When Thinking Becomes an Attitude and an Attitude Becomes Action

[HKHaugan]

When Thinking Becomes an Attitude and an Attitude Becomes Action

Suppose you woke up in a wilderness and didn’t know where you were? This happened to a friend of mine in college. Some of his drunken fraternity brothers crept into his room when he was asleep, tied him up in a big burlap sack, carted him out to a country road and dumped him there in the middle of the night. He was terrified but his survival instincts kicked in and he was able to find his way to a main highway, identify where he was and hitchhike back but was never able to sleep soundly after that. Later in life he’d have occasional blackouts. He never got over it. It seems most of  us have had some experience like that even if it wasn't as dramatic. But it did leave a scar.

When you start thinking spiritually you find the same condition is common in all human beings. When we are born and as we grow, get educated, learn relational adaptability and gain our bearings, we don’t think spiritually. We find ourselves still alone, still in a wilderness of invisible processes and not sure where we are headed or even why. We need a contact, a leader, someone we can trust with the best way to maneuver in this vast unknown and unsure environment in which we find ourselves.

Until we accept that our condition is spiritual we will spend what life we have in survival tactics and die alone. We can follow the world principles of success and still end up alone or we can be criminals and try and be ‘one-up’ on the world and come to the same end, alone. In between those, others live blindly in a kind of day-to-day acceptance, resignation and denial. The epitaph on the headstone will still be the same, ‘He died alone.’

God did not want us to end up in eternity alone, which is why He sent His Son Jesus. Jesus’ mission consisted of three basic objectives:

First, He came to make us think spiritually before we did anything else.

Second, He came to make us aware that He was the door to thinking spiritually.

Third, He came to reveal the way we can do it. He starts us with belief in Him, spiritual lessons from His Word to build a spiritual trust relationship with Him and He provides the power to reshape our minds, hearts and souls by the gift of His Holy Spirit.

If we really consider what Jesus underwent while He was in this world, we might appreciate more deeply his sacrifice for us. He was born just as we were, had to be nursed, weaned, educated and learn adaptability to his environment. He was tempted in every way as we are. He had to discover who He was, why He was here and what He had to do about it. He had to believe with His mind, trust with His heart and have faith in His Spirit. Jesus knew He was on a spiritual journey He didn’t have to take. He did it for us. His choices, decisions and actions were based on the Scripture and led by the Spirit. Again, all this by faith.

The difference, and this is important, the difference between Jesus and us is that the Holy Spirit conceived Him so His immediate impulses were always spiritual, always perfect, always personal, always with His Father in mind; perfect faith. He believed spiritually, He trusted spiritually and His actions were all faith faith based. We, on the other hand, were not conceived by the Spirit. The ability for belief, trust and faith are in us from birth but they are separated from God. So how are we to think, to make choices and decisions and to live a life that is real, fulfilling and never being alone again? We were born separated from God, born in sin. Our first impulses are from sin; needy, fearful, prideful and self-centered...that is, until Jesus becomes their center.

It starts with the mind then the heart and then the spirit. So “Think of yourselves [“Have this attitude in you…NIV] the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn't think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn't claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion (Philippians 2:5-8 Message Bible).” Jesus was not a human being having spiritual experience. He was a spiritual being having a human experience. That's what He came to show us because that's what we are, spiritual beings having a human experience. “Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of Himself.”

When we can turn our minds around to capture that thought, that's when our mind, heart and spirit are turned around, inside out and upside down. When the heart can accept the mind's belief, it trusts and when the heart trusts that's when the spirit is nudged by the Holy Spirit and spiritual life, eternal life, real life kicks in. This is why Jesus says, “Trust in God, trust also in me...(Jn.14:1).” The bottom line in this process is the heart. The heart is the seat of our attitudes. Trust is an attitude. You have to have the attitude of trust before you can step out in faith. It's just how we are built. Look at Jesus and see Him at work. The one attitude that really counts is the trust we have in Jesus. “I am with you always” He says. He's our spiritual bankroll and our personal bank role. He's our revolution within and without.

Like my college friend wrapped in a sack and dumped in an unknown wilderness, we came into the wilderness of this world wrapped in sin and trying to find our way out by instinct. It's a lonely existence and not without its scars. Jesus chose to take on that path for us, each one of us that would ever be born. Like my friend who eventually found a highway, Jesus says He is the 'high' way. When we find Him we'll discover He has been patiently with us all along to give us His light and a road map through the wilderness, His Word. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me...”