I recently came across this article and decided to re-post it. I believe that it is timely and helpful in today’s upsidedown world.
Glenn.
There’s No Complaining in Faith
Recently I delivered a message that I titled “Now What?”. I was asked to speak at a Christian businessmen’s breakfast and I wanted to give a talk on the value of supporting the local economy. As I was preparing for this, I felt God lead me another way. Many of the men who attend this meeting are currently experiencing difficulties in their businesses so giving them a speech on something so vague seemed a little shallow. Since my goal was to try to bring some realm of encouragement, I started to look to the Bible for a different direction.
James 3:2-12 gives a insightful description of the power of the tongue, vs 6: “the tongue [is] a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire by hell”. This led me to a study of the negative aspects of complaining. Today complaining has almost become a sport. Everywhere you turn someone has an opinion about how bad things are yet they seldom have a solution to offer. The general media makes a living continuously rolling out a steady stream of bad news. Where is the hope? Will we find it with our politicians? How about our families? Myself, I have chosen to follow the promises of God as found in the Bible.
First of all, God doesn’t like complaining. Numbers 11:1 records this: “Now when the people complained, it displeased the LORD; for the LORD heard it, and His anger was aroused. So the fire of the LORD burned among them, and consumed some in the outskirts of the camp”. God, in this passage, displayed a very bad attitude toward the complainers. In chapter 13 we see the account of the twelve spies sent to look at the promised land and report back to Moses what they found. Ten of the spies had a bad report, even though they saw a great bounty for the taking. They were to concerned about how difficult it might be to take the land, even though God had promised it to them. Two of the spies had a different report. They were convinced that God was well able to do what they were promised He would do. These two displayed a tremendous faith in God while the other ten showed a serious lack of faith. As a result of the majority report, the people rejected the good report and started to complain bitterly to Moses. This brought a decidedly negative response from God. The Israelites, who had journeyed a mere 2-3 weeks to get to where they were, now would be told that their trip was being extended by 40 more years. Imagine for a moment being within sight of your destination, the very land promised to you by God, and then being told you can’t go in because of your complaining. This is exactly what happened. I find it also to be ironic that the chapter numbers here are 11 and 13 since the resulting actions literally bankrupted the future of that generation of people.
As Christians, we are faced daily with choices of which report to adhere to. Do we trust the news media and its pundants and experts, or do we trust God? When we engage in a complaining mode, we are moving into the realm of the negative world report. As we do this, we are displaying a serious lack of faith in God’s promise to us. We are setting ourselves up to fail. I am convinced that what is needed today is to speak words of faith and encouragement to the people around us. In my business travels, I am seeing a pattern develop. The people who are speaking of hope and possibility are showing growth and success while the ones going negative are showing signs of weakness and failure. We must not fall into the world’s trap. In order to work faith in an uncertain time, we must first speak faith. Remember the power of the tongue.
Jesus call on us to be overcomers in this age. Only by faith can we accomplish this. In order to truly have that God pleasing faith, we must not be complainers.
God Bless, Glenn Smith Jr, author of The Key of Forgiveness
Tags: Columnists
Monday, August 16th, 2010 - 12:44 PM
Category: Christianity/Religion.
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...
