Christian Living

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Larry Lilly's Letter Tuesday September 7, 2010

Attitude Result of Innertude

I correspond with many men and a few women who are in prison. Most of the exchange is on a positive level, but a few are interesting in what I call the attitude of the missile or letter. One such came the other day from a man who is having a terrible time in prison. For some strange reason the administration nor the world at large will not adjust to him. This causes problems in all areas of life, but especially behind the wall or fence. He is the slave to what is called "attitude," negative to the max.

Attitude is one of the most important determining factors in the kind of life we are living and will continue to live unless there is a change of attitude. Attitude is usually referred to as positive or negative. Webster gives several involved variations of the word, but for our purposes, positive or negative suffice.

Over the years I have made a few adjustments to my ideas on the power of attitude for positive or negative results. I know many so called "positive" thinkers who are positively repugnant when it comes to true positive living and the "loved" ones around them would shout a raucous amen in a Reformed Presbyterian Church. A pretended "positive" attitude may be worse than a genuine negative one.

Former actor (Sky King) turned master speaker, writer, salesman, and motivator, Earl Nightingale stated:

"A great attitude does much more than turn on the lights in our worlds; it seems to magically connect us to all sorts of serendipitous opportunities that were somehow absent before the change."

President Reagan told a story about positive attitude that I heard Earl tell years before and it is on target.

A family had a child who as he developed also developed an incorrigible positive attitude. In an effort to discourage him his family filled a room with horse manure and ushered the lad into the room on Christmas morning. Instead of outraged disappointment the child grabbed a toy shovel and went to work saying, "With all this manure, there has to be a pony in here somewhere."

I have no idea how this applies to your life today, but at least you get a smile. People with a positive attitude smile more than do morose negative crabs.

Jesus Christ has a realistic positive attitude and so should we. On negative vs positive Jesus said in John 10:10 part b:

I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

Larry Lilly Copyright (C) 2010 Use with credit

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