I am co-hosting a ladies Bible study with a group of ladies from my church. A friend was interested and recommended the book “Lord, Change my Attitude” by James MacDonald. I looked at for a few moments on Amazon and replied that I thought it was right up my alley too and I would see what the other ladies thought. Well we needed something to kick start the Bible study so we decided to do this book. I’ll confess I barely looked at the book so after getting the book from the library today, it might be wonder why I was so eager to do this book. If you asked me if I had an attitude problem, I would probably say no. I can’t really think of an attitude that has a problem. When I think of the word “attitude”, I typically think of a teenage girl or my 4 year old (they have a lot in common at times!) but then I realized and I think that I realized it in the back of my mind when I agreed to do the book that we all have attitude problems. None of us can say that we have a perfect thought life. We have all been guilty at some point of having different negative attitudes. They may not have a stronghold on our life but I don’t think any one could read this book and not have some (or all!) of it resonate in our life either past or present.
In the pre-introduction, MacDonald asks five questions to see if this book is right for you. If you answered no to any one of the questions, then you probably need the book the most (my words not his)! His questions were 1) Are you open to considering what the Lord has to say about changing your attitude? 2) Are you willing to be changed? 3) Are you willing to change your attitude? 4) Are you willing to focus exclusively on your attitude? and 5) Are you willing to go after this change of attitude with urgency? His obvious premise was that we need to have the right heart and attitude towards allowing God to change us in our attitudes. I wouldn’t say that God couldn’t change you but it would be much harder to change your attitude if you had a rebellious attitude towards allowing God to prune you and change you. I personally love the Christian “self help” books. One of the best ways that I know that I can show God that I love Him is to strive every day to become more and more like Him.
I equate attitude a lot with my thought life. The Bible says in Colossians 3:2 to “set your mind on things above, not on the things on this Earth”. Philippians 4:8 says “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” I think that Christians tend to look at the obvious sins that are committed in actions and it’s easy to say that we are doing good when we aren’t doing those things. But there’s a reason why Christ on the Sermon of the Mount talks about how just being angry is as bad as murder. I think we all become a little too relaxed and a little too complacent when it comes to our thought life. At the end of the day, we may not have even realized that we dishonored Christ or had sinned in our minds. It’s important that we realize these things and correct them so that we can love and honor Christ not only with our words and our actions but with our thoughts as well.
For these reasons, I am excited about this book because I know that I am very much an imperfect person and I want to rid myself of these attitudes and embrace the things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely and admirable – excellent and praiseworthy. I want to be more and more like Christ.
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