The Attitude Book: How To See With God's Eyes And Feel With His Heart

By Brenton Williams

This book explores the theme that God is more interested in why we do things than in what we do. The motives and attitudes behind what we do are far more important to Him than the actual actions. What we do may appear completely right, but why we do that may be completely wrong.

The book studies the renewing of the heart and mind [the places where motives and attitudes dwell] so that we can think and feel as God does. It goes on to look at how we develop the right attitude that incorporates servant-hood, humility, and obedience.

The final section covers the subject of partnership with Jesus Christ. Headship, submission, and a “gentle and quiet spirit” form the heart of this section and we discover the most precious thing in God’s sight.

The content contains simple and easy to understand truths that any believer can apply to their personal faith.
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• Language: English
• Publisher: Brenton Williams
• Release date: Nov 14, 2012
• ISBN: 9780473208653

Brenton Williams

Brenton Williams was born in 1947 to non-christian parents and, apart from attending a local Sunday School, had no Christian faith or beliefs.He met his wife, Coral, in 1970 who was a member of The Salvation Army and converted that year. He joined The Salvation Army as a member and in 1975 felt a call from God to full-time ministry. He and his wife trained and became Salvation Army Officers for 11 years moving around New Zealand to various posts.His search for truth led him to question some of the tenets of the Army and in 1984 he left The Salvation Army to start a small charismatic group where he still ministers today.The truths in his books are based on first-hand experience and a desire to discover a real and true faith. Central to that is a close and intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ. His heart desire is to help other believers come to know Jesus as a friend and lover and thereby prepare them for an eternity of wedded bliss with their chosen bridegroom.

Book preview

The Attitude Book

By Brenton Williams

Copyright 2012 Brenton Williams.

Unless otherwise stated, scriptures are taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE. Copyright. The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1977 La Habra, California.

Edited by Paul Corrigan's Editing Works!

ISBN: 9780473208653

Smashwords Edition

Synopsis

This book explores the theme that God is more interested in why we do things than in what we do. The motives and attitudes behind what we do are far more important to Him than the actual actions. What we do may appear completely right, but why we do that may be completely wrong.

The book explores the renewing of the heart and mind [the places where motives and attitudes dwell] so that we can think and feel as God does. It goes on to look at how we develop the right attitude that incorporates servant-hood, humility, and obedience.

The final section covers the subject of partnership with Jesus Christ. Headship, submission, and a gentle and quiet spirit form the heart of this section and we discover the most precious thing in God’s sight.

The content contains simple and easy to understand truths that any believer can apply to their personal faith.

Table of Contents

Synopsis

Part One – Understanding Likeness

Chapter 1 – Starting out

Chapter 2 – Which way?

Chapter 3 – Upside-down and back-to-front people

Part Two – The Heart and Mind

Chapter 4 – The heart

Chapter 5 – The mind

Chapter 6 – Nothing good

Chapter 7 – Being renewed

Chapter 8 – A new law

Part Three – The Attitude

Chapter 9 – The Attitude

Chapter 10 – Grasping at equality

Chapter 11 – How we grasp at equality

Chapter 12 – Servant-hood

Chapter 13 – Humility

Chapter 14 – Obedience

Chapter 15 – Reigning in life

Part Four – Partners

Chapter 16 – The Bride of Christ

Chapter 17 – Headship

Chapter 18 – Submission

Chapter 19 – Gentle and quiet

Chapter 20 – What’s in an attitude?

Other books by Brenton Williams

Part One – Understanding Likeness

Chapter 1 – Starting out

What does God mean when he says, You are to be my holy people? [Exodus 22:31] Do we have to stop doing some things and start doing others? What makes God holy? Is he holy because he never swears, lusts, nor acts selfishly, as we do? If I stop swearing, lusting, and acting selfishly, will I be holy, too?

I used to ask myself questions like those as I listened to holiness teaching and tried to understand how I could be holy. I knew it would please God if I became holy, and in my heart I wanted to be holy, but I never seemed to succeed. Whenever I compared myself with what I knew of God, I saw vast differences that only showed how unholy I still was. How could I measure up to his holiness standard?

I did all the usual holiness things. I stopped drinking and smoking. Why? Because the preacher said my body was a temple [1 Corinthians 6:19], and a temple should be holy. That made me feel better but it didn’t make me more like God. I kept all the rules and regulations — written and unwritten, religious and secular — that I knew. Now I had begun to make progress. I could feel myself growing holier with every command I obeyed. That particular bubble burst one day when I realised that what I felt was self-righteousness, not holiness; so much for that avenue to holiness.

Eventually I asked, What does it mean to be ‘holy’? The answer was as simple as the question. To be holy is to be different. When God told the Israelites to come out from among the Gentiles and be holy [Isaiah 52:11] he was telling them to be different from those other peoples. When Paul said the same thing to the Corinthian believers [2 Corinthians 6:17] he meant that they should be unlike the unbelievers surrounding them. Believers are to be different from unbelievers. Believers are to be different because God is different.

Here is the first step towards understanding holiness. God is holy because he is supremely unlike all other beings. Angels are holy because they bear a likeness to God. That makes them different to beings that are unlike God — demons, for instance. People, in their natural state, are unlike God and are therefore unholy. Christ is holy because he is like God and different from other people. So, holiness is being like God and that makes us different from others.

However, what is the source of that difference? What makes God different? Is it that God doesn’t do some things and does others? Would God drink? Would he smoke? Would he swear? What makes God holy? Again, the answer is simple. God is holy because his motives and attitudes are different from ours. The source of holiness is motives and attitudes, not actions. When our motives and attitudes are like God’s we are holy. When they differ, we are unholy.

God made that clear when he said, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my way, . . . [Isaiah 55:8] God thinks differently to us and that makes his attitudes unlike ours. His motives are also different. Why God does things differs from why we do things. Those differences make him holy. If we can change how we think and why we do things to the way God thinks and does things, we will be holy, as he is holy.

This book says that God is more interested in why we do things than in what we do. If we change what without changing why we will never be holy. If we change why we do things, what we do will become holy, although what we do might not change at all.

Central to our understanding is a passage from Paul’s Philippian letter: Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death — even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name . . .. [Philippians 2:5-9] I suggest that you become thoroughly familiar with this passage as a preparation for what is to follow.

If you want to be like God and reflect his holiness, this book is for you. If you have failed repeatedly to meet God’s holiness standard, but haven’t given up, this book will hold answers for you. I hope that the truths outlined here will ease your struggle to be like God and give you the means to be holy. Once you understand how to be holy, you’re halfway there.

One last word. Being holy can be fun. It isn’t all pain and self-denial. As you approach the things written in this book, relax. God is on your side! He wants to make it easy for you to be like him. We meet pain and difficulty only when we resist the change God wants to bring, or we insist on our own understanding or way of doing things. Jesus never struggled to be holy because he always sought to learn and walk in God’s ways, not his own.

Chapter 2 – Which way?

Clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because, ‘The righteous will live by faith.’ [Galatians 3:11]

Let’s start with some reverse logic. Before we look at how to be holy, let’s find out how not to be holy. God wants a special friendship with us, and makes that offer through a covenant. That means he wants a special friendship with us governed by an agreement. A husband and wife share that kind of friendship. Their covenant, entered into during the marriage ceremony, makes their friendship different from others. If they break the covenant, it can spell the end of their special friendship.

Two covenants govern friendship with God. The first is the Old Covenant and the second is the New Covenant. Both offer special friendship with him provided we fulfil certain conditions. Since our objective is to be like God and enjoy intimate fellowship with him, we should take a closer look at what the two covenants offer.

Long before God wrote the Ten Commandments in stone or Moses wrote the Mosaic Law, God declared that a relationship with him would be based on whether a man did right or wrong. He told Cain, If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it. [Genesis 4:7] Right behaviour made men acceptable, wrong behaviour would make them unacceptable. That principle is the basis of any friendship with God.

But how were men to know the difference between right and wrong? That’s where the law comes in. It spells out the difference between right and wrong. All law — whether governmental, religious, or the law of conscience — helps us understand what is right and what is wrong. As we do the right thing and avoid doing wrong we become holy. The law of commandments is the central element of the Old Covenant. However, the law of commandments deals only with what we do. Actions are its vital ingredients, not motives and attitudes.

The principle is fine, but it doesn’t work because we have a sinful nature that tempts and pressures us to do wrong. We got that nature from Adam and Eve’s disobedience in the Garden of God. All people born since, except Jesus, start life with a sinful nature and are soon led into sinful behavior. Each time the sinful nature meets the law it tempts us to do the opposite. If the law says, Thou shalt not. . ., the sinful nature whispers, Thou shalt. . ., and vice versa. We give in more times than not and so lose our chance to get close to God.

Paul understood that well and explained it in detail to the Romans. The key passage is in Romans 7:7-12, which says, " . . . I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, ‘Do not covet.’ But sin [the sinful nature], seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead. Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by