Revitalize Your Church

I once heard my friend, John Maxwell, say, “Your attitude determines your altitude.” How true that is!! When you boil it down, just about everything in life is related to attitude. Did you know that a poor attitude is the number one reason why people are dismissed from their jobs? Do you realize that attitude is the primary difference between mediocre football teams and Super Bowl contenders? Do you understand that your success in marriage, work, and living depends largely on your attitude? Quality of life is not measured by what happens to you - but by how you respond. As Helen Workman said, "It's not what you have to meet, it's how you meet what you have." A doom -and -gloom pessimist will find problems in every possibility. An optimist will see the opportunities in every obstacle. A set-back is a dead end to a pessimist. For an optimist it is only a detour. A pessimist longs for the "good old days", while the optimist believes that the best is yet to com...

Cal Thomas asks "What Happened to Optimism?"

On September 6, 1965, Admiral James Stockdale’s A-4 Skyhawk was shot down over Viet Nam. The injured Stockdale found himself captured and imprisoned in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton”, where he was a prisoner of war for over seven years. He was the highest ranking naval officer held as a prisoner of war in the Viet Nam war. Stockdale was kept in solitary confinement for four years, placed in irons for two years, denied medical care and malnourished. Despite these terrible conditions, he led an “underground resistance movement” which brought hope and a sense of esprit de corps to his fellow POW’s. Still, many prisoners died under these grueling circumstances. Finally, in 1973, the brave admiral was released, and awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor is 1976 by President Ford. Several years later, author and researcher, Jim Collins, interviewed Stockdale in the campus of Stanford University, and asked the decorated offer how he coped with the demoralizing effects of his imprisonment. Stoc...