Joyce Meyer - Can You Fix My Bad Attitude?

Do you know that a good attitude can give you an above average life, and a bad attitude will always give you a below average life.

Ephesians 4:22 says, "Strip yourselves of your former nature put off and discard your old unrenewed self which characterized your previous manner of life, and becomes corrupt through lusts and desires that spring from delusions."

So, he's saying stop acting like you used to before you were saved. Now, how many of you know that even though we are saved and we do have a new nature, that we can go get that old nature out of the closet and put him on if that's what we feel like doing? So, you got to kind of keep him dead. He's dead, but you got to remind him that he's dead. So, he says put off that old nature.

And let's just skip verse 23 for a minute. And verse 24 says, "And put on the new nature (the regenerate self) created in God's image, Godlike in true righteousness and true holiness."

So, the simplicity is stop acting like you used to, and start acting like you ought to. Very simple. Well, how do I do that? Verse 23 is the bridge. It's the bridge from the old life to the new life. "And be constantly". Now, you see, passive people are not too big on constantly. "And be constantly renewed in the spirit of your mind."

Listen, I don't remember exactly, but I know that I had at least seven or eight times today when I had to quickly, purposely choose to straighten out my attitude. So, I don't care how long you've been saved or how much you pray every morning, you are going to have opportunity to have to decide if you're going to be purposeful or passive, if you're just going to kind of go with how you feel.

Because I mean, there was some stuff that happened to me, just not even big stuff, but minor stuff that just didn't make me feel too good.

Tonight, I had to try seven times to get my contact lens in my eye, and I was not liking that. And then I got my hairspray out, and the can wasn't working. It was one of those cans that you squirt, and it leaks, and I'm out on the road, don't have my hair spray, my contact's not working, I'm teaching on attitude.

Come on. And see, the person who purposes to keep a good attitude, that doesn't mean that he feels like having a good attitude. It doesn't even mean that having a good attitude necessarily seems fair. But he does it because he knows down deep in his heart that the word is true. And that if we do things the way God tells us to do them, that we will have what God says that we can have. But there are no shortcuts.

I'm telling you the truth, I don't think with all the preaching we've heard on things like this that we still comprehend the power of one attitude, what it can do for us if it's good and what it can do to us if it's bad.