Change your attitude, change your life
Your life will never change if your attitude doesn’t first.
"Change" means a departure from the ordinary. To change requires that we leave what we know and move forward into something better.
If we want something different for our lives, to get out of a rut or to get past our fears, we have to change our attitudes in three ways:
1. Change your attitude about yourself.
What we do doesn’t define us. Neither our failures nor our successes cannot capture who we are. Our identity comes from God, and He’s prepared a way of life for us (Ephesians 2:10). Jesus doesn’t see us as failures or successes; He sees people who can represent Him by loving and serving others in the world.
2. Change your attitude about others.
Are we doing things to get attention from others? Are we using people to get what we want? Arrogance and selfishness are natural ways to think about ourselves in comparison to others, but God insists that way of living isn’t good for anybody. Changing our attitude and changing our life will only happen if we begin to value the interests of others more than our own, and get past our self-absorbed thinking (Philippians 2:3-4).
God wants to use us as examples of the life change He performs, so people far from Him will see how good He is. The first place people look to see what God is like is the church. As a community learning to be like Jesus, we should be the first ones to stop complaining and start rejoicing (Philippians 2:14-15). Our attitude can influence how others see God.
3. Change your attitude about God.
When we’re going through difficult circumstances, we can be tempted to think God’s against us or abandoned us. Nothing could be further from the truth. Hard times don’t scare God away, and neither do our imperfections. Jesus came from a perfect heaven to an imperfect earth to live among people He loved and entered into the mess of humanity to save us (1 Timothy 1:14-15).
Jesus is proof that God cares so much about us that He’s willing to meet with us and change us. If this is really how God feels about us, shouldn’t we correct our attitude about Him?
Ultimately, all change is a result of God shifting things in our lives. God has good things in store for us, and the only way we’ll see them is if we faithfully continue changing with Him.