Another Insight from Jack Deere et al.

An excerpt from Jack Deer in his book, Surprised by the Voice of God :

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Attitude Matters

Any coach will tell you that the right diet and exercise are essential for optimum performance. But a good coach knows you can have both diet and exercise and still lose if the players don’t have the right attitude. Listen to the story of Matt Biondi:

Americans who follow swimming had high hopes for Matt Biondi, a member of the U.S. Olympic Team in 1988. Some sportswriters were touting Biondi as likely to match Mark Spitz’s 1972 feat of taking seven gold medals. But Biondi finished a heartbreaking third in his first event, the 200-meter freestyle. In his next event, the 10-meter butterfly, Biondi was inched out for the gold by another swimmer who made a greater effort in the last meter.

Sportscasters speculated that the defeats would dispirit Biondi in his successive events. But Biondi rebounded from defeat and took a gold medal in his next five events. One viewer who was not surprised by Biondi’s comeback was Martin Seligman, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, who had tested Biondi for optimism earlier that year. In an experiment done with Seligman, the swimming coach told Biondi during a special event meant to showcase Biondi’s best performance that he had a worse time than was actually the case. Despite the downbeat feedback, when Biondi was asked to rest and try again, his performance—actually already very good—was even better. But when other team members were given a false bad time—and whose test scores showed they were pessimistic—tried again, they did even worse the second time.

Biondi's confident attitude made the difference between a good swimmer and a champion.

Attitude is critical in the world of athletics. It’s even more critical when we talk about reading the Bible. The words of God will never benefit us unless we believe them (Heb. 3:7-19). If my friend Dorothy had not believed the words of Luke 24:26, those words would never have turned her away from her suicidal course. Reading and attempting to obey the Bible without having confidence in God’s words robs the Bible of its power.

Not only do we need to have faith and confidence in the Bible, we need to read it for the right reasons. C.S. Lewis wrote that when we come to the Scripture it’s not a “question of learning a subject but of steeping ourselves in a Personality.” In other words, our primary purpose for meditating on the Bible should be to meet Christ, to hear his voice, and to see him more clearly that we might love him more passionately. Scripture reading is meant to aid in the process of “forming Christ within us” (Gal. 4:19)

(pages 106-107)

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On a wall in my house, I have a poster with this quote from Chuck Swindoll:

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Attitudes

Words can never adequately convey the incredible impact of our attitude toward life. The longer I live the more convinced I am that life is 10 percent what happens to us and 90 percent how we respond to it.

I believe the single most significant decision I can make on a day-to-day basis is my choice of attitude. It is more important than my past, my education, my bankroll, my successes or failures, what other people think of me or say about me, my circumstances, or my position. Attitude keeps me going or cripples my progress. It alone fuels my fire or assaults my hope. When my attitudes are right, there’s no barrier too high, no valley too deep, no dream too extreme, no challenge too great for me.