Stop Complaining and Start Gaining (3)

‘Do everything without complaining...’ Philippians 2:14 NIV

Isn’t complaining really just about words? No, it’s much more than that! First, complaining hands your power over to the people and circumstances you complain about, making you feel like their victim. It diminishes your ability to think of solutions, conditions your mind negatively and blunts your ability to receive creative ideas from God. Positive outcomes don’t grow in negative soil! You can’t complain and create simultaneously. ‘Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring…can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs?…’ (James 3:11-12 NIV) Complaints are verbal expressions of negative beliefs. They cancel positive intentions and confessions, rendering you powerless to reap the gains God offers. Complaining focuses on a past you can’t change. It keeps you scavenging in yesterday’s debris, searching for evidence about ‘who did what’ and ‘when’ and ‘why’, while your present slips fruitlessly away. Second, complaining is toxic to your relationships: ‘…Do you not know…a little leaven leavens the whole lump?’ (1 Corinthians 5:6 NKJV) Complaining invites others to complain. Injected poison toxifies every part of the body. Subtly, your relationship, your family, your workplace, your church and your environment become polluted. Complaining polarises relationships. People who don’t like stress, anxiety and negativity begin to distance themselves from you. ‘The tongue has the power of life and death…’ (Proverbs 18:21 NIV)-your life and death, and the life and death of others. So pray, ‘Set a guard over my mouth, O Lord…’ (Psalm 141:3 NIV); help me to avoid complaining.