Everything you do stems from attitude. Attitude is the most important thing in life. As they say, life is 98% attitude and 2% action. Most people who make it in life do so because they had the right attitude to make it. I say “most” because there are always exceptions. There are a few people that have a very bad attitude but somehow still make it in life, but they are usually miserable people in the process.
Colossians 3:10 (Colossians 3:10)
10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. When you come to God, you are a new creation, so you should not be talking down on your spouse the way you do if you do that. Your attitude controls how you talk to your spouse, whether it’s good or bad.
Well, what about your marriage and your kids? How does attitude affect them? It affects them in every way. Many times, before the marriage falls apart, the attitude already started. Attitude is usually the first thing to go in a marriage.
How you treat your spouse says so much about your attitude. I know people that call their wife “old Lady.” I am like, “REALLY? Come on now. That is such a bad thing to program in your mind.”
How about when a group of married women get together, including Christian women, then start husband-bashing? WHY? To look good? Why do they have such a bad attitude? Marriage is supposed to be enjoyable.
I heard someone ask, “What if God gave you your spouse to make you Holy, not Happy?” Now, granted, that is a great question, but I see it differently. Why can’t you be Holy & Happy? I think many Christian people have this attitude that, in order to serve God, you have to not be happy. In order to serve God, you have to be broke. In order to serve God, you have to be perfect.
Those kinds of attitudes will kill the family. I believe that God wants us to be happy but happy His way, not the world’s way. Many people think material things will make them happy, but it is short-lived. Happiness on the outside is always dependent on circumstances, but when you have true joy in your heart, it doesn’t matter what is going on; you have peace in you.
I have read so many books on attitude. Attitude doesn’t control what happens to you, but it does control how you go through it. I am not talking about some hokey-poky kind of stuff. I am talking about an attitude of gratefulness in your heart. You can either look at your family as a burden, and some people do, or you can look at them as a Blessing.
If you see your family through burdensome eyes, your family will suffer, but if you see your family through the eyes of Blessing, then your family will be Blessed.
I believe that my wife and I are strong right now because both of us are easy to please. I see many people where the man or woman could fly to the moon, and you still wouldn’t get a response out of the spouse. That is no way to be in a marriage.
How about your kids? Are you destroying your kids because of your lousy attitude? Whether you realize it or not, you are destroying them too. I actually heard a mom tell her 16-year-old daughter that she is mean to her because life will be mean to her. She said she is building character in her. REALLY? Come on now, she was destroying her 16-year-old daughter because of her past experiences.
Don’t allow your past experiences to cloud your judgment about your spouse or your kids. There are many people that have been cheated on so many times so they are married now waiting on their husband or wife to cheat. They are pushing their spouse away because of past experiences.
Yes, whatever happened to you in the past might have been bad, but you don’t have to make your current husband or wife pay for someone else’s past crime towards you. Your past needs to stay right where it is, in your past.
We should use our past to learn from but not take orders from it. Are you still so focused on what happened in your past that you are allowing it to control your every thought? If you are, then you are allowing it to destroy your family.
This is a form of addiction. Focusing on your past so that your today can’t be great. We all, from time to time, wallow in our past, but we can’t allow it to control us.
There are only 2 things in this world that we have 100% control over. They are our actions and our attitude. We don’t control other people’s actions or attitude, but ours and ours alone. Granted, sometimes our actions and attitudes put fire in a situation that springs out of control.
Do you say, “I will change when he or she does”? It doesn’t work that way. That’s not how God sees it! We are to change as a person, whether someone else does or not. So the next time you catch yourself saying, “if he or she would just do this, my life would be easier,” WRONG! We can only control what we do and what our attitude is. That’s it!
The point to all this is that your attitude controls everything you do, whether it’s good or bad. If you keep a bad attitude, you will over time destroy your family, and people won’t want to be around you. If you keep your attitude more on the positive side of life, people will be drawn to you. You will become a people magnet as people will gravitate toward you, including your spouse. Life will seem easier even though it is no easier than anyone else’s.
Don’t get me wrong here; I am not saying that you should never let your emotions show because that extreme is bad too. If you do that, eventually your emotions will come out and blast at people, especially your spouse. You can’t hold your emotions in. There has to be balance in your life, just like everything else. Yes, your life might be falling apart, but at least you have God with you, right?
God never said that he would take away our problems, but he did say he would be right there with us through them. Life isn’t supposed to be easy, but it is supposed to be fruitful no matter what happens to you. When you look at your past, if you can honestly say you learned something positive from that experience, then that is what life is all about.
I say “learn something positive” because some people learn negative from an experience. For example, a woman gets cheated on multiple times, so she learns that all men are dogs, which is false. So instead of learning that maybe she picked the wrong kind of guy, she takes it as all men are like that. Or vice versa, and the man gets cheated on, and he feels all women are users.
So whatever happens to you, find some positive lesson within the experience. When you start taking positive lessons from things, you will see your life change like never before.
Ask God to help you change your attitude. Tell him you have had this bad attitude disease long enough. Ask him to heal your heart and to heal your family from the attitude. Ask him to help you be more of the wife or husband you need to be with the right attitude. Ask him to help you become the parent you need to be so that your attitude doesn’t rub off on your kids.
What you say to your spouse will kill their spirit, so don’t allow your attitude in life to help destroy them as a person. God gave you them for his purpose, and his purpose has nothing to do with you dogging on them all the time. You are to treasure your spouse through good and bad times. Change what you say to your spouse and change how you see your spouse, and you will see your marriage start to change God’s way.
I will end this with one statement and one question: Success in a marriage is not about finding the right person as much as it is about becoming the right person. Ask yourself, would you want to be married to you, then act accordingly.
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