The Sacred Articles of Attitude

Have you ever thought about your attitude? Have you ever been told you have a ‘bad attitude’, or that you have a ‘great attitude’?

As I was beginning my devotional time early one morning, the Lord spoke to my heart. He said, “I want you to work on your attitude, Tracy-Ann.”

My response was, ‘Yes, Lord. Show me how…. But I don’t know what you mean by my attitude. Wherever I carry a wrong heart, I’m sorry. It’s just that I so often feel either angry or sad or at a loss. I know I can be critical and self-centred. I know I struggle with self-pity. You’ve spoken to me about that having a root in slothfulness. That was an eye-opener. I can feel insecure a lot, not believing I have a place in this world…”

And suddenly the Holy Spirit turned on the light inside my darkened mind. “…Ohhhhhh. Those are my attitudes…. Lord, I’ve carried those all my life!”

I paused, considering what He was showing me. As I carried these and other emotions through life, they had become heavier and more burdensome.

Those things God wanted me to work on were those things God wanted to set me free from.

God doesn't just want me to be free, He needs me to be free so I can live a life of absolute devotion to Him. So I can be productive, fully matured, passionate, able, and authentic without apology, to complete His will for me. He was showing me that I needed to release those things and begin to see myself with clarity, and see that His devotion and love for me replaced it all.

I opened my bible to begin my reading and jumped back a passage from where I was up to the previous day.

1 Chronicles 22:19

(NIV) Now devote your heart and soul to seeking the Lord your God. Begin to build the sanctuary of the Lord God, so that you may bring the ark of the covenant of the Lord and the sacred articles belonging to God into the temple that will be built for the Name of the Lord.”

This passage is about David making preparations for the temple of the Lord and charging Solomon with the responsibility of building it.

1 Chronicles 22:9 (NIV)

But you will have a son who will be a man of peace and rest, and I will give him rest from all his enemies on every side. His name will be Solomon, and I will grant Israel peace and quiet during his reign. He is the one who will build a house for my name. He will be my son, and I will be his father. And I will establish the throne of his kingdom over Israel forever.’

Peace and rest is how the Lord desires us to live with Him, trusting Him as He establishes our lives in His name.

As I read and considered, it struck me.

First

Devote my heart and soul (all of my being) to seeking the LORD. All of me. Undistracted. Unhindered. With 100% devotion. I can’t seek the Lord with devotion while I’m gnawing over old wounds, doubting God’s goodness towards me, worrying about my circumstances, and allowing quarrels or strife to smudge my relationships.

In some ways, I could see I was still a little girl caught up in the impressions of neglect, embarrassment, disapproval or even jealousy that I had interpreted growing up and continued to experience into adulthood. From those impressions, I never felt good enough. Because of them, I found reasons to justify myself but never found my true identity in Christ. Therefore, I found it difficult to release things and move on.

Second

Begin to build.

I thought I had been building. I thought I had been devoted. And I had been, as much as I could. But the Lord was showing me, these attitudes I continued to carry, blocked me. The attitudes that had been reinforced had become towers in my heart and soul as I experienced life.

You can’t build, devoting your heart and soul, when your heart and soul still has junk from the past claiming you.

I needed to fully let go of the things that hindered me and understand how they were holding me back, like those thick rubber bands that you work-out with at the gym.

Hebrews 12:1 (TLB)

Since we have such a huge crowd of men of faith watching us from the grandstands, let us strip off anything that slows us down or holds us back, and especially those sins that wrap themselves so tightly around our feet and trip us up; and let us run with patience the particular race that God has set before us.

I understood that God wanted to do more with my life. While I was frustrated that He wasn’t, He was patiently waiting for me to lean into Him enough to show me why.

I was to stop blocking myself and holding myself back from people. I was to stop questioning Him constantly. I was to stop waiting with frustration instead of patience and begin to run my personal race without comparison or feelings of rejection or forsakenness.

God wanted me to run my race with belief, empowerment, always aiming for my personal best.

As I read verse 19 over and over again, a rhema word began to cascade over me. I looked up other translations.

(NCV) Now give yourselves completely to obeying the Lord your God. Build the holy place of the Lord God; build the Temple for worship to the Lord. Then bring the Ark of the Agreement with the Lord and the holy items that belong to God into the Temple.”

(Emphasis mine.)

Third

Build the temple for worship to the Lord. My feelings, my attitudes of neglect and failure, of blame and being undecided or lacking, was not worship to the Lord. They were things that blocked me from worshiping the Lord fully, with an open and contrite heart. They were excuses that stopped me at the gates of His presence. I always felt like I was just looking in and now I knew why.

How I craved to be inside the inner court of God’s temple, praising and worshipping in Spirit and in Truth, with freedom, where He could inhabit my praise and dwell with me without obstacles.

And I thought again, I am that temple. He has made me His sanctuary! How can He live in a sanctuary when it was littered? A temple has to be clean and thoroughly swept out. It should be gleaming. My temple was, sadly, still messy with peeling wallpaper.

Fourth

‘Bring the ark of the covenant of the Lord’ (NIV), ‘Bring the Ark of Agreement with the Lord’ (NCV) and the ‘sacred articles’ (NIV), the ‘holy items’ (NCV) that belong to God into the temple.

I was to come into agreement with Him and bring His presence (represented by the Ark) and my attitudes (represented by the sacred articles) that belong to God into the temple, His sanctuary - into me, His image-bearer.

The sacred temple articles were instruments of use. They had set purposes. They were made of gold. They had been refined and crafted. This is what my attitudes should be reflecting.

Fifth

My attitudes belong to God. Therefore, they are sacred. They need to reflect Him. His image. His glory. His righteousness. His power and strength. His unity. My attitudes need to be holy. He wants them devoted to Him because they belong to Him. Whatever doesn’t belong to Him doesn’t belong in His sanctuary, which is now in me.

Oh, I take such a long time to learn things.

Philippians 3:13-14 (TLB)

No, dear brothers, I am still not all I should be, but I am bringing all my energies to bear on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I strain to reach the end of the race and receive the prize for which God is calling us up to heaven because of what Christ Jesus did for us.

As I continue to sit with this and let it absorb my heart, I am aware the clean-up process has already begun. God’s faithfulness has once again gone ahead of me. His challenge to me was to clean up relationships, tidy up the way I see myself, get rid of distractions, focus on His goodness and seek Him first rather than wallow in the muddy pool of self-absorption and sorrow, of lethargy and discontent I so often fell back into. With devotion, I was to cast it all, heave it behind me and fully walk into the clean, new creation Christ had died for me to become.

Isaiah 43:18-19 (TLB)

But forget all that—it is nothing compared to what I’m going to do! For I’m going to do a brand-new thing. See, I have already begun! Don’t you see it? I will make a road through the wilderness of the world for my people to go home, and create rivers for them in the desert!

God calls us to swim in rivers of freedom that was once the desert. He calls us to run, with undivided devotion, along a road that He's made for us. We are to bring all of our energy to bear on that road marked out for us, without anything around our feet to trip us up.

We can't do this on our own. But we are given the Holy Spirit who guides us.

John 14:26-27 (RSV)

But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.

We can take great comfort and knowledge in this, that He will never let us down, He never forsakes us.

Let us not come before Him from our place of grief, pain, trauma, loss, abandonment or whatever else it may be, any longer. Let us come before Him in thankfulness and freedom, acknowledging that He sees the best in us and will continue to perfect us until the day of His return.

Philippians 1:6 (DLNT)

being confident-of this very thing: that the One having begun a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ—