I got a chance to talk with a bunch of teens last weekend about selflessness! I've been
really stoked about this, and the study was immensely rewarding! At the session before sending the students
home, we went over Philippians 2:14-16a which says, "Do
everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and
pure, children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation. Then
you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word
of life." This concept brings up
some interesting connotations that I would love to share with you.
First of all, we need to understand that God
... HATES ... Grumbling!!!! Before we
really get into it, what does grumbling mean?
Grumbling, as translated in the Greek, is like the cooing of doves. It's a silent murmuring of discontent and ill
will. It doesn't mean "quiet"
in as much as it refers to a secretive meeting.
We would call it complaining or whining, but in such a way that is destructive
in a festering way, like an infection.
The Old Testament speaks of grumbling as a lingering or fixation on
whining and complaining. In 1
Corinthians 10:10, Paul reminds the Corinthian Christians of what God did to
the Hebrew people as they began to grumble in the desert (Numbers 16:41). God was prepared to wipe the entire nation
from the face of the Earth. With a
plague, often spoken of as a death angel of the Lord, God had already begun to
destroy the grumbling nation of Israel.
As Moses and Aaron had done several times already, they begged for God
to forgive the people. Aaron ran to a
point between the living and the dead to plead for the lives of the remaining
Israelites, but by that time, 14,700 people had already died...GRUMBLING! So, what's the big deal? When Israel worshipped a pagan God and did
all kinds of degrading acts around its altar, God took only a fraction of that
number! Why would He react so strongly
to grumbling?
That's the overarching issue, really. Grumbling is deceptive in its
whispering. Loud sins often tend to be
seen as the most destructive, but we forget the power of words. A sword ill used can commit murder but words
ill spoken can commit genocide. We
forget what James says about words. He
says in James 3:5b-6, "Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a
small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the
body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire,
and is itself set on fire by hell." Philippians 2:1-18 is all about being
selfless, and, in order to grumble or argue, we must be as selfish as
possible. How do we have the time to
fight with or talk bad about each other if we are busy loving others? Grumbling, at best, is a self-defense
mechanism that has gone horribly wrong.
Grumbling, at worst, is an attack that is both cowardly and dangerously
affective. The natural "need"
to rise on the ashes of others is evil in its selfish ambition. The feeling that we have the right to have an
opinion and grumble or complain about something that God commands of us is
natural for people that think God is little more than an elected official. He's not.
He's God.
What do we do then? We pull our heads out of our private whining,
backbiting and trashing in order to actually make a difference in the
kingdom. God is God. We do what He tells us to do. We don't have time to ask how we feel about
His commands. He's our Lord; we agree
with His decree because of who He is not because of what we want. Our brothers and sisters are our family. We don't argue, trash talk or fight because
we need each other in this brutal world!
Did some dude lie about something?
Is some lady wrong about something?
What do they need? Grumbling and
arguing or loving support and accountability?
The world is not our enemy, it is our mission field. We don't speak ill and attack the very people
for whom Jesus died and intended for us to bring salvation. Selflessness is admitting that it's not all
about us. Our life is an offering, an
outpouring to the world out of love for them and, ultimately, out of reverence
for God. Instead of arguing, murmuring,
backbiting, gossiping, trash-talking, grumbling, complaining, whining, griping,
slandering and attacking with words of death, let's be blameless and pure in
the warped and crooked generation. Let's
shine like stars as we use our words, our hearts, our minds and all of our
effort to hold out the word of life.
In His Grip,
BJ
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