I Will, Attitude

I grew up in one of the most iconic moments in basketball history. In the 90’s everyone knew who Micheal Jordon was, and of course, like the commercials, everyone, including us kids, wanted to be like Mike. When I was in 7th grade our school had called all the boys who was interested in playing basketball to come to the office so that we could walk across the street to the Saint Patricks Gym to try out for our schools basketball team.

One of my core memories of that day was standing in line at the half court line, and we were asked to make layups. Now, I had no clue what a layup was. So, what I did, was, I position myself near the end of the line so I could study all the other failed attempts of layups so that when it was my turn, I had a better understanding of what was being asked of me.

And let me just tell you, I failed miserably. Thankfully, there was like 20 other boys before me that did so too. And it wasn't just layups, I didn’t even know what a foul shot was. I didn’t know the rules of the game. I didn’t know what traveling was, or how to do a double dribble, although for some reason I kept getting called on all of those things. I literally had no clue what I was doing.

Needless to say, I did not make the team. That next summer, was one of the most iconic moments for me. I was determined to become a better basketball player. Everyday, I would dribble my ball 1-2 miles to the Jane Lew basketball court and I taught myself ball handling skills. I would get involved in pick up games and teach myself offensive and defensive moves. I would watch sports center every morning to see what the pros were doing, and then I would go and recreate their moves.

My favorite player was Dennis Rodman. I loved how he would just rebound with aggression and with power. And of course I chose Rodman because my best friend would always pick to pretend he was Jordan. Another friend would be Pippin or Steve Kerr. For two years, I worked hard on playing basketball. Every moment of every day I would dribble, I would workout by running and doing suicides, I would train relentlessly.

Every summer our coaches would have open gyms for practice. I was a kid with a single mom, and so we couldn’t afford it. But they would let anyone come to watch and shoot around, and I would show up with my basketball, and I would watch Coach Stout teach the girls team drills and he had these straps that would go on your guide arm to keep it in place to teach your shooting form.

And I would, shoot around on one and as he trained the girls on the other, and I would mimic what they were doing. And then after two years of training, and hustling, and working hard, a friend and I decided to try out for the 9th grace basketball team together. Jordan and Rodman. We would be unstoppable. At try outs, I was the fastest kid on the team. I beat every person in all of my 1 on 1 competitions.

I had the best and most razzle dazzle passes, my ball handling skills were top notch… but the issue came on the final day of tryouts. Close to the end of the practice, I twisted my ankle for the umpteenth time. Every practice, I played like Rodman. Aggression. Speed. Power. And every practice I got hurt in some way, I would walk it off and come back for the next day of tryouts.

ON the final day of tryouts, Practice was over and we all waited for the coach to come back out to post the list of those on the team. I will admit, I was still nervous. I hobbled over to the list that our coach had just taped to the wall, and to my surprised, I was cut! It was the worse day of my life. And to top it off, my best friend made the team, and I looked over and saw my mom had showed up early and she watched how fast and awesome I was, but yet in my heart, she showed up to see me lose.

As I was gathering my things to leave, coach put his arm around me and pulled me aside and said, Matthew, You were the best at everything I asked for you to do You can tell you spent a lot of time working hard. You had ball handling skills, you had court awareness, your shots were on target, you won match and every obstacle I put in front of you. But before you leave, I want to just tell you why I cut you, First, you’ve never played organized basketball and so since you’ve only played street ball, you don’t know simple plays.

Simple plays that you would have learned on a team in little league basketball. And secondly, you have the wrong attitude. You were too prideful. You were cocky, you were the best and you knew it and you made sure everyone else knew it as well. And in your pridefulness, you twisted you ankle. Every tryout you’ve gotten injured in some way, and And I need a guard that can stay healthy and has the right attitude.

I learned that day, that you can have all the skill required to do something, but skill doesn’t trump having the right attitude. I’m sure we all can sit around a table and tell similar stories. How important is attitude in life? Maybe it’s when we’re driving down the freeway and someone cuts us off and our attitude is to throw some sort of obscenities at them, or give them some sort of hand getures.

I remmeder one time back in 2017 when we lived by serve pro. I was on my way here to church and hill I was at mcdonads they told me to pull up to the front because my mean wasnt done. The guy behind me must have not realized that for some reason. He pulled up beside me, slammed on his horn, and as I looked over he was yelling something and giving me some sign language and then drove off.

I was like, man, you need Jesus. Maybe its when we walk up to the return desk at a store and they won’t take our return without a receipt. What is our attitude like? How idd that effect your attitude when you had one thought of getting your money back, but they sad no. What about family arguments when emotions run high and individuals resort to shouting, name-calling, or disrespecting one another.

I want to make this very clear, “Our attitudes determine our success to forge our future more than any factor in life.” There’s a book by John Maxwell called, the Power of attitude and he writes: “Never underestimate the power of your attitude. It is the advance man of our true selves. Its roots are inward, but its fruit is outward. It is our best friend, or our worst enemy. It is more honest and more consistent than our words.

It has an outward look based on past experiences. It is the thing which draws people to us or repels them. It is never content until it is expressed. It is the librarian of our past; it’s the speaker of our present, and it’s the prophet of our future.” So, what we learn is that Our Attitude is the key too many things God calls us into. It’s the key to getting along with others and moving ahead in life.

It’s the key to listening to the Holy Spirit, hearing him, and obeying and walking forward into what God calls you into. And not just walking forward, but walking forward in peace and with Joy. And so, what we learn is the a worker with the right attitude will learn to do the job better and proceed cheerfully in doing that job. We can go to work and be happy about it, even when our job is the worse.

The husband or wife with the right attitude will handle difficult situations in a much more effective way and enhance the relationship substantially. You can respect your spouse with the right attitude when you’re willing to love one anther as Christ loved the church. And When everything else is equal or if there is any doubt, the coach will always choose the athlete with the best attitude. So will the employer or the man or woman seeking a someone to spend their life with.

Your attitude in life will determine your success. So what can we learn about attitudes in the Bible? Well first, Attitudes are not caused by people or circumstances. Some people would say, I would be happy if it wasn't for all the jerks in my life. That guy that cut me off on the interstate… I would be happen if they would get a flat tire. Or that guy who sped past me going 100.

I hope you get pulled over and an expositive ticket… in Jesus name. If it wasn’t for all the idiots around me and I would be just fine… that isn’t true. Adam and Eve had a perfect life, living in paradise. They had perfect bodies. They would never die because they had access to the tree of life. They had daddy walking around with them and was in perfect union with him.

They never experienced chicken pox or covid. They never had to experience death and sickness. They’ve never been poor, or homeless. They never had to feel the loneliness, anxiety, depression. Nothing negative ever happened to them And yet, in all of this goodness they still were unsatisfied, and ungrateful and rebellious. King David is another curious person when it comes to attitude. Because think about this, in the worst time of his life, he had the best attitude.

And the best times of his life, he had the worst attitudes. Most of your psalms in the Bible are written from David life of all the wrong things happening. The philistreans tried to kill him, King Saul tried to kill him. He was running away all the time. And yet, in these moments, his attitude was what? One of praise and adoration to God. He had a trusting heart and a yearning heart for God.

What happened in all the good times? There’s war and instead of going and fighting with his men, he was successful enough that he had the choice to stay behind and have others fight his battles for him. What happened? He met Bathsheba and had this great sin. We can also look at the consensus. Where he got to a moment of great growth and took a consensus to see how powerful he had become, and in his pridefulness many people died.

In the worst time of his life, he had the best attitude. And the best times of his life, he had the worst attitude. The apostle Paul in acts 16 was in Philippi, he had the Bible tells us that on Sabbath he had gone down to the river to find a place for prayer and of course, like any of us extroverts we see people and we being conversation with them.

The lady invited him to her house, and it turned out that this lady wa sa fortune teller, So Paul realized it and cast out the demon in her. Of course that makes no sense because people are mad now, because this woman is free but the owners of the woman dint like it. SO they had Paul and Silas whipped, flogged, and thrown into jail. What did Paul and Silas do.

They sang. They worshipped. They praised GOd. I want to believe, they saw the living God heal that woman, and it was worthy of praise. There s deception in life… if I had a better circumstance, I would have a better attitude. That’s false. It’s untrue. I remember when I was working in the lab down in Mill Hall and when I would get mad, or frustrated at someone or something.

You’d catch me singing a song under my breath. I would sing to myself, Don’t worry, about a thing, because every little thing, is going to be alright. What was I doing? I was adjusting and calibrating my attitude. I was reminding myself, It’s gonna be ok. There’s always tomorrow. And if I mess-up to where it’s really bad, there’s always grace. Proverbs 23:7 tells us, "As a person thinks in their heart, so is he/she.” Attitude is determined not by our circumstance, but by where our heart is.

If you wake up and go, work sucks. It’s hot out there.. I hate these people. You’re gonna calibrate your heart to see every situation, and see every person in a negative way. You can’t speak the gospel into anyones life with an attitude of hate towards others. Paul teaches us in Philippians, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others” What would happen at work, or in your home, or when you’re at the grocery store and you had the attitude of, kindness and gentleness and compassion?

What would happen if our heart was calibrated to see others as better than ourself. What would happen if we looked not only for your interest, but also to the interest of others? Did you know a key to Spiritual growth, and church growth is having the right kind of relationship. It’s true.. first, it’s with Jesus. And second, it’s with others. Love God, with all of your heart, mind, soul and strength, and then love others as you would love yourself.

Can I ask you, how many of you here today desire unity? I meanI’ve preached it for four years. Anyone? Would you say, unity right now, between you and me, through Christ and in Christ would be what we need? And maybe not what we need as much as what we desire and crave? Well, just like attitude, and making a daily decision in our mind and heart to love one another as Christ taught us, it’s the same with unity.

Unity only works when individuals have made a decision to pursue it with thier whole heart. Yesterday I finished a two day conference about church planting and multiplication, and we got into a session about vision and they asked the question, what makes a church, a church? Right, easy enough question. Where would the church start. And do you know what the first answer was? Covenant. What makes a church a church is a group of 2 or more individuals making a commitment to one another as the body of believers, to love one another.

Each individual in the group must decide on whether or not to meet the needs and the good of the group before his or her own needs. Listen, this is me being transparent. NO one will walk in that door, and watch us have poor attitudes, and not love for one another and say, I want that. Our conference leader said this, I can walk into any church and tell you immediately whether or not there’s unity in that church.

And do you want to know how I can know that? If there is joy in the church there is unity. But if I walk in and I find no joy, I can guarantee you, I’ll find a church that is back biting one another, murmering about one another, selfish and conceited. If there is no joy, they are not pursuing the manifest presence of God together. And I took that personal.

That stabbed me in the heart, because let’s be honest, do we find a group of Christians here, living in joy? No one at this conference knew me, and they didnt know our situation.. but I was convicted. SO, I asked myself, how can we have the attitude of joy, and seeking unity? Paul teaches us in Romans, (5:1-5) Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

It’s realizing we have been stifled by faith, and now we have peace available to us with God, through Jesus. The only way momentum church is going to gain the momentum that we crave, is when we in unity begin to realize that we have been saved by grace, through faith in Jesus. And when we put the needs of each other above our own, we can stand together and rejoice in the hope that we have in the glory of God.

And we will see our sufferings, as moments of God not just testing us… but as moments where God is growing us. He’s taking us from grace to grace… from faith to faith, from victory to victory… because his desire is to sancifty us. To make us holy. And that begins, right here… at this very moment… for you and I to make a decision. Unity only works when we decide to love one another, as Christ loved us.

I want to close with some application… just bear with me… because this will helps. In life there are four attitude killers. These are attitudes that we calibrate our life with that kill relationships with others. First one, having wrong expectations. It’s living life saying, life will be easy, and people will like me. I can guarantee you, life isn’t easy, and not everyone will like you. Some wrong expectations are, God’s Love for Us Should Look Just Like What We Want.

We Won’t Be Persecuted for Our Faith. Jesus said, “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first” (John 15:18, NIV). Another wrong expectation is that Jesus Must Return in Our Lifetime. There’s a story that goes along with this, but I’ll just give you the just of it… A soldier fighting in Vietnam was captured and he and his men were tortured. There were two groups of men, and the one groups leader kept telling the men, don’t worry, we’ll be out by Christmas.

Christmas came and they were still there. We’ll be out by easter. Easter came and they were still there. The leader of the other group looked at his men and said, I can’t guarantee you when we will be rescued, but have hope, I can promise you it will happen. I just don’t know when. After some years in the prison, do you know which group made it out? The one who’s hope was set far in the future.

Every man of that other leader who kept giving timelines and and false hope died. The writer of this story had said, those men died of broken hope. Jesus is coming back, and I don’t know when. I never cared about the when because I know there are those I love not ready. There might even be some here today, that your heart, and attitude isn’t of Christ. Are you sure you’re ready for Jesus to return?

Another attitude killer is this, Entitlement. Entitlement is Believing that everyone owes you something. Paul said, I’m a debtor, first to Christ, and im a debtor as a servant to others. Entitlement is killed at the cross when we pick up the humility of Christ and we’re robbed in his righteousness. The third attitude killer is this: Negativity. All one ever does is focuses on what is wrong. Ya know something?

I can tell you all kinds of things I find wrong with anything, and anyone. You know what’s wrong… the fact that biscuits and gravy doesnt make you skinny. That’s wrong. But that negative view doesn’t stop me from having biscuits and gravy. If something is wrong, first ask yourself, is it me? I mean, I might be wearing the wrong lens to see this situation. Maybe it’s wrong because I have set a wrong expectation?

Maybe it’s wrong because I feel entitled? Maybe it’s wrong because I see it in a negative. Way? These are attitude killers, What are some attitude builders? Gratitude. Psalm 100:4 says, “Enter his gates with thanksgiving; go into his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and praise his name.” Did you know that God will not allow grumblers in his presence. Let me report that… CS lewis wrote: Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others.

Bily Graham said, “Grumbling and gratitude are, for the child of God, in conflict. Be grateful and you won't grumble. Grumble and you won't be grateful. You want an attuned that builds, then begin by seeking a heart of gratitude, and a life of servitude. Second, Faith. Faith builds attitude. Faith is focusing on God and not on people. David prays, “I have set the LORD always before me.” That means we put God first.

God is before me. That means everything I walk into, I walk where God has already been. When I set God before me. I know God is with me. Whatever comes, has to come through God first to get to me. So no matter what I face, I face it as a second hand witness. And let me just remind yo, faith isn’t just living comfortable, it’s stepping into the unknown with the God that knows.

That’s faith, that’s trust. Finally, respect. Be respectful to people. I love this thought… you don’t know everyone’s story, so be respectful of what they are going through and how they are handling it. Not everyone is holy and fully trusting in God. Jesus tells us, "So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” This is literally "the golden rule" of the Bible.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Paul tells us, Love each other with genuine affection, and take delight in honoring each other. You can’t honor a person by smearing their name. Or by lifting yourself up over them. That’s pride. And a attitude killer. You can’t honor someone by refusing to serve someone else. I want to challenge you this week. Work on your attitude. Let’s stand together.

I learned this at family camp. There’s a tribe in south america that missionaries brought he gospel to. Over some time they returned to see how they had grown in the Lord, and they noticed that whey they prayed, instead of holding thier hands up ot receive blessing, they would first hold their hands down. So they asked them, where dod you learn this and they said, we can’t receive blessing when we’re holding onto other things.

So we pray with our hands down, to let go of everything else, and then when we have let it go, we raise our hands to receive what God is wanting us to have… and if your wondering, what is it that God wants me to have.. it’s Jesus. Let’s pray… *