Our pastor has just finished a series entitled: What If? His main point throughout the messages was: Our beliefs determine our behavior. This is how our attitudes are formed. This is important to understand because our ability to succeed in life can come down to a single choice. How we’ve reacted to what has been done to us in the past or is being done to us right now is oftentimes the determining factor in what we choose to do in that situation. Your attitude is formed because of what’s happened in the past. How you react when confronted with a new (stressful) situation is based on that attitude.
For example, there’s the famous story of Dr. Victor Frankl who endured the Holocaust by adhering to this principle just stated above. The Nazis killed his family, placed him in a concentration camp, starved and beat him. When the war ended Frankl was neither broken, bowed nor bitter. When asked how he had endured such treatment with a positive outlook he stated, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of human freedoms, to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances; to choose one’s own way.”
Ground Zero was for a long time just a massive canyon where the Twin Towers once stood. Over 2000 people lost their lives there. How did New Yorkers choose to respond? A sign was placed at the edge of Ground Zero which proclaimed, “The human spirit is not measured by the size of the act, but by the size of the heart.” That’s an attitude that terrorists will never conquer. It’s also the attitude that God’s Word challenges us to adopt: “Whatever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good report… think on these things.”
Every day we choose the clothes we’re going to wear, the food we’ll eat and… the attitude we’re going to adopt. There are really only 2 kinds of attitudes— good ones and bad ones. I start my day by trying to establish a good attitude. I recite what the Psalmist exclaims in Psalm 118, verse 24: “THIS is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it!” I challenge you to make this your attitude too!
