Change Your Attitude Sermon/Workshop

Sermon - Change Your Attitude
Change Your Attitude Workshop, Part 1
Workshop Booklet
PowerPoint for Sermon

History of how it came to be:

Article for the Berean News

Viewpoints
With thoughts marinating for my Sermon on Change My attitude, I was struck by John Maurelli’s Sermon on Thankfulness for other people. Often the good things that that you and I deliver spiritually have a rich history that God has ordained. Sometimes it’s even unasked for. I’d like to share with you the rich history that built the sermon I just gave. It started some 4 months before with some passing thoughts about the Israelites and the wandering in the wilderness. The following Sunday, Dennis Thorfeldt gave a sermon on Jericho. I knew right then that God was leading me on the subject. I was still pondering this a couple weeks later and was working the subject for Teen Camp that Brian Dunn and I co-directed when Paul Jezuit and I were talking on the phone and he told me about a book he had just finished called, Lord Change My Attitude… before it’s too late by James MacDonald. He gave me his copy and I was floored. The premise of the book was built upon the Israelite’s wilderness wandering! I read the book a couple of times and thought it would make a good sermon and possibly a workshop. I passed the idea past Joe Funari and suggested that it might be good to have a 2 week study with it as well. The appointment committee (Joe, Larry Urbaniak and Tim Chabot) agreed and put it on the schedule. I started putting some of the thoughts from the book into the Teen Camp outline all the time pondering the Sermon and Workshop but realized that something was still lacking.

Now I often internet chat with my friend Terry who is not a Christian and he has just finished a book called, Learned Optimism. After telling me some of the details, I was intrigued enough to pick it up at the Library. I quickly found that the concepts of Cognitive Therapy fit very nicely with Scripture and gave some wonderful ideas on how to stop overly pessimistic thinking.
All this time, I was struggling with my post pneumonia coughing. I can’t help but wonder if I’d have really gotten the lesson of Thanksgiving without that experience. By thinking on the attitude of Thanksgiving, I was able to embrace being thankful for the affliction. At the same time, I have fallen in love with a worship song that Tracie Elliott and Sara Rohr have used in worship that was timed perfectly with this lesson, “I’m trading my sorrows, I’m trading my pain, I’m laying them down for the joy of the Lord!”

What’s the point of this article? There are a lot of people deserve thanks for a Spiritual Service. I could not have delivered anything without the trail of people mentioned in this article. Of course God get’s the biggest Thanks! He arranged the whole thing. But John Maurelli had his list of people to thank God for… and so do I.
Philippians 1:3 - I thank my God in all my remembrance of you.

Thanksgiving #1

I am thankful to God for a lot of things:

• For a good job
• For a church that cares and allows expression of different opinions
• For fellow Elders that are different from one another yet still work as one
• For Val who loves me and my children with all her heart
• For Abby who has a compassionate heart. I can't see what paths God uses it in.
  

Taking care of the Body

Sometimes it takes a bunch of things to go forward with waht you know is right. I've known for a while that I needed to take better care of my body consistently. So far here's what I've done:

1. Cut out Soda... this has been the hardest but I don';t need the nutrasweet in my system.
2. Exercise... Been treadmilling for a month now averaging 6 days a week.
3. Just started juicing again.

Now to limit the intake of food and choose the healthiest foods possible.

I've got the power to do this... just need to exercise the will! :-)

Quote which summarizes some thinking lately.

You are today where your thoughts
have brought you; you will be
tomorrow where your
thoughts take you."
- James Allen

Humility is:

"Humility does not mean thinking less of yourself than of other people, nor does it mean having a low opinion of your own gifts. It means freedom from thinking about yourself at all."

William Temple

Sermon on Giving

My sermon from Sunday:

http://podcasts.bbschurch.org/aw/WhyWeGive.mp3

Insanity of War

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99555344

Success

Success isn't how far you got, but the
distance you traveled from
where you started.

I've often thought about this concept. I think too often we compare ourselves to perfection but I believe we need to look abck from time to time to see the vast distance we've come over our Christian walk.

I have a choice

A few years ago my friend Mark said to me, "Why don't you just choose not to..." At the time I was not ready to embrace that concept. One of the biggest issues I have to deal with is being lazy as evidenced by my propensity to sit in front of the TV and veg out. Through a string of recent events and revelations, I now understand this concept.

1. I have the power of God working in me to accomplish good things.
2. I have learned to love myself.
3. Based on these things, I have the choice to succeed.
4. I have the desire to succeed.

So, I choose to be happy. I choose to take better care of my body. I choose to meditate in the morning. I choose because I can.

"I have learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance but by our disposition." - Martha Washington.

Positive Thinking, Resolutions

Found this a very helpful audio segment for the new year:

How To Make New Year's Resolutions Stick

Outline of Universal History

Started reading "Outline of Universal History" in Book format again. Finding it's very interesting to read and ask some of the 'why' questions. I'm homing in on 100 AD - 400 AD

Book: The Treasure Principle

I've being challenged BIG TIME with a book called: "The Treasure Principle" by Randy Alcorn. The book is about the attitude of giving. The challenge comes from how much to give. I recommend reading this.

Cooking

I've recently decided to cut back on TV but the shows I do enjoy the most are cooking shows and in fact, they have driven my desire to creatively cook. Made a pretty good baked cod last night with a tomato/onion/garlic/parsley/thyme base. I am looking forward to the creative side of cooking rather than just following recipes.

Making delicious food for others to me is one of the greatest 'temporal' blessings one can give.

Settling for Mud Pies

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

C.S. Lewis

Worst Prayers

What seem our worst prayers may really be, in God's eyes, our best. Those, I mean, which are least supported by devotional feeling. For these may come from a deeper level than feeling. God sometimes seems to speak to us most intimately when he catches us, as it were, off our guard.

- C.S. Lewis

Relationship

I've been mightily impressed with how simple IMHO the Gospel is becoming. It boils down to relationship. God to human; human to God; human to human. I've had a few experiences recently which really bring that point home. The most emphatic is a book given to me by my parents for my birthday: We Would See Jesus. It really emphasizes how everything in the Christian walk is subordinate to that relationship whether it be service or anything else. This concept is not something that can be explained or articulated, only revealed. I've heard the words before but only now begin to understand. It's the emphasis of John 17; John 15; Unity as taught so hard by the Apostle Paul. I hope to share more on this as time passes.

Traditions

Traditions are group efforts to keep the unexpected from happening.
- Barbara Tober

Dealing w/ Stress

My good friend Mike who has a PHD in education did a workshop for some educational conference and had this section on dealing with stress which I will endeavor to blog about for dealing with my own stress.

Stress
Yes, stress is needed for growth, but when there is too much stress, everyone suffers. How can we handle it? One way that people of all different worldviews, spiritual backgrounds and religions have used is meditation.
Think of yourself as the CEO of your life. Whether you run a business, classroom, home or any other system, you need the ability to deal with stress, think clearly and make decisions that will move you, and those you serve, forward.
Just like a flight attendant will instruct you to put the oxygen mask on yourself first before attending to your child in case of a drop in cabin pressure, we need to do the same when the pressure builds in our life.
When we can calm ourselves; we can attend to our work and those we serve more completely, doing a better job and feeling better as well. When the stress is high enough, it can motivate us to change. If you have taken the time to read this, you are probably ready!

Getting Started
Keep a notebook for recording your thoughts and ideas as you develop this discipline. The word discipline is often associated with a method like meditation. It’s a good word because it carries the idea of work, something you have to study and practice.
In your notebook, record the times you felt really stressed or not in control in the last week or two.
For each event, can you determine what the trigger was? What moved the experience from regular life to a stressful event?
Now think about any triggers you were able to identify. What do they have in common? What’s different?
Imagine what could have happened differently that would have kept the situation at a more peaceful and productive level. We have creative ideas when we give them time to percolate to our awareness.
· Could you have anticipated the situation and prepared a response ahead of time?
· Can you think of a couple of different things to try the next time something like this happens?
· Is there some way to change your routine where this happened that could eliminate the situation?
· Are there things about myself that need to change?
Doing this type of work, thinking, reflecting, recording ideas, creating new approaches can be an important component of meditation. Many people have the idea that meditation is for mystics.
No, it’s for mystics as well as everybody else. It’s a tool that will help you come up with new and creative ways to deal with stress, problems, and change. It can also help you more fully experience and enjoy all the good things that happen in life as well!

Before we start running, let’s walk.

Copyright 2008 by Michael Knapp