This is an extract from my new book You will Get Through This (100 Days Through Grief Devotional) due to be released in the first half of next year…

Proverbs 4.23 – Be careful how you think, your life is shaped by your thoughts.

Attitude is defined as a settled way of thinking or feeling about something/the environment around us. We each have attitudes. Some of these attitudes are developed in the environment that we live in. We can have a negative view of the world or a positive world view. Even God’s attitudes can influence our lives, especially when our own attitudes can lead us off the straight and narrow path.

What is our attitude in the face of adversity, grief, tragedy? How do we respond to grief? Do we respond to our troubles in a negative way? Do we curse God? Or do we praise God and trust the Lord that He will see us through this difficult patch? What do you do?

See, when we are faced with difficulties and end up in a wilderness our natural response is to revert to the attitudes we grew up with. So, coming from a non-Christian family it would be easy to go back to those attitudes and to abandon the faith. The wilderness period is the stripping of all the layers to see what is really in our hearts. Do we cry out to God in anger that he has taken away what was ours? Or do we put our trust in God, and believe that God’s perfect plan is best?

The only way for us to overcome the tragedy around us, and to be able to keep the good godly attitudes is by walking in the Spirit. By having a close relationship with Father, and that means reading his word, praying and worshipping.  The only way we can do this is by being open to Father, by being receptive of his love, rather than pushing it away. Let God’s word cleanse us from the inside out, to let it inhabit all the things that we do.

Life is about challenges, it is about difficulties. It is about facing them with zeal and joy, with a positive attitude rather than a negative attitude. I remember someone telling me this once and it stuck by me while I was grieving my lost son.

People will watch how you grieve, on whether you are clinging on to God or turn your back on God. What is it you want people to see? A strong faith, or a faith that does not exist at all? So, with an attitude of being afraid of grief I moved forward begrudgingly, trusting the Lord in the face of adversity and believing that he would see me through.