem is that a lot of people who have a wrong attitude hardly discover they have a wrong attitude so they blame everyone else around them for the things that go on around them. Let me clear your doubts by quoting that ‘Your attitude can define your personality’.  Your attitude can define your fulfilment. People with wrong attitude always feel they are in the wrong place; they blame everyone else around them, they move from one company to another, they think they have wasted their years everywhere. They felt people don’t discover there greatness or potentials but the truth is that they got the wrong attitude. They know they are valuable and nobody seems to know or value them, the chances are that they got the wrong attitude. They come to church and don’t participate in anything they are doing and feel too important for the programmes of the church, they faults the pastors, choir, ushers, they even blame the children for their situations but all along the problem lies within them that they got the wrong attitude.

There is so much to learn from the Master’s attitude which is JESUS. There are people Jesus praise in the Old and New Testament, why did he praise them? What was peculiar to them? What was in their character that was so impressive to God? When I look at the bible and one of those charactersthat comes to our mind is John the Baptist. The bible says ‘OF ALL MEN BORN OF WOMEN, THERE IS NO GREATER THAN JOHN THE BAPTIST’ that’s powerful. He said John the Baptist was greater than them all but in the concluding part of the same verse; Matthew 11:11b the bible says ‘Notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom heaven is greater than He’ which is John the Baptist.The question in my mind was what kind of man was John the Baptist? For Christ to have said powerful words about him. The book of John 3:22-25. In this passage, it shows that Jesus was baptizing somewhere and John was baptizing somewhere also. In verse 25 the question was asked to provoke John the Baptist, a lot of us today would have answered and say let me continue, we will know on the last day. John did not say anything promiscuous, immoral, corrupt about Jesus but instead he answered them in verse 27; ‘A man can receive nothing except it be given him from heaven’ that’s the kind of man John the Baptist his. He continues his answers into from there on to verse 30. He said his joy is to hear the bridegroom voice and he concluded by saying ‘My joy therefore is fulfilled’.

Our attitude determines how much of the future we are allowed to see. It decides the size of our dreams and influences our determination when we are faced with new challenges. No other person on earth has dominion over our attitude. People can affect our attitude by teaching us poor thinking habits or unintentionally misinforming us, or providing us with negative sources of influence, but no one can control our attitude unless we voluntarily surrender that control.If we care at all about ourselves, then we must accept full responsibility for our own feelings. We must learn to guard against those feelings that have the capacity to lead our attitude down the wrong path, and to strengthen those feelings that can lead us confidently into a better future.If we want to receive the rewards the future holds in trust for us, then we must exercise the most important choice given to us as members of the human race by maintaining total dominion over our attitude. Our attitude is an asset, a treasure of great value that must be protected accordingly.When you have the right attitude, you can do the remarkable.When you recognize your gifts, you can change anything for yourself that you wish to change. If you don’t like how something is going for you, change it. If something isn’t good enough, change it. If something doesn’t suit you; change it. If something doesn’t please you, change it. You don’t ever have to be the same after today. If you don’t like your present address, change it.

Finally, having the right attitude is an essential prerequisite for success and happiness. The right attitude is one of the fundamentals of the good life. That is why we must constantly examine our feelings about our role in the world and about our possibilities for achieving our dreams.It is our emotional nature that governs most of our daily conduct in our personal and business world. It is the emotional aspect of our experiences that determines our behaviour. How we feel about life’s events is a powerful force that can either freeze us in our tracks or inspire us to take immediate action on any given day. With the wrong attitude, they can be crushed by the smallest grain of sand but with the right attitude, human beings can move mountains. Let have a right attitude towards our worship, leaders, events, programmes, careers, life, economy, relationship, business, country and the sky will be our limit.

There are so many things that we wish we had done yesterday, so few that we feel like doing today. Let’s all go out and change our life and environment with the right attitude today.

BISHOPD