Be Optimistic |  Crosstraining 1.4.16

Read Proverbs 11:27 I’m horrible at losing things. Anytime I start pacing around the house, my wife rolls her eyes and asks me what I’m looking for now. The problem is that I’ll come across random things I don’t need over and over again, but, as soon as I need that thing I’ve seen a thousand times in the last month, I can no longer find it. This is the opposite to how our attitude works, though. With our attitude, when we look for the good in life, we will find it. The proverbs in the Bible are a group of bite sized chunks of wisdom that give us insights into how to best live our lives. In this particular proverb in Proverbs 11:27, the writer says that “whoever seeks good finds favor, but evil comes to one who searches for it.” The writer is saying that people who seek the good out of life will find it. But, those who constantly look for the negative in life will find all the negative things. Many of us are plagued by our bad attitudes. We gripe and complain and are constantly finding more things to gripe and complain about. But, what if we changed our perspective? What if we started looking for the good things in people? What if we started looking for the good in our world? What if we started looking for good things to do for other people instead of waiting for them to do something bad to us? Most of us are pessimistic because of how we feel. But, we don’t have to allow our feelings to determine our attitude. We can be optimistic based on what God has said. Reflect Is your attitude based more on what you see or what God says? How can you move toward the latter? Pray Ask God to help you look for good in others and in the world instead of constantly focusing on the negative around you. // TWO-A-DAYS // GO A LITTLE FARTHER WITH YOUR DAILY DEVOTIONS // Go through these questions with your spouse, kids, or friend, or you can even journal about the answers to these questions:

1. What was the best part of your day?
2. What was the toughest part of your day?
3. Where did you mess up today?
4. Where did you see God today?