Sunday message · I Dare You To Move series
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Message Summary
In week two of the I Dare You To Move series, Pastor Phillip Santillan gets practical about breaking the unhealthy circles we run in our relationships. Last week’s Easter message looked at Jesus’ call to repent, which simply means a change of mind about who God is and a change of direction. This week’s focus is negativity, and the big idea is that attitude is everything.
Most of us battle negative thoughts. Asking everyone to trade their religious, Minnesota-nice face for a truthful one, Phil walks through five boxes to check: personal negativity (nobody appreciates me), relational negativity (my boss is a jerk, my spouse will never change), circumstantial negativity (if only I had a better job or a bigger house, a struggle he admits), spiritual negativity (God answers everyone’s prayers but mine, or no church is good enough), and nitpicky negativity, like slow drivers in the left lane. At different points in his life, he says, he would have checked all five.
Wrong attitudes keep us running in unhealthy circles with others. This is not self-help, Phil insists, but what Paul taught churches with relational problems. To the church he planted in Philippi, Paul wrote that in our relationships we should have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who made himself nothing, took the nature of a servant and humbled himself to death on a cross (Philippians 2:5–8). Phil cannot find one example of Jesus showing a negative attitude. The Greek word for mindset means to be mentally decided, and Proverbs 4:23 says to guard your heart, meaning the whole inner person, because everything you do flows from it.
Paul told the Ephesians that since they had learned the truth that comes from Jesus, they should let the Spirit renew their thoughts and attitudes and put on the new nature. Growing in the knowledge of who Jesus is and what he has done is what separates this from self-help. “Attitude is everything, and you get to choose yours,” Phil says, and he shares three decisions he has made. He will not let negative people influence his life; he still loves them, but bad company corrupts good character (1 Corinthians 15:33), a lesson he and his wife learned the hard way. He will not dwell on negative thoughts, but will take every thought captive to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5).
And he will replace negative attitudes not with happy thoughts but with truth about who God is, since Jesus said we will have trouble in this world. Instead of fuming about a difficult boss, we can remember that God sent his Son to die for us while we were his enemies, and that God has placed us in that boss’s life to bring life. A spouse who never changes can become God’s grace to change us. And because God has overcome the world, “if he is my victor, then I don’t have to be a victim.” Circles can become launch pads into maturity, and Jesus welcomes us no matter how often we have failed. Phil closes by daring everyone to move.
