Analyzing Attitudes

“Do everything without complaining and arguing, so that no one can criticize you.

Live clean, innocent lives as children of God, shining like bright lights in a world full of crooked and perverse people.”

Philippians 2:14-16 (NLT)

An attitude can be described as a way we feel or think about someone or something and is almost always reflected in our behavior. We should always be mindful of our attitudes, but at times when our schedules are overloaded and we are rushing around, our bad attitudes are more apt to rise to the surface and we are much more susceptible to exposing them to others.

There’s no better time than today to reflect on our attitudes to see if there are any “bad ones” we need to bring before the Lord so He can help us work on them.

Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount is recorded in Matthew chapters five and six. When He introduces His sermon, He begins with a message called the beatitudes. This is a great section of scripture to use as a plumb line when examining our attitudes.

Have you ever taken the Beatitudes into consideration when analyzing your personal attitudes or those of our culture today? As I dug deeper into God’s Word, I uncovered several new nuggets I hadn’t seen before when studying this particular passage.

In Matthew 5:3-12, Jesus describes characteristics that we are to strive for, “even” when, and “especially” when it’s hard to do so. But, Jesus doesn’t leave us with just commands; He also includes encouraging promises for us to focus on as we strive to apply these verses to our lives.

Let’s look at these attitudes and promises closer:

Eight attitudes we are to incorporate into our everyday lives:

1. Humility, we are to be humble in our awareness that we are spiritually bankrupt without Christ.
2. Sorrow, we are to be mournful over our sin and the moral decay of our world.
3. Gentleness, we are to be gentle in how we respond to and relate to others.
4. Desperation, we are to pursue Christ-like behavior with an awareness of our desperate need to be more like Him.
5. Mercy, we are to be generous and compassionate toward others who are suffering and in need.
6. Morality, we are to strive for purity in our thinking and in our actions.
7. Harmony, we are to be peacemakers who desire and pursue wholeness in broken relationships.
8. Perseverance, we are to stand firm in our faith and trust in Christ, even when we are persecuted or face various trials throughout life.

Jesus also mentions eight encouraging promises that we should focus on as we strive to maintain godly attitudes in our everyday life. These eight encouraging promises are:

1. We will inherit the kingdom of heaven.
2. We will be comforted by God.
3. We will be eternal residents of the new heaven and new earth.
4. We will be satisfied by God.
5. We will receive mercy from God.
6. We will see God.
7. We will be called sons of God.
8. We will receive our reward in heaven.

Have you analyzed your attitudes lately?

Join me today in slowing down and taking inventory of our attitudes and striving overcome culturally accepted ones by pursuing attitudes that Jesus desires us to possess.

What attitudes are you aware of that you need to bring before the Lord?