You Can Stop Complaining: A Five-Day Fast!Намуна

Why do we complain? And what can we do about it?

None of us are immune from the dramatic heartaches and disappointments that craft our life. Your parents may have made mistakes, and you come from a dysfunctional home. Siblings may have wounded you deeply, or you may be one of the many adults whose life was scarred as a young person by bullying. Your marriage may have failed, or you feel imprisoned in a bad marriage or relationship.

Negative, stinging encounters may taint your life with a propensity to be negative and complain. It is so easy just to get lost along the pathway of life’s struggles. Complaining creates negative chains and binds us to the past. 

Complaining has this devastating impact; it sends all the wrong messages to God. Complaining hurls ingratitude at God.

When we become part of God’s family, we get a new identity—we become His children. At some point in your life, you have been around children or teenagers who are ungrateful. Is there anything that annoys you more than a child being ungrateful? What makes it so distasteful is that the ungratefulness aims at the person who has made the most significant sacrifices for the child—the parent. That’s the picture I get when I think of our ungratefulness to God. We are these snarky little kids who are complaining to God the Father.

Ingratitude blinds us in two ways: 

(1) We fail to give God credit for His majestic watchfulness over us. In our microscopic view of life, we are sightless to see how He uses all things for our good. Devastating, confronting experiences build the steel in our character. Seen through spiritual eyes, they prepare us to face the future. 

(2) We don’t have eyes to see the good God has done for us. The times He has saved us, the many right decisions the Holy Spirit has guided us in, and the coda of all God’s goodness—salvation through Christ.

What can you do about complaining? The antithesis of complaining is gratefulness. I say that gratefulness is the oil of the Spirit. It is an apt simile, like oil is to an engine, so gratefulness is the oil of our spiritual life. Remove the oil—the engine comes to a clanking halt. Remove gratefulness, and our spiritual life sputters to a standstill.

We need to refocus our eyes; good is always somewhere. NO matter how bleak circumstances, hope is ever-present.

The truth—good always overcomes evil. Gratefulness conquers complaining.