A rabbi and a soap maker went for a walk together. The soap maker said, "What good is religion? Look at all the trouble and misery of the world! Still there, even after thousands of years of teaching about goodness and truth and peace. Still there, after all the prayers and sermons and teachings. If religion is good and true, why should this be?"
The rabbi said nothing. They continued walking until he noticed a child playing in the gutter. Then the rabbi said, "Look at that child. You say that soap makes people clean, but see the dirt on that youngster. Of what good is soap? With all the soap in the world, over all these years, the child is still filthy. I wonder how effective soap is, after all!"
The soap maker protested. "But, Rabbi, soap cannot do any good unless it is used!" "Exactly!" replied the rabbi. (Stories for Preachers & Teachers)
As we continue to think about “How to face life’s challenges”, I want us today to look at doing so “with Jesus’ attitudes”. As that story suggests, the problem with Jesus’ teaching about how to face life’s challenges is not that it’s been tried and found wanting, but that it is waiting to be found and tried. Much of Jesus’ teaching about how to live is, I suggest, like much of the bible’s teaching, about our attitudes. In that he agrees with human experience down the ages.
“It isn't your problems that are bothering you. It is the way you are looking at them.” [Epictetus (C. 55-C. 135)]
“Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens. Circumstances and situations do colour life, but you have been given the mind to choose what the colour shall be.” [John Homer Miller (1722-1791)]
“It all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves.” [Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961)]
So let’s hear Luke’s version of some of Jesus’ teaching about how to live, about the attitudes we need to bring to life, from Bible:Luke+6:20-31 .....

1. Jesus invites us to embrace a radical attitude.
The stuff we have just heard is frankly shocking by the standards of this world. We do not think it a blessing to be poor, hungry, sorrowful or hated, excluded and insulted, but Jesus proclaims a blessing on such people. Nor do we think it a curse to be rich, well fed, happy or well thought of, but Jesus proclaims woe to such people. These are upside-down values, which we dare not explain away. I believe what is at issue is the way we respond to our situation. The negative states on which Jesus pronounces blessing can be turned to good if they cause us to focus on God and seek his blessing, whereas the second set of circumstances can so easily lead us to forget God, because life is easy. "Blessed" (vv. 20-22), as elsewhere in the NT, "refers to the distinctive religious joy which accrues to man from his share in the salvation of the Kingdom of God" (Hauck, TDNT, 4:367).
If we can discover, by the grace of God, how to have the right attitudes to negative circumstances, to the challenges of life, be they poverty, hunger, sorrow, exclusion, or whatever, then we can find the blessing of God’s joy whatever life throws at us.
“Life is a grindstone. But whether it grinds us down or polishes us up depends on us.” [L. Thomas Holdcroft]
But if we do not have godly attitudes then even the best of circumstances, wealth, plenty, happiness, fame, whatever, will lead us away from God and thus into woe.
“People can alter their lives by altering their attitudes.” [William James (1842-1910)]

2. Jesus calls us to positive love.
It’s been often pointed out that negative love was & is a common teaching. “Socrates's version of the Golden Rule was "We ought not to retaliate or render evil for evil to anyone, whatever evil we may have suffered from him." It's good advice but altogether negative. Jesus' advice is altogether positive: "Do to others as you would have them do to you" (Luke 6:31).” (Robert C. Shannon, 1000 Windows)
Here’s a humorous version:
“A good thing to remember,
A better thing to do -
Work with the construction gang,
Not with the wrecking crew.” (Vern Mclellan)
Jesus’ whole teaching and way of life can be best summed up as positive love. He did good to everyone, he challenged people to change their lives for the better, he prayed for those who mocked & crucified him, he forgave those who killed him, he gave his very life for sinners like you and me, who did not in the least deserve his love. And he calls on us to respond to life’s challenges with his positive love. We need to see ourselves as being here not to get but to give.
“When we come to the end of life, the question will be, "How much have you given?" not "How much have you gotten?"” [George Sweeting, former president, Moody Bible Institute]
That’s a radical attitude. Like Jesus, we must see ourselves as slaves, who are here to serve others, rather than as masters here to be served.
“One thing I know: The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.” [Albert Schweitzer, missionary doctor, 1875-1965]
As a great Anglican prayer says, “God’s service [alone] is perfect freedom.”
So how can we embrace the liberating attitudes of Jesus?

3. Jesus offers to live in us & fill us with his love.
It is beyond our human power to develop the radical, positive love of which Jesus speaks and which he lived, and yet we know of Christians who have lived that kind of love to the benefit of humanity. Their secret has been to open their lives to the loving, life-giving presence of Jesus himself. Let’s hear the challenging words of Jesus from Bible:Revelation+3:14-20.......
These words were written to the Church of Laodicea, to Christians like us. Here’s an echo of Jesus’ words in Luke 6 about the danger of wealth, and by every standard except that of our small part of the world in the 21st century we are extremely rich. Do we not also tend to be lukewarm in our commitment to Jesus and his way of life? So there’s an invitation to receive from Jesus true wealth, righteousness & real vision, which are found only in embracing his attitudes. And the way to develop those attitudes is shown here to be to invite Jesus into our lives, like inviting someone into our house for a meal. The secret to true happiness, to facing life’s challenges, is so simple that anyone can find it. It is to share every moment of every day with Jesus, by opening our lives to his presence.
“Words can never adequately convey the incredible impact of our attitude toward life. The longer I live the more convinced I become that life is 10 percent what happens to us and 90 percent how we respond to it.” [Charles R. Swindoll, Christian Reader, Vol. 33, no. 4.]
If we share our daily lives with Jesus, allowing him to shape our attitudes from within, then we will rise to life’s challenges and find the blessing he pronounced. But if we try to live in our own strength we will experience the woe of which he warned. So let us, today, renew the invitation to Jesus to live in us, and determine to always ask what Jesus would do in our place in life, and with his help let us then life in positive love, as he did.