Live Well with a Positive Attitude

I am so concerned about people who live from one day to the next in more pain and misery than they did the day before. Things never go right for them and they are always focusing on the negative aspects in their life. I know that some people are genuinely ill; but I have seen others, in the same position, with a smile on their face and a jaunt in their step.

If we do all we can to prevent the pain or circumstances in our life, then we can look to God to deliver us from them. He may surprise us by taking us home to heaven, or allowing some major decision to be made that will affect our life drastically. However, we can continue to live a positive life by focusing on the pure, lovely aspects, which He constantly supplies for us (Philippians 4:8).

Expectations ruin our life and our health. We expect deep relationships, abundant finances, stellar health and increasing spiritual growth each day of our life. When this does not happen, we are devastated. Then depression settles in, coloring every other aspect of our life. Our spiritual, emotional, physical and mental health are all affected by our negative attitude.

We also get too involved in too many aspects of life; and this tires us out, pressures our schedule and makes us feel used and abused. We end up getting tension headaches, stress-related illnesses and our soul gets disheartened and miserable. We get grouchy, irritable and too sick to do anything. The answer is to live each moment in gratitude and praise, led by God's Spirit in every aspect of our life.

Prayer:

Father God, remind us to cast our cares on Your shoulders. You promise to take care of them and us (1 Peter 5:7). That means that we can thank You for the answers before we ever get them. If we focus on our troubles, we live in a negative spiral that can only get worse. This causes tension, fear, unhappiness and despair. However, if we live with our faith in You, we maintain a positive attitude. Then we will reap many more positive results in our life with Your love filling our soul with joy.

Thought for the Day:

Prayers of gratitude keep our focus on God's Presence in our life rather than on our circumstances. - Matthew 6:25-33; Luke 12:22-31

Amazing Paradoxes

It is amazing to see what happens when we praise God regardless of our circumstances. Listening to music or singing in our mind can change the most depressing moment into a time of joy. Praising the Lord in our car, at home, at work, in the grocery store and in our quiet times will change our attitude quicker than any other pursuit. Praising puts a smile on our face and a spring in our step! People are drawn to those who are full of the joy of the Lord.

The amazing paradox is that living a life of praise will change everything for us. We can sing our way out of depression and into the courts of our God (Psalm 100). As we look for God’s will in our life, work, exercise, church encounters, volunteerism and hanging out with our friends, He turns everything into a time of ministry for Him, as well as a source of joy for us. We wait on the Lord and move only and always as His Spirit directs us.

If you are home alone, and you start to feel lonely, either get out of the house and work in the yard, or serve a friend or family member, or spend time growing deeper in God. When you feel lonely, put on your praise music and sing at the top of your lungs in worship to God, dance around as you dust, bake a cake and take it to a neighbor, go to the homeless shelter and help out any way you can, or go grocery shopping for an elderly person. Just listen to God’s Spirit and He will direct you.

God has a plan for our good now and in the future. Rejoicing in the Lord one moment at a time keeps our negative thoughts under God’s control (Philippians 4:8). However, we can praise Him even for the negative aspects in our life, because He has a plan for us even in them. Praising God will put Satan in his place and let God work in our behalf. We will feel better, once we stop allowing negative satanic fears, anxieties and desires to torture us. It is a human characteristic to worry about the future, but God has everything in His control (Jeremiah 29:11).

God cares for us even more than for the sparrows and lillies, and He tells us not to be anxious about anything (Matthew 6:19-34). If you praise God for what you have, even the bad things, knowing that God has a plan in it for you, then He will give you everything you need to live victoriously. As we seek the Lord first and fulfill His purpose for us in His Kingdom, then we can rest assured that He will supply all of our needs according to His glorious riches through Christ Jesus who lives within us (Philippians 4:19).

Prayer:

Father God, remind us that we cannot control anything about life. Allowing feelings of unhappiness and loneliness to disturb our peace and the joy in our soul is not trusting in You. It is focusing on what we do not have instead of what we do have. If we spend intimate times with You, Lord, through every waking moment, then we will not be unhappy, because You are our ultimate hope, rest, joy and peace. We are only unhappy and lonely when we think more about temporal things than we do about spending our eternal glory with You.

Thought for the Day:

If God’s will does not include what you want, then you do not want to have it, because you will be out of His will.