English: Jesus appears to the disciples (watercolour) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Attitude
In the previous postings, we covered how God – our lover is helping us improve our quality of life through such things as providing a goal for us: “Goodness,” an “example” named Jesus and the “Inspiration” to guide us. Now we are going to start taking a look at how we can use what He has provided us. The first area, is our “Attitude.” Our Attitude is the way, emotions, and approach we use to deal with life, and the challenges, tests, assignments we face in living that life.
We learned these attitudes through all the ways we dealt with and succeeded in life. But they are not always the best ways to approach life. Such as love is better than murder, even though murder may have temporarily solved the problem, but will have caused more problems in the long run.
The Holy Spirit/Inspiration inspires us and Jesus gives us examples of the better way to get the better quality of life. Jesus showed us such things as, position, authority, and money are not important in your quality of life. The children in the poorest areas can still play and have fun. What really matters is the love they are able to share. The examples Jesus shared with us challenged the proud and legalistic religious leaders. Jesus called them and us back to the message of shared love and the resulting trust and obedience to the “Inspiration” provided us to improve.
Jesus put it this-way: Don’t expect fame and fortune, but mourning, hunger, and persecution. Jesus assured all his followers; that they would be rewarded – after their graduation from their training program to make that all important decision (Love God or ourselves), into their eternal life. There may be times when following Jesus’ example may bring us positive things on earth. But if we are not prepared for the challenges we will face, we will find ourselves using God’s plans only to promote our personal interests.
God’s way of living usually contradicts the physical worlds. If you want to share love with God, you must be ready to say and do what seems strange to the physical world. You must be willing to give when others take, to love when others hate, to help when others abuse. By giving up your own rights in order to serve others. By following God’s way, you will one day be able to directly share love (one spirit to another) with God for eternity.
There are at least four ways to understand Jesus’ examples of attitudes: (1) They are a code of ethics for God’s lovers and a standard of having a better quality of life on earth. (2) They contrast God’s love affair (which is eternal) with the physical world (which is temporary). (3) They contrast the superficial life of the physical world of the body with the complete love that God wants to share with you. (4) They show how the decision to love God or our-selves should be made. These attitudes are not multiple choice – pick what you like and leave the rest. They must be taken as a whole. They describe how we should follow Jesus’ example.
Each attitude tells us how to be blessed. “Blessed” means more than pleasure and happiness. It implies the fortunate or enviable state of those who are sharing God’s love. The attitudes don’t promise laughter, pleasure, or earthly prosperity. To Jesus “blessed” means the experience of hope and joy. the deepest form of happiness. To achieve that, we need to follow Jesus’ example no matter the cost.
Jesus shows us that wealth and power and authority are unimportant. His loving children seek different benefits and they have different attitudes. Are your attitudes a carbon copy of the physical world’s selfishness, pride, and lust for power, or do you reflect the humility and self-sacrifice of Jesus your example.
In the next posting, we shall start our look at specific attitudes we need to change.
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