Complaining Is Another Way To Stay Stuck

I recently heard someone say, "I don't think Christians have any idea just how much God hates complaining."

And I thought, oh, if that's true, I know a lot of Christians who are in trouble.

(To which I heard God whisper, you mean like you?)

This person went on to explain that complaining is just another way to keep remaining where we are. Complaining is another way to stay stuck.

When we complain, we don’t just talk about the thing again, we feel it again. We re-enter the frustration. We re-enter the hurt. The brain doesn’t always distinguish between memory and right now, so when we complain, we often end up re-experiencing the very thing we wish we could move past.

And, likely, things we probably NEED to move past.

Joyce Meyer says, "God doesn't answer complaints, he answers prayers."

Prayer is different than remaining. Prayer invites God into the space where I’m stuck. It shifts the conversation from “Why is this happening?” to “Be with me in this.” Prayer doesn’t always change the situation, but it always changes me.

I think we too often forget that - that much of life is about changing who I am and not as much about changing what the world is. So often when I get to complaining about this awful world, I'm doing it - not always knowingly - to avoid addressing the awful in me.

Pointing out how much needs to change about this world can keep me from facing how much I need to change about me!

Amen.

Sometimes I wonder if we really understand what happens when we complain. Not just the words we say, but what they quietly shape in us.

If we could see it clearly, if we could see the way complaining hardens our hearts, distances us from gratitude, and subtly declares that God isn’t enough, we might treat it with a little more gravity.

Because every complaint is a seed. And depending on where we plant it - in bitterness or in prayer - it will either grow into resentment or into deeper trust.

These are challenging times. It can be easy to find something to complain about. (But do we really need challenging times to find a reason to complain?)

The much harder thing is to find a reason to trust.

Trust. And who knows, maybe when we stop complaining and start trusting, it will be someone else's reason to start doing the same.