A Little Attitude Adjustment....and Keeping Miles!

Before I get to my "attitude adjustment" portion of my blog, I want to start off my saying that I got to keep Miles (Lee and Kyle's baby boy) yesterday for a couple hours while Lee went to the doctor and I loved it! He was wonderful! He is the best baby! So sweet and tiny and perfect! God is so good when he blesses someone with children. It was the first time I got to meet Miles because Lee has had a rough time since she has given birth, but she has such a great ATTITUDE about it all!

Ok...now for my "attitude" portion. Last summer I was in a bible study and we were doing a book called "Lord, Change My Attitude Before it's Too Late" (James MacDonald).I absolutely LOVED it! It was a great study for me to do because my attitude is definitely something that needs working on, on a daily basis. It's funny but I had forgotten about that book until this morning. I saw it on the book shelf and picked it up. I began to look through it because anytime I read I always underline, circle, highlight or star anything that jumps off the page at me, or speaks to me. Let me tell you, this book had lots of pen markings. So I decided to look back through the book and read everything I had marked. Lately, I have felt like my attitude, just about everything sorta stinks and it's affecting me daily. And let me be the first to say, it doesn't make for a very good day either. There are several chapters in this book, but today one that stood out to me most was the one on a Covetous attitude and then how to replace it with an attitude of contentment. I think, especially in our world today in which people place such high regard on materialistic "things" and how high you can make it up the ladder, it puts people in a position of wanting more. And I think (like the book says) it only sets people up for a let-down. Just bear with me for a few because if you read this, you may be blessed too! It may just be what you needed to hear as well.

In Numbers 11:16-20 it says, "Say to the people, 'Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow, and you shall eat meat; for you have wept in the ears of the Lord, saying, "oh that someone would give us meat to eat! For we were well off in Egypt." Therefore the Lord will give you meat and you shall eat" (v.18) The book says, to paraphrase what God is saying "You want meat? you want something to eat? Is that better than Me? You think food is going to meet all your needs? You think THAT is going to make you happy? Really? Then you shall have it!" and He gave it to them "Therefore the Lord will give you meat and you shall eat. You shall eat, not one day, nor two days, nor five days, nor ten days, nor twenty days, but a whole month." (v. 18-20). So here we see that God was giving them what they had been wanting, what they had been complaining about wanting. But that doesn't mean it was a good thing. He was doing it to teach them a lesson. In Psalm 106:15, His action is mentioned as well as the consequence that came later "He gave them their request, but sent leanness into their soul." Once He gave them what they thought they HAD to have, He withdrew and put them into the wilderness.

One thing the book says is, "In time you may come to the place where you hate the very thing that you had to have." God gave them enough meat to eat to the point where "it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathesome to you." He gave them so much to eat that they choked on it! In the book MacDonald mentions how single adults who loved the Lord have prayed for Him to bring along the right person and how they have pleaded "I have to have a husband", "I can't be happy until He meets this need" and then she goes out on her own and later he sees her in his office only to find out that she has made the worst mistake of her life and how miserable she is now that she did not wait on the perfect plan of the Lord. "He gave them their request and sent leanness into their soul." He says he has also seen parents struggle with infertility and the burden of wanting children so badly to the point of being demanding. He says how it's not a good thing for a child to be born into a home where the child is more important than God. God doesn't want anything substituted for him and children who have to take God's place have a hard time. So he says "Beware of begging God for non-essentials. In time you may hate what you had to have." And remember that enough is never enough. Once God gives us the mate we want, then that's not enough, we want the nice house and the nice cars, then that isn't enough, we want to have kids and then that's not enough we need more money b/c the kids are too expensive and now we have to have a bigger house and the list goes on and on. It never stops.

Then the next chapter shifts to replacing that couvetous attitude with an attitude of contentment. There was one main thing that jumped off the page when I read it. It simply said, "When we expect to be satisfied with the basics, God will often surprise us with treats." I just love that! It really puts it into perspective doesn't it? I mean, if we just sit back and let God take care of us, He will surely bless us with something wonderful because that's what He wants to do. He wants us to live for Him and be secure in Him so that He can love us and pour out His blessings on us. He doesn't want to punish us or "put leanness into our souls" but if we beg and beg for it, then He like our earthly fathers will have to teach us a lesson. Sorry for the long post, but this little lesson was something I needed to get my attitude jump-started in the right direction and I thought I would share just in case someone else needed it too!