UNTHANKFULNESS
by A. Gene Veal

In Ephesians 4:29 Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.   We are to watch what words come out of our mouths. We are not to allow unwholesome, rotten, putrid words to proceed from our mouths. The words that we speak are the expression of who we are.

You know we are the only creatures on earth that speak.  Animals do communicate with each other, but they do not speak. Birds can be trained to mimic sounds that resemble speech, but they can’t really converse with us. When a human being speaks, it is original sound. It is created sound. He is communicating what his spirit wants to say. No animal or bird can do that. No other being that lives in this universe can speak except us.

God’s name is "THE WORD" and in His Word, Who is Jesus Christ, He expresses Himself by His Word to us. We know Who He is and what He is like at heart because He tells us. We know Who God is. We know through Jesus Christ Who is the Word Who declares Him. The Word of God is Who God is. 

Your words are who YOU are.

The Psalmist says, "Let the words of my mouth be acceptable in thy sight" and he goes right on to say, "and the meditation of my heart." Be sure that whatever you meditate on in your heart (that is who you really are) will eventually be expressed from your lips. Part of the Christian walk is the words we use.

Do not allow unwholesome words to proceed from your mouth, but rather words that are full of God’s grace, building up those that hear them. Then Paul goes on to mention all other kinds of words and then says that as Christians you should be GIVING THANKS.

So the Christian’s words should declare who he really is. He is a person who is in union with God. He sees the whole universe from God’s point of view. He understands life from God’s throne. For that reason no putrid words come out about life or about people. Rather there is a giving of thanks to God as He walks among men as a person who sees the TRUTH and sees the way things really are.  Therefore a Christian can edify and build up those who don’t see things as clearly as he does.

Unfortunately, one of the most unnoticed, but one of the most wide spread sins, is the sin of COMPLAINING and MOANING.  It is an expression of the lack of contentment. You smile at that and I know why. It is because it is you I am talking about. You wouldn’t smile like that if it wasn’t something with which you identify.

I want to underscore this is one of the most prevalent and misunderstood of all SINS.  Indulging ourselves as in saying, "Poor us" is not just a little thing.  No. Nor is saying "well, everybody does it."  If everybody does it, that doesn’t make it right.  If I understand the Scripture (as we shall see) UNTHANKFULNESS, COMPLAINING, MOANING is at the heart of many, many sins. In fact, it stands at the head of Scriptural lists of sins.  It is put before the most gross sexual sins.

UNTHANKFULNESS to God is described as approaching rebellion against God more than anything else.  So, although we can relate to it, even laughingly, let’s admit the seriousness of this and understand that with all our talk about joy and all of our desire to have the joy of the Lord; there will be no joy until we diagnose the cancer of unthankfulness. Because it is that cancer that swallows up our joy.

Joy is no problem. The joy of the Lord is springs up like a well. It is the spontaneous spring within the heart of every Christian. The fruit of the Spirit is joy. You don’t have to work at it; it is there.  Yet, our joy is swallowed up so many times by the cancer of unthankfulness. If we would put off unthankfulness and treat it as sin, we would find the joy of the Lord there unhindered. 

Let’s very seriously take a look at what the Bible says about this. First of all, the word that occurs many times in the Bible, and which the NASV always translates "grumble," is in the KJV translated, "murmur." Which ever way you translate it, the Greek word for grumbling, moaning, and complaining is a SOUND word. You know what I mean? It sounds like what it is. Say it over and over and you will see what I mean. MUR-MUR, MUR-MUR, MUR-MUR. Do you hear it?

You are not shouting, so you can get away with it. You don’t get mad. You just talk in a low tone complaining, moaning and murmuring. It is the idea of a group of people huddled together and voicing in a low tone ... murmur, murmur. 

Try it in a group. Let each person turn to the other and everyone say it at their own pace aloud over and over again. You will hear it’s meaning. We are angry, but we never blow our top. We are resentful, but we never really act it out. We are rebellious against something somewhere or somebody, but we just say it, we don’t do anything.  This is murmuring. We dismiss our behavior as just being negative. I guess, apart from the grace of God, I am a very negative person.

The grace of God, however, sets us free from being negative.  Negative isn’t just the way you are. Negativism is a result of being part of a sinful human race.  When Christ comes into us, we don’t have to be negative anymore.  

We don't recognize we need to change our mindset, we dismiss the suggestion that we are too negative, by saying, "Well, I am just a pessimist." Do you know what the Bible says about pessimism? That is a direct slandering of the Being of God.  We have to face up to this as Christians that this is something that is to be put off.

When the Bible mentions complaint, it speaks of complaints against the world of people.  We see that some people have not done things the way we determined they ought to do them.  They have jaywalked across our little universe.  They have walked where we said they shouldn’t walk. They have done something that we didn’t want them to do. Or, circumstances have not come about the way that we planned it in our "all" wisdom.  It just didn’t go our way.

Now the moment you set your heart (for that is what your words are expressing) against a person because they haven’t done what you said they should do or set your heart against circumstances because they haven’t worked out the way you said they should work out, where does that put you?  It puts you right in the center of the universe and saying, "All people and all circumstances ought to CIRCLE AROUND ME."

On such occasions folks haven’t met your expectations and so your self-centered, self-loving self, expresses itself not in an explosion, but just in a constant drip, drip, drip, as Proverbs puts it, of complaint. (Prov.27:15) I want us to understand right at the beginning that this is against God. Who sent the circumstances? Who let the people walk across your path?  It was God. The Bible leaves us with no excuse. It says it is unquestionably against God that the grumble is made.

The text goes further. When I complain about circumstances, (they are not as I think they should be, or they don’t come up to my standard, or I think they should be more profitable or less burdensome) what am I really saying? The Scripture lets me know that what really and truly I am saying when I complain is that AS FAR AS MY HEAVENLY FATHER’S LOVE AND HIS CARE, HIS ALMIGHTINESS, HIS WISDOM, HIS KINDNESS IS CONCERNED, THERE IS SOMETHING IN HIS DEALINGS WITH US TO BE SUSPECTED.  I am saying, If I were God, I wouldn’t have done it like that.  If I were the one who defined what love was, I would have defined it differently.  I would have done it this way.  If I were the one that was the absolute of all goodness and kindness, I would have worked it out my way.

That is what we do when we complain. We take the things as they are and we grumble to an invisible Unseen. We murmur against Who? Against our heavenly Father. And what is it that we are complaining about? HIS LOVE, HIS CARE, HIS GOODNESS, HIS KINDNESS, HIS WISDOM, HIS WAY WITH US...  We are slandering the very PERSON AND BEING OF GOD. That is at the heart of these harmless little murmurings.

Do you remember Absalom? He was the son of David. He was in banishment and then when he came home he was so subtle. He didn’t stand on the roof tops and say, "David is a louse, he is no good. Let’s have a civil war." He was far too clever for that.

Absalom stood at the gate of the city. That is where all the courts gathered and all the cases were tried. He didn’t say anything. He just watched. When David’s judges meted out justice, Absalom would walk along beside them and say, "You know you really got a raw deal. If I were king, I wouldn't have done that to you. I think that was lousy. If I were king, I would have done this and this. But, of course, I am not king, but if I were, you would get a better deal than you got there."

We call that "the rebellion" of Absalom after he had polluted the minds of everybody just by saying, "if I had been king, it wouldn’t be like that. I would do a far better job."  Now isn’t that what complaining is really saying? "If I were God, not that I am pretending to be, of course, but if I were God, we would have a far better life than this."

The weather is wrong. It is raining today. Of course, it was wrong yesterday when it was too hot. The food is wrong. It is too hot or it is too cold. The dog is wrong. Everybody is wrong. The house is wrong. If I were God we would have a better system than this. But since I am just a poor creature, what can I do except stand here and tell you "If I were God ...." That is at the HEART OF ALL COMPLAINING. The suggestion is that if I were the head of the universe, the whole human race would be given a better deal.

There is another kind of complaint. It is really tied into fear. This kind of complaint always comes with a whine in the voice. It is carefully practiced. You aren’t born with this skill. You practice it until you get good at it. You get to where you can do it without thinking. It has a twang, a whine to it.

Jesus talks about it in the Sermon on the Mount. He actually quotes these people, "What are we going to eat tomorrow? What are we going to wear? Where is the next penny coming from?" (Mat.6) This kind of complaint is precipitated by fear and anxiety. It is the kind of complaining, according to Jesus, that suggests God is not going to keep His promises to you.

It amounts to saying to others, "you know God. You can’t trust Him at all. Tomorrow there is no telling. Any one of us might be starving if we leave it to God. There is every reason to believe we are going to be without food, without clothes, without a job, etc. Forget it if God is in charge. In fact, we feel absolutely helpless, so if we can’t do anything, we put out our complaint.

Only this time it isn’t the same kind of moaning as those who want to be in charge. This has that fear in it. You are afraid, because you have already decided to distrust God. He is not reliable. That leaves you as God and you know you can’t handle it, out comes more of that kind of complaining than you would think could come from a worldling, much less a Christian.  Christians, we don’t belong to this world; we aren't to talk like that.  Don’t let any PUTRID words come out of your mouth like that.

Did you know that BOREDOM is rebellion?  You say, "I am bored." Why? Aren’t you satisfied with the life God has given you? Aren’t you satisfied with all the events God has placed around you? Are you so out of joint with God that you can’t be alive with God in every minute of His glorious universe?

Boredom is saying, "God, if I could manage my days, it would be a better life than this. I am rather disgusted with the kind of circumstances that You hand out to me." Boredom is a complaining about the life He has assigned me. "And quite frankly, God, there is nothing much I can do with it."  Then with my hands in my pockets, and with those big "humph" sighs, I am bored. It is just another unique kind of rebellion against God that manifests another type of complaining.

There is still another kind of complaint. Fortunately, there aren’t too many of these people who voice this. This person, after placing himself right in the center of his universe, makes himself god, sets rules and laws (and thinks, what kind of god are you if you don’t have a set of rules?). So the mark of these people, who enthrone themselves in the middle of their universe, is that they set up their own law.  If I am the center of my universe, I must have my own laws to establish good and evil.

My law is even stricter than God’s, because, after all, I am a better god than He is. You remember that the Pharisees did that. The Bible says, "Keep the Sabbath day holy." Now that is beautiful. "Just take a day off and enjoy Me." But the Pharisees come along and say you must not do ANYTHING on the Sabbath.

They even said that no lady should use a mirror on the Sabbath day, because she might see a gray hair and be tempted to pluck it out and that would be working on the Sabbath. They added law to law until we have an endless list. God didn’t say that, but we little gods put laws out there that God never intended.

Remember when you went to church? They told you that salvation was free. You said, "wonderful." Then you walked through the door and they gave you the 2,000 commandments of...you must not do this, you must not go here, you must not eat that, you must not drink this, you must not ... you must not... and so on. Who said that? They did. Put a man in the center of the universe and he will give you 2,000 more commandments than God does. Right?

Now bring this down into your home. Bring this down into your work. We call these people perfectionists. A perfectionist makes laws that go beyond all that God has ever asked. They get proud of it, too. They demand that everybody conform to their impossible standards. They can’t even meet it themselves, but they let you know they will keep trying until the day they die, fully expecting to die a failure at keeping them, but that doesn’t prevent them demanding you also try with them.  Somehow they feel smug about always trying, but you know, it is just another manifestation of man in the center.

What happens to them?  Well, of course, from their side nothing is ever right.  How can it be?  They have made sure of that by the laws they have set for themselves. So their household is always wrong. Their job is never what it ought to be. Their pay is not commensurate. The people they work with are always wrong.  Everybody is always wrong. Because the standard that they have set in their minds, standards set there by themselves: standards of playing god and making commandments, are utterly foolish and impossible and can never be achieved.

If you have this view, you never enjoy your car because the car you have in your mind is so far out of sight, there is no way you will ever own it.  No matter what kind of car you have, something will be wrong with it.  You hear a knock or feel an irksome vibration because of the perfectionist standard you've established. This is tragically true.

In a secondary way, you look at others and see what they have and know that they don’t have perfection themselves. So you envy and complain that they don’t have it. So you look at what they have and can’t enjoy that either, because it isn’t as good as what another has. So you complain of what you have and complain of what you don’t have.  Nothing is good enough.

The greatest tragedy is when this becomes a strangling habit. I mean this; this is as hard to kick as drug addiction. The drug addict always says, "I can handle this." The alcoholic always says, "I can handle this."  This complaining becomes a strangling habit and the addict always believes he has a right to complain, that it isn’t him we are talking about.  It becomes a way of life.  It is tragic that this cannot be a phase that passes, something we repent of and pull away from, and live our lives instead in the positiveness of the way of God.  This should become a way of life.

C. S. Lewis, in The Great Divorce, describes meeting people after death. He is being introduced to people and he hears this one that is a shrill whine. He is introduced to this one who IS a grumble. He interrupts and says, "Surely, you mean this lady grumbles." He was informed, "No, she used to grumble. Now she IS a grumble."

At one time it was something apart from her that she did. She could look at it and know she did it and be sorry about it and turn from it. But she has done it so often and so consistently that it has now become her.  Now she IS a grumble. I think that really says it. We have become creatures that are trained in unthankfulness.

All of our life, now, is filtered through that black grid. All we can see is unthankfulness so that we are not able, any more, to see the simplest joys. Have you ever stood out in the rain, a spring shower, and just let it drip all over you and praised God for rain?  Have you ever stood in the sunshine and been showered in liquid light?  Have you ever stood on a cold winter’s night and heard the wind howling around the house and just praised God for the sounds of creation?  Have you ever seen a thunder storm roll across the sky with lightning causing the whole horizon to be bathed in colors and just praised God for the glory of His creation?

Or, have you stood there and said, "Umph! It’s raining again today." "It’s too hot, too hot." "That draft has got to be fixed." "Another thunder storm this time of year?" You can’t even see God in His creation. You are unable to see the simplest joys. Unable to feel grass with its wet dew against your legs without complaining that you are getting wet.

Isaiah said that the ox knows his master’s crib. The donkey knows where to go and get fed. Even a dumb animal has more sense in some things. Every time you put food down for your dog, even it has the sense to wag its tail. Yet some Christians don’t have the simplest ability to praise God for His creation. Even animals have more sense sometimes.

Of course, Isaiah’s whole emphasis was that if a donkey has enough instinctive animal thankfulness for its food and its bed, how much more should we, who are made in the image of God, we who are little copies of Deity, we who have reason and can weigh fact against fact, we who are not reacting with instinct, but are acting out of our will ... how much more should we be able to weigh what our God has done for us and embrace it all and praise Him for it?

But, as I say, complaining becomes a habit: a habit as terrible and as devastating and as destructive as any drug addiction or alcoholism.  It increases until every part of our life, from a simple spring shower down to the fact that the clothes weren’t ready at the laundry last week, is all filtered down through the black, filthy, putrid grid of our unthankfulness and it all comes out as a grumble, a low murmur which characterizes our life from now on. TERRIBLE!

Let’s make no mistake about it, it is a GREAT SIN. Look at Romans chapter one as Paul describes the wicked and tells us why the world is in the state it is in. It tells us the human race wasn’t made this way, something terrible happened. What was that something? "They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator--" That’s what is wrong with us. Man puts himself in the center instead of God. That is what we have been saying. "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities-- His eternal power and divine nature-- have been clearly seen - For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him -"

Now that blows my mind. Because it goes on to talk about IDOLATRY next... SECOND, after not giving thanks is idolatry. Number one on the list of hideous sins is UNTHANKFULNESS, second is idolatry, third is perversion and sexual immorality. Number one on the list is unthankfulness. It stands at the front when all the armies of sins come against God. When every sin raises its fist to do away with God, the general in command is unthankfulness. It leads in pure, unadulterated rebellion against God.

If you think this is an isolated Scripture, take a look at another Scripture. This one tells us that what happened to Israel happened as an example so that we would know certain things. 1Co 10:6 Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did. And it begins to list some of the evil things. 7 Do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written: "The people sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in pagan revelry." 8 We should not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did-- and in one day twenty-three thousand of them died. 9 We should not test the Lord, as some of them did-- and were killed by snakes. 10 And do not grumble, as some of them did-- and were killed by the destroying angel.

Do we hear this correctly?  Idolatry, sexual immorality, testing God blasphemously, are all put in the same arena as grumbling.  They are all in the same category. Looking at the book of Exodus we can see it first hand.

Exodus 14:10 - They were in a tough spot between the Red Sea and Pharaoh, but they should have seen enough of the power of God in the 10 plagues to know what God could do, but they said, "Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn't we say to you in Egypt, 'Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians'? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!"  Do you realize what they are saying?  They are saying, "God, we knew we shouldn’t have trusted you. We knew if ever you got the reins of our lives you would lead us into a mess like this. Here we are ... you should have let us die in Egypt instead of all this salvation business." That was addressed to God.

Exodus 15 - They were going through the desert. They ran out of water. They were led into that position by God Himself. Now, if God led you here, surely you can trust God for a few hours. So the people grumbled against Moses, saying, "What are we to drink?"

Exodus 16 - They came to Elim. What happened? They said, If only we had died by the LORD's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death. -- Moses also said, "You will know that it was the LORD when he gives you meat to eat in the evening and all the bread you want in the morning, because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we? You are not grumbling against us, but against the LORD." Just a minute. They weren’t talking against God, they were grumbling against Moses. Moses set the facts in order. Who is in charge here? GOD IS.

Exodus 17 - Would they do it again? -- the people were thirsty for water there, and they grumbled against Moses. They said, "Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?" Couldn’t they learn? On and on, chapter after chapter ... they did the same thing.

Every time there is any complaint made, they are reminded that they are not grumbling against the circumstance or even against Moses. You can’t grumble against circumstances, they are inanimate. You can’t grumble against Moses and Aaron, they are only people. There is Somebody in control of it all. Every time you grumble, it says, you are in rebellion against God Himself. You are accusing Him of doing a bad job, saying that His wisdom is not what it was cracked up to be, that His love is very suspect, that His care is not at all what He gave you to understand that it should be. It is a very serious thing to grumble, because we are grumbling against God.

It is the reverse of seeing that God IS. That is all Moses kept seeing. So they are backed up against the Red Sea. Moses says, "I know that God is. Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. I haven’t the slightest idea how God is going to do it, but God is God. Here we stand trusting." His expectancy is that God really is Who He said He is and that He cares as He said He cares REGARDLESS OF HOW IT SEEMS.

The opposite of grumbling is TRUST. It is one or the other. It is a choice you have to make.  The grumbler is the person who is only happy when things are pleasing him, when things make sense to his brain, when all circumstances fit in with his idea of how things ought to be.  He has becomes the center of his universe.

Whereas, the Christian realizes that God is the center of the universe. It can’t be both. If I am at the center, then I grumble when things don’t go my way. If God is at the center, I stand in inexplicable circumstances and I say, "God, I praise You. You are still there. I praise You because you are God. I praise You because You are wise, even though I don’t understand. You are omnipotent, even though it doesn’t look like it at this minute. You are love, I know it, and I trust myself to Your care."

To praise God with thanksgiving for Who He is, is the only way of truly saying, "I BELIEVE IN GOD." Oh, come on, I could train my parrot to sit in a pew every Sunday morning and if it learned well, it could say, "I believe in God the Father Almighty."  My parrot could learn to "say" the Apostles’ Creed.  But, we are not parrots standing suspended on religious strings and just saying, "I believe in God the Father Almighty."

When I proclaim the Creed, I am expressing the way I lived last week and how I will live the coming week. Every act I do, every word I speak, every attitude I display should declare, I BELIEVE IN THE GOD THE FATHER ALMIGHTY, MAKER OF HEAVEN AND EARTH. Every time I complain, I withdraw that statement and say, "I am sorry, I was mistaken. If there really was a God in heaven this wouldn’t be happening now. If I was really in charge, it wouldn’t happen like this."

The only way I can adequately, from my heart, express my simplest belief in God is to PRAISE HIM IN LIFE, FOR ALL THINGS. Because living thus is saying I believe that He is in control.  If He is in control, and His control is from the eternal well of His infinite wisdom, then I know (even when I don’t understand) that ALL THINGS ARE WORKED TOGETHER BY HIM FOR MY GOOD AND HIS GLORY. I KNOW THAT.

This is not psyching yourself up. It is because you believe it. It is the way you approach every situation. You believe God is in control.  He is working it all together for good. He didn’t ask you to understand it. He asked you in that moment of time, just where you are standing, to praise Him because that is the way it is. In simple praise, in simple thanksgiving, in the moment, you assert that He is the only wise God. He is GOOD. He is KIND. He is FATHER, WHO IS CARING FOR YOU NOW.

You say to Him, "I don’t feel like praising You."  He knows. You didn’t feel like forgiving, but He sent you home to forgive. You didn’t feel like not worrying and not having anxiety, but He sent you home to turn that into seeing Him in all things. You didn’t feel like quitting envying, but you chose Jesus Christ as Lord, so that is the way it is going to be. Any person that is in any way caught in this hideous habit of complaining, never feels like quitting.

It is a choice you make. You are not an animal. Animals react. You have a choice. You act, or you don’t react. You choose.  We are to act within a circumstance, not react to it. We choose Jesus as Lord. We see something. We see the universe. We have seen the way God is. We can’t come down to the putrid level of the words of the world who walk in the darkness. We have seen God is in control and through Jesus Christ we know Him. We choose not to react, we choose to act within the circumstance, to praise God for this.

So the only way to handle complaining, as it dribbles and trickles its filthy water though all your life, is to resign your place in the pantheon of the gods, to take your place as a mere mortal, a creature under God, and to praise Him for being God.

I am a creature. God is God. People do not exist for my benefit.  All the weather in America is not determined to fit my schedule.  There are farmers, you know.  There are other people in America.  I am not the one around whom the world revolves.  I begin to understand this when I am living in my salvation. Only God makes the universe revolve around Him. 

I am one creature. What a fantastic creature under God, but it also means I am alongside of you.  You don’t exist for my benefit, you exist for God’s benefit.  All things don’t exist for me, they exist for God. Do you believe this?

I see this. I am sharing with you what I see. When I see it and practice it, I walk in peace and joy. You don’t need to be zapped to get joy. You just need to see the way things really are. Your unhappiness, your misery, your warped lives, won’t be helped by someone praying for you. You don’t need praying for, you need to repent and see the way things are. We make our own misery. We self-destruct.

You see, the complainer lives in a universe that is as big as himself. God merely exists to serve him. Everything must be interpreted as to how it pleases him. Doesn’t it sound awful? Well, that is the way he is, you know.

Jesus said, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God." Do you know what "pure in heart" means?  When you buy milk, "pure" means there is only milk in the carton; they haven’t added water to it.  In this and many other verses in the Bible "PURE" doesn’t mean clean.  "Pure" means "UNMIXED."  It is just right. There has been nothing else added to it.  It is unadulterated by anything else.

What did Jesus mean when He said, "Blessed are the pure in heart?" Another word for what He is saying is "SINGLE." Remember, He said, "If thine eye be single." It means you don’t have double vision. You are not trying to see two things at once.  You have a "single eye"; your outlook is not mixed. That single outlook is God.

Double vision is the man that has an eye in both directions. When that man comes along, he says, "God - Me." The Bible says, "A double minded man is unstable in all his ways." He doesn’t know where he is going. On the one hand he says, "God, I love you as long as you give me what I want, as long as you prosper me."  Now, is that man worshipping God?  That is doublemindedness. Am I worshipping God or am I worshipping myself? You can’t do both. You will tear yourself in half, self-destruct. A double minded man wants God to work for him. If God doesn’t work for him, guess who gets blamed? God. A complainer is a doubleminded person, double visioned. He sees God, but he sees himself at the center and God exists to serve him.

If your eye be single, if you have a single vision for God, then your whole body will be full of light. To see the universe as it is, is to see God in the center. Have a single eye that says all circumstances, all people, all my life, is all for God. My eye is single. He is the center.  (Mat. 6:22-23)

What changes? Lights come on all over the place. You don’t get all upset anymore because you see the truth. It is illumined.  The lights are on. You no longer go around moaning and complaining about how you wish things were; you see the way it is.

If situations don't go the way you think they should, well, you thank God for His wisdom.  He knows better than we do. So praise Him when it is raining. Praise Him when the sun shines. Praise God all the time about all things. Everything is under His control. It is a wonderful thing to be alive.

This is not just positive thinking; this is not psyching yourself up; this has foundation. This is not the nonsense of "praising God anyhow," it is praising God BECAUSE HE IS GOD. You have a foundation. You have contentment. You know why you are doing what you are doing.

The Bible says, "Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? Who shall stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a PURE heart." This is SINGLE VISION: not trying to use God for your own benefit and then moaning at Him when things don’t work out your way.

To quit complaining is the most difficult sin to surrender.  We have a built-in defense, you see.  As soon as this repentance presented to the typical complainer, he responds with, "Well, you don’t understand. If you had to live with who I live with ...."  Our response is built-in.  Every time I start talking with you about this, you have a good excuse for continuing to do it. The habit is contagious. You hear everybody else complaining.  Complaining thrives in goups.

In fact, if you want to know who the biggest complainer is, ask a complainer. They will tell you. They know one when they see one and they detest them.  Of course, you see, they don’t complain like THIS complainer does.  They state their rights. "People don’t treat me right." Or, "If I had what she has, I wouldn’t be complaining like she does." But isn’t that complaining about the complainer?

And then there are the Pity Parties, the Gripe Groups. Members get together to talk about how bad they have it. Misery loves company. I never have been able to understand how women can get together and complain about their husbands. Doesn’t it ever dawn on them that their husband represents their choice in a man? Their behavior is illogical.  I'm not even mentioning Scripture which forbids wives to take such a position against their husbands. These Pity Parties are sometimes disguised as prayer meetings, coming together to share our misery. Each member is there to share, "poor me."

It is so difficult thing to classify this as YOUR PROBLEM, to even acknowledge it as YOUR problem. That is why I classify it along with the alcoholism and the drug addiction. Addicts say, "It’s not my problem. I don’t know who you are talking about. I can handle it."

If ever you are free from this sin of complaining, which is the closer to pure rebellion than any other, you are free by repentance of the first order.  You are freed through facing up to the cold light of facts, maybe without any feelings at all, just accepting what the Scripture says and what in your heart of hearts you know is true.  To repent you will be making a deliberate choice, to see the way things are, thanking God that the death and blood shedding of Jesus has already dealt with this. You will rise up in the name of Jesus, the Lord, and choose against all of your feelings to give praise to God every time the whine comes to your mouth.

So the Bible says, over and over again, that the Christian is the person who "abounds" (overflows) in thanksgiving. Before it was the putrid stream of complaint, now they overflow with thanksgiving about everything.  It is almost fanatical.  There are many things that people might say you have a right to moan about, but not the Christian.  You overflow with thanksgiving.

You thank God for the funniest things. You see God everywhere because the Bible says, "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God." Don’t put that in heaven. This isn’t speaking about heaven. It is talking about right now. If you are pure in heart, you will see God everywhere. No one doubleminded will see God, but you will. You will see Him.

Have you ever heard of "bush eyes?" A friend of mine told me about his trip to Africa. Walking along the trail with natives all around him, suddenly one of the natives shot his gun near him.  He killed a huge deadly green snake in the path.  My friend couldn't see it at first.  He would have stepped on it. He asked, "How come I didn’t see that?"

They walked on. Soon the native grabbed his arm and said, "Look! Do you see the leopard?" My friend said there was no way he could see it until it moved.  He said, "Wait a minute. Why couldn’t I see it?  I walk on the same path as you.  You see the snake. I see a path.  You point out what looks to me like shadows and stone and it becomes a leopard.  Why couldn’t I see them?" He told the native, "You know, that could be dangerous." Ha!

What was the native's reply?  He said, "you have to get your BUSH EYES."  If you stay in the jungle long enough, you develop what they call "bush eyes."  What an illustration - we could walk though life blind to God.  All we would see would be reasons for complaint, but when the Holy Spirit is allowed to open our eyes we get "GOD EYES" and we can SEE GOD where and when no one else can see Him. We see God where others just see leaves.  We see God where others just see rocks and vines. We see God.

It is the same with antiques. A dealer may tell me that a piece is genuine 1500. But an expert comes along and runs his finger over the material and he says, "No. It is early Salvation Army." Another store has something marked $10 and this same expert sees it and says, "buy that. It is worth over $1000."  How does he know?  He has been around. He knows what he is looking for and what he is feeling for.

We walk though life and we have God’s treasures at our finger tips and yet we moan and complain.  We are foxed and fooled my our own selfishness.  We pay an awful costly price for the cheap, dirty, junk of complaint.  And the precious treasures of God are passed by. It pays to know what you are looking for. Blessed, oh so happy, supremely joyous, are the PURE (UNMIXED) in heart for they see God. When others can’t see Him, they see Him. They are praising Him all the time for everything.

Christians are described as a people that Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the way we are, or at least, the way we are supposed to be. To go from being oblivious to this is one thing, but to go from being a complaining person to rejoicing is a transition only accomplished with strong commitment, prayer and reliance upon the grace of God daily.

Practice this kind of praying: Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. No whining. No complaining.  No fear of the future. You can trust God. Even while you pray about the biggest problem you have ever had, interlace it with praise. Thank God that He is still the way He is. PRAISE HIM! BE THANKFUL.

There is no situation that is exempt from this. We are commanded to give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. Do you do this? Well, you can. You should. You are commanded to do so as a Christian.

This is not just lip service, it is an attitude, the attitude of a Christian, a blessed Christian that has Single Vision: seeing God in ALL THINGS and giving thanks in ALL CIRCUMSTANCES.

Don’t relegate the words of Isaiah in the future. They belong to us NOW. And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness. The unclean will not journey on it; it will be for those who walk in that Way; wicked fools will not go about on it. No lion will be there, nor will any ferocious beast get up on it; they will not be found there. But only the redeemed will walk there, and the ransomed of the LORD will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.

This brings the universe into the order that God intended: God in the center, me (his creature) unto Him and under Him, and you (my fellow creature) unto Him and under Him and all things working together for good. How could we fail to praise His Name? We will forever praise Him and declare to all the world that He is our life and for us -

TO LIVE IS CHRIST.

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