debbie downer

I woke up this morning and had all these complaining thoughts running through my head.  Then I started to pray and I felt like Jesus was standing on the other side of this chalk-line drawn on the ground.  On my side of the line it was boring and depressing.  On His side He was celebrating. There were people all having a party around Him.  He had a glass of wine in His hand.  He said, "Hey, which one do you want.  You can stay there but it's way more fun over here."  I started to step over and He stopped me and said "Oh, by the way, you have to leave complaints over there." So I agreed to it and I ended up having some really fun and intimate time with God after that.

It's been on my mind all day.  How much do I complain?!  But it seems like complaining is just a part of our culture.  If your DON'T complain, people get annoyed with you.  Everyone wants you to be just as negative as they are.  It seems that the times I try to respond to negativity with positive truths, the other person gets super offended or people tell me I'm unrealistic. 

I heard Graham Cooke say once that if praise and thanksgiving are the worship of heaven, then what do you think complaining would be worshipping?  Think about THAT for a while.  Scary, huh?  I'm just empowering the enemy by agreeing with negativity.

I then began to wonder if Jesus ever compained.  So I read through the gospel of Mark at work this morning.  And guess what?  He DIDN'T.  And come on, Jesus had PLENTY of reasons to complain...Disciples that were airheaded at times and stubborn, people always wanting to kill Him, the pharisees always trying to bring Him down, wearing sandles in the desert...all of those things seem pretty worthy of complaint.

So then I looked up the definition of complaining. 

complain [kəmˈpleɪn]

vb (intr)

1. to express resentment, displeasure, etc., esp habitually; grumble

2. (foll by of) to state the presence of pain, illness, etc., esp in the hope of sympathy

 

The part that stood out to me is the motive in the second part..."in the hope of sympathy".  What is our motive behind complaining?  Is it because we want others to feel sorry for us, because we want that attention of having someone say "oh, poor baby, she has a headache..."  I mean, how lame is that?!?! 

 

I just think it's time to take a look at our motives behind why we say things, and think about the atmosphere we are creating.  I personally want the atmosphere of the Holy Spirit to continually follow me around, and I'm not creating that with complaining.

 

And even if you try to stop complaining and people say you are unrealistic about things, so what?  I mean, if you wanna talk about unrealistic, let's look at the crazy wonderful things we all believe in.  It is unrealistic that I can lay hands on someone and they get healed, but it happens. 

 

So, I would like to invite everyone into a new revolution, the revolution of happy.  There is a party waiting for us on the other side of that chalk line, and Jesus is there.  So we can just drop that heavy baggage of complaining and join the party.