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Hello, My Readers,
Welocme to the UCOG Yahoo groups online Bible studies. These studies are designed to meet the spiritual needs of all believers who desire meaningful spiritual growth in their walk with God. There is no height you cannot attain in the spirit if only you are ready to take the bull by the horn; do away with every form of hinderance and follow the principles of spiritual growth and teamwork laid down in God's word.
Hebrews 5:12: "For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, you have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk and not of strong meat."
Jesus our Lord expects each believer to grow to the level where he or she can teach others. In many of the Epistles, the believer is encouraged to grow in grace and in the knowledge of Christ (2nd Peter 3:18).
When a believer refuses to grow, he remains a spiritual babe who is unskillful in the WORD. Such baby christians need milk and not strong meat.
When we as believers, begin to apply the truth we know in our lives, we will begin to grow and our knowledge of Christ will also increase. Paul encourages the believer to be "rooted and built up in Him" (Colossians 2:7). As believers, we draw our nutrients from Him, i.e. Jesus Christ.
Teammates Must Be Able to Count on Each Other When It Counts
They were expected to crush the competition. They had talent and the ambition to win. But instead of dominating, they self-destructed. If only they'd known about the Law of the Bad Apple. "Rotten Attitudes Ruin a Team".
Everyone is part of a team. If you are married, you and your spouse are a team. If you give your time to a church or other organization, you are part of volunteers.
And while everyone knows teamwork is a good thing, you may not know how it really works. Why do some teams appear to skyrocket toward realizing their vision while others seem to go nowhere? There are no simple answers.
Join me now in today's lesson as I try with the help of the Holy Spirit to demystify the process of building a winning team. Vision gives team members direction and confidence. I have given enough lectures about this theme.
Yesternight on the prayerline, God sent his Holy Spirit to bulldoze and demolish every hindrances to our success. He has done His Part.
Now, for all these promises and revelations to be manifested in our lives, we have our own part to play as His team players and workmanship to bring into fruition His unfailing promises.
I understand the importance of a positive attitude and have placed such a strong emphasis on it for myself, for my children as they are growing up, and for the churches I am leading.
Here is something I would like to share with you briefly about attitude for The Winning Attitude.
Attitude...
It is the "advance man" of our true selves
Its roots are inward but its fruit is outward.
It is our best friend or our worst enemy.
It is more honest and more consistent than our words.
It is an outward look based on past experiences.
It is a thing which draws people to us or repels them.
It is never content until it is expressed.
It is the liberation of our past.
It is the speaker of our present.
It is the prophet of our future.
Good attitudes among players do not guarantee a team's success, but bad attitudes guarantees its failure.
The following five (5) truths about attitudes clarify how they affect a team and teamwork.
1. Attitudes Have the Power to Lift Up or Tear Down a Team
I read an article "The Winner's Edge" in which Denis Waitley stated, "The real leaders in business, in the professional community, in education, in government, and in the home also seem to draw upon a special cutting edge that separates them from the rest of society. The winner's edge is not in a gifted birth, in a high IQ or in talent. The winner's edge is in the attitude, not aptitude."
Unfortunately, I think too many people resist that notion. They want to believe that talent alone (or talent with experience) is enough. But plenty of talented teams out there never amount to anything because of the attitudes of their players
Various attitudes may impact a team made up of highly talented players:
Ability + Attitudes = Result
Great Talent + Rotten Attitudes = Bad Team
Great Talent + Bad Attitudes = Average Team
Great Talent + Average Attitudes = Good Team
Great Talent + Good Attitudes = Great Team
If you want outstanding results, you need good people with great talent and awesome attitudes. When attitudes go up, so does the potential of the team. When attitudes go down, the potential of the team goes with it. What an eye opener for the blind!
2. An Attitude Compounds When Exposed to Others
Several things on a team are not contagious. Talent. Experience. Willingness to practice. But you can be sure of one thing: Attitude is catching. When someone on the team is teachable and his humility is rewarded by improvement, others are more likely to display similar characteristics.
When a leader is upbeat in the face of discouraging circumstances, others admire that quality and want to be like him.
When a team member displays a strong work ethic and begins to have a positive impact, others imitate him. People become inspired by their peers. People have a tendency to adopt the attitudes of those they spend time with - to pick up on their mind-set, beliefs, and approaches to challenges.
3. Bad Attitudes Compound Faster Than Good Ones
There's only one thing more contagious than a good attitude - and that's a bad attitude. For some reason many people think it's chic to be negative. I suspect that they think it makes them appear smarter or important. But the truth is that a negative attitude hurts rather than helps the person who has it. And it also hurts the people around him.
A wise baseball manager once remarked that he never allowed the positive players to room with the negative ones on the road. When he created the team's room assignments, he always put the negative ones together so that they couldn't poison anyone else.
To see how quickly and easily an attitude or mind-set can spread, just think about this story from Norman Cousins. Once during a football game, a doctor at the first aid station treated five people for what he suspected might be food poisoning.
Since Their symptoms were similar, he tried to track down what they had in common. He soon discovered that all five people had bought drinks from a particular concession stand at the stadium.
The physician wanted to do the responsible thing, so he requested that the game's announcer advise people in the stadium to avoid buying drinks from the particular vendor because of the possibility of food poisoning.
Before long, more than two hundred people complained of food poisoning symptoms. Nearly half the people's symptoms were so severe that they were taken to the hospital.
The story doesn't end there, however. After a little more detective work, it was discovered that the five original victims had eaten tainted potato salad from one particular deli on the way to the game.
When the other "sufferers" found out that the drinks in the stadium were safe, they experienced miraculous recoveries. That just goes to show you, an attitude spreads very quickly.
4. Attitudes Are Subjective, So Identifying a Wrong One Can Be Difficult
Have you ever interacted with someone for the first time and suspected that his attitude was poor, yet you were unable to put your finger on exactly what was wrong? I believe many people have that experience.
The reason people doubt their observations about other's attitude may not do anything illegal or unethical. Yet his attitude may be ruining the team just the same.
People always project on the outside how they feel on the inside. Attitude is really about how a person is. That overflows into how he acts.
Allow me to share with you common rotten attitudes that ruin a team so that you can recognize them for what they are when you see them.
An inability to admit wrongdoing. Have you ever spent time with people who never admit they're wrong? It's painful. Nobody's perfect, but someone who thinks he is does not make an ideal teammate. His wrong attitude will always create conflict.
Petty Jealousy. An attitude that really works against people is the desire for equality that feeds petty jealousy. For some reason the people with this attitude believe that every person deserves equal treatment, regardless of talent, performance, or impact. Yet nothing could be farther from the truth. Each of us is created uniquely and performs differently, and as a result, we should be treated as such.
The disease of me. An overpowering beliefe in their own importance. Their actions virtually shout the claim, "I'm the one".
A desire to hog all the credit. Another bad attitude that hurts the team is similar to the "disease of me." But where the person with that disease may simmer in the background and create dissension, the credit hog continually steps into the spotlight to take a bow -whether he has earned it or not. In a word, most bad attitudes are the result of selfishness.
Certainly there are other negative attitudes that I haven't named, but my intention isn't to list every bad attitude - just some of the most common ones. If one of your teammates puts others down, sabotages teamwork, or makes himself out to be more important than the team, then you can be sure that you've encoumtered someone with a bad attitude.
5. Rotten Attitudes, Left Alone, Ruin Everything.
Bad attitudes among Ministers, Elders, and Members must be addressed. You can be sure that they will always cause dissension, resentment, combativeness, and division on a team. And they will never go away on their own if they are left unaddressed. They will simply fester and ruin a team - along with its chances of reaching its potential.
Because people with bad attitudes are so difficult to deal with and because attitudes seem so subjective, you may doubt your gut reaction when you encounter a bad apple.
After all, it it's only your opinion that he has a rotten attitude, then you have no right to address it, right? Not if you care about the team. Rotten attitudes ruin a team. That is always true.
If you leave a bad apple in a barrel of good apples, you will always end up with a barrel of rotten apples.
President Thomas Jefferson remarked, "Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude." If you care about your team and you are committed to helping all of the players, you can't ignore a bad attitude. If you do, you will find out the hard way about the Law of the Bad Apple. To be continued!
Abundant Blessings.
Archbishop Daniel Browne
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