By Mary Carothers

“I just got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.” “I’m just in a bad mood.” Have you ever heard either of these expressions? Or perhaps said them yourself? We like to excuse ourselves, don’t we? (My bad attitude or bad mood is never my fault!) Oh, no. Of course not!

But did you know God has something to say to us about our attitudes? When I looked in my concordance (what would I do without my concordance!) I found several scriptures dealing with our attitudes.

God was angry with Solomon. Although the Lord had blessed him, Solomon had allowed himself to develop a divided heart. Oh, he still worshiped God, but not with his whole heart. In I Kings 11:6 we are told that Solomon did evil in God’s eyes because he did not follow after God alone. He had begun to follow some of the gods of his day. God said to him in verse 11: Since this is your attitude . . . Then God told Solomon the sad results of his wrong attitude which had inevitably led to bad choices.

Now, I know that our moods and our attitudes are not exactly the same, but they are close enough for us to realize that we can control them. The day Jesus began to work in my life, the very first thing He did was to begin showing me all the times in my life I had indulged in bad attitudes. The humbling part of this experience was the Lord didn’t show me just a few times when I had wallowed in bad attitudes. No, He made sure I understood that this had been a habit for many years. Each time I admitted to Him that yes, He was right, and I had been wrong – no matter what someone else had said or done.

I am not responsible for what others say or do. But I am most certainly responsible for my attitudes because my words and my actions come from my attitudes. In other words, whatever thoughts I indulge in will inevitably affect my speech and actions.

Each time the Holy Spirit convicted me of my wrong attitudes, I told the Lord I was truly sorry, and asked Him to forgive me. I have often wondered if I had not humbled myself and repented – would I have continued to grow in the Lord? Perhaps I would have remained an immature, carnal Christian.

In Ephesians 4:23 the Lord uses Paul to urge us to be made new in our attitudes. We need to be constantly changing the way we think – from the way the world looks at things – to the way our Lord thinks. One way we can accomplish this is to read His Words to us. Each time we begin to read the Bible, it’s helpful to pause a moment and ask the Holy Spirit to teach us whatever He wants us to understand.

Let us decide to change our old ways of thinking. Let us determine to no longer justify our bad attitudes or bad moods … no matter what someone else says or does. Not only will this result in our being happier, but we will also find that we have pleased the Lord and honored Him! And isn’t that what we really want to do? If you have trouble wanting to have right attitudes, ask Jesus to help you to change your mind and attitude. He will gladly help you! (Reprint from September 2010)