Godsway Media LLC

There has been a lot of complaining around our area lately. People are wondering why it has to be so cold outside, and why there is no snow. I sat at a Cleveland Browns football game (not a fan…I love my Steelers) Sunday night. I complained about the winds off the lake…I’ve never been so cold in my entire life! But I also sat and listened to the armchair quarterbacks talk about what they would do to fix the Brownies. I’ve been complaining about my family’s current financial status, Complain, complain, complain! We all do it more than we know…

“Do everything without complaining”. Philippians 2:14

Two groups of psychology students were wired for audio and assigned a period to socialize freely. One group knew the experiment would measure the level of complaining in normal conversation, the other did not. Afterwards, both groups were shocked by how frequently they complained. The informed group complained almost as much as the uninformed one. It’s the oldest response in the book — literally! Confronted with our choices and actions, we spontaneously start complaining. “It was their fault, not mine. If they hadn’t…I wouldn’t have.”

Adam needed no lessons in the art of complaining. Caught red-handed, he told God, “The woman You gave…me, she gave me…and I ate”. Eve said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate” (Genesis 3:12-13 NAS). Neither accepted responsibility for their choices. And since God doesn’t help people who won’t be responsible, He threw the complainers out of Paradise.

If they ever “got it” regarding complaining, they didn’t transmit it to their offspring, Isreal. “Now the people complained…in the hearing of the Lord…his anger was aroused. Then fire…consumed…the outskirts of the camp” (Numbers 11:1 NIV). Notice, all complaining is “in the hearing of the Lord”, and He clearly doesn’t want to hear it!

Paul writes: “Do not complain as some of them did; they were killed by the angel that destroys. The things that happened to those people are examples…written down to teach us” (I Corinthians 10:10-11 NCV).

Clean up your verbal act! That goes for all of us! Decide to detect, reject, and eject all complaining from your vocabulary!

More later…

Shari