Yan Handley, a guest speaker, came to visit tonight and spoke challengingly on the freedom God wants to give us from wrong and ungodly attitudes. Our attitudes determine our altitude: wrong attitudes drag us down, but right attitudes lift us up.
Philippians 2 shows us the attitudes that Christ had and therefore acts as a model for the attitudes we should have. Attitudes are a settled way of thinking lying deep down within us. They affect our behaviour and can be conveyed in so many ways (tone of voice, silence, body language etc.) Our sinful nature breeds wrong attitudes and our attitudes are influenced by a whole range of factors, including our upbringing, the cultural influence all around us,and the spirit of the age. The most important influence on our attitudes has to be the Word of God, however. This has the power to mould and shape our attitudes so that we can have the same attitude as Jesus.
We know that if we are in Christ, we are new creations (2 Cor 5:17). We are converted from self-centredness to Christ-centredness. All wrong attitudes are rooted in self-centredness.
Attitudes are worked out in the context of relationships. Yan taught that if our vertical relationship with God is right, then our horizontal relationships with people will have the opportunity to be right; we will be able to love God and people as we should (see Matt 22:37-38).
Vertical relationship
(1) We need to hate sin and flee from temptation.
(2) If we love God, we must obey His commandments (John 14:15) and delight to do His will (Ps 40:8)
(3) We need to grow in our dependence on God (John 15:5)
(4) We need to grow in trust
Horizontal relationships
We need to love unconditionally, sacrificially and unilaterally as Jesus loved us (1 Jn 4:20). This involves:
(1) honouring others, not looking down on them (Rom 12:10, Phil 2:3-4)
(2) encouraging others, not discouraging them (Heb 3:13, 1 Cor 14:12)
(3) accepting others, not making them feel unwelcome (Rom 15:7)
(4) serving others, even as Jesus washed his disciples’ feet (John 13, Gal 5:13)
(5) forgiving others, not holding grudges and resentment in our hearts (Eph 4:31-32)
Yan also talked about relationships in the workplace, and how we need to be of a different spirit to those with whom we work, whose attitudes can often be categorised as disrespectful, disloyal and discontented. Instead, we need to follow the principles laid out in Ephesians 6, having a good attitude to work and our employers, understanding ultimately that we are working for the Lord (Eph 6, Dan 6:3, Jn 17:34, 1 Pet 2:18-19)
Our attitude to the world and to evangelism also needs to be right. It needs to be motivated by love. In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the ‘religious’ people were too busy to help the injured man; God challenges us to do as the Samaritan did and help those in need.
For our attitudes to change, we need God’s anointing and we need to:
(1) acknowledge that God’s Word is true and is our plumbline, our guide for righteous living.
(2) agree with what God says
(3) ask God for the mind of Christ to be in us
The standard is high – we only have to read 1 Corinthians 13 and substitute our names for the word ‘love’ to see how high! But by God’s grace our attitudes can change.
Birthday girl (a week late, but there’s no escape!):