I'm not talking about pretending we are positive. Nor am I talking like acting as though all things are well. You might recognize either or both from your life. The Christian message is mixed with both. We live in fear of what people will think both in our positive and in our negative times. I know that there are times of negative in my life that I want no one to know about, see, or engage with. There are also those times when I'm so positive in my life that it's offensive to those who are not in that space. Putting on a happy face isn't always the best choice. People in the world love to rain on other people's parade and we love to remind the world that we are different from them. Sometimes that equates to an attitude of superiority. Definitely not Christian. I'm positive about a lot of my life but do get overwhelmed with the expectation to be positive by those around me. Satan has taken great pains to see that we have those in our lives who like to steal our joy. Whether it be the gossip or the braggart, the damage can mount quickly and the theft has taken place. We succumb to the event and act like it's a life sentence.
Sometimes we need to acknowledge that we are more influenced by the world than we really want to admit. Take the news media for example. Their job is to make everything seem worse than it is. Bad news sells while good news gets the channel changed. There are people around us who are like that as well. For every positive you live, they live the negative equivalent. That's where Murphy's Law comes in, superstitions abound, and doubt destroys the remnant who have held firm to their optimism. Ever been around negative people when you are happy? The life in you can be felt leaving your body if you aren't centered on Jesus. The same goes in your lives around others. If, as a Christian, are living a negative life, there is little that anyone would want from living a life like yours. The witness is gone and in place is a plate of food no one wants to eat. Paul talks about being all things to all people so that they may see Jesus and believe and be saved. When we are living in negativity we serve a meal that best be left in the fridge. People want positivity for the most part. As Christians we have that positivity to give away if we will only get outside of ourselves.
I've done more than my fair share of complaining over the 63 years of my life. In fact, I've been guilty of living selfishly many times with my negative thinking. David, when confronted about his sin of murder and adultery said, "against you and you alone have I sinned, oh Lord." That's the essence of it. We come into a negative place where Christ isn't manifested in our life and the real damage is we lose that connection with Jesus. We don't lose our salvation if we are saved but we lose the "favor" of the Lord. Turning once again to the positive is essential for the Christian to live an overcoming life. The positive allows us room to look around, assess all that is right in our lives and then thank God for the blessings he has given us midst the negative world we live in. Daily and sometimes minute by minute I can choose to be positive. I can choose to believe in the promises of God. I can choose to lay my hands on the promises of God and believe that the impossible is possible. I can choose to share positively with others and let the negativity go back to where it came from. I can choose to be around positive people and stay away from negative people when I'm weak.
It's always my choice.
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