Tag Archives: thecostlyCs

The Cost of Complaining

I used to have a rule when I team lead missions trip that went something like, “don’t state the obvious”. This meant you will likely be tired, hot, cold, thirsty, hungry, and any combination of those at any given point on the trip. There will probably be crazy smells, lots of traffic, and unexpected things everyday. I didn’t want team members to stand there and complain about the obvious.

It’s easy to adapt this mentality on a 1-3 week concentrated trip where you are out of your element and serving people in a foreign country. It’s NOT as easy to adapt a mentality like this or better on a day-to-day basis. We get impatient. Something frustrates us. We have the ability to cater circumstances to fit our needs and preferences and so we complain when things don’t go as we like. I’m GUILTY!

When I was on a dance team years ago, we had Philippians 2:14-15 on our shirts and it read, “ Do all things without complaining and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world”. I remember feeling great conviction from this scripture and while I would complain all the time in my heart, that scripture always went through my mind and it made me feel accountable.

While we all may not wear a T-shirt as a daily reminder not to complain, we should meditate on this verse and take inventory of when we are dissatisfied. The verse above states that by not complaining we are able to shine like stars in the midst of darkness and perverse situations in this generation. Are there dark and perverse things around you? Do you want the light of Christ to shine through your life into those places? Then don’t complain about everything and don’t dispute or argue over things that don’t matter eternally.

When Jesus came to the Earth He didn’t get into silly arguments with the Pharisees. He answered them in the spirit of wisdom and stayed true to His Father’s words. He might not have pleased men at times by what He said and did, but He wasn’t complaining. I feel if anyone had a right to complain it was Jesus. I think about the “mess” we’ve made as humans and the times we’ve broken His heart with our sin and rebellion. Even as He stood to be judged and accused on behalf of OUR sin, He kept silent. In all of His innocence He didn’t speak in complaint and accusations.

I believe we can learn to transform our behavior in the area of complaining so that we begin to reflect Jesus to the world around us. When the children of God complained in the Bible, it caused them to wander from the faith of what God had spoken to them. If we are to shine and reflect His purposes for our lives, we must keep a thankful heart and walk forward in what He has for us.

The Cost of Being Critical

I could easily have a job being a critic. I’m a critical thinker who likes to think through thinks and make improvements. If there was a field like movies or food that I had expertise in, I’d have no problem detecting how improvements could be made and point out the flaws in a given presentation. I believe part of my natural tendency to critique is of The Lord when governed by His spirit. I believe this to be true because Holy Spirit produces excellence in us which is only truly possible by submission to Him. However if not led by the Holy Spirit, a critical spirit can actually shut down our ability to hear from God and to cooperate with His spirit. This is an area where I’ve continual struggled particularly as I’ve seen the good, the bad, the great, and the ugly in ministry.

No one is perfect no matter who they are and how well they might do something. Everyone is flawed because we are human. There is no exception for anyone even those in ministry. While many called into occupational ministry might be really great people, they can never be perfect because they too are humans in constant need of the Perfect One, Jesus. When we have expectations that people or organizations particularly in ministry should be perfect, we will always find inadequacies.

As believers we are to rightly test every spirit. “Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies. Test all things; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil.”-I Thessalonians 5:19-22. “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”-I John 4:1. I list these scriptures because I don’t want anyone to think that we are just to accept and endorse any teaching we hear. We need to make sure the word of God is not only being taught with integrity, but lived out rightly as well.

While we do need to make sure we are listening to sound doctrine, we don’t need to openly criticize, exploit and mock people. There is no fruit of the Spirit that results in this and it furthers hurts the testimony of Jesus. I have often been disgusted at times with the amount of arguments and critical things Christians post back and forth on Facebook particularly against other Christians. I wonder what it looks like to those who aren’t Christians to see those who claim to know Jesus being so critical of those in the “same way of life”. I wonder if those outside the Body of Christ feel as if they were to step into a church that they too would be criticized with whatever they might be walking through. If we are so critical of “our own”, how could we ever accept them in their struggles particularly when they know they are in sin?

I’m not making excuses for what the word of God says as it is very clear on defining sin. I can’t excuse someone from sin as it was never a standard set by man. The fact is that men did not write the Bible and if people are preaching from the Bible and it offends people, then the arguments need to be directed towards God as He is the author. However there is a way to communicate the truth of His word in love and in a way that is not critical of others. It’s the goodness of God that leads men to repentance, not critics. God can not be with sin because He is without sin, not because He wants to be mean and exclusive. Sometimes this is how we make Him appear to those who don’t know Him by having a critical attitude.

As believers we must realize that a critical spirit is of the enemy and it hinders us from hearing rightly from God. Satan wasn’t satisfied with his position that God had given him in heaven at the beginning of creation and he wanted to be like God and have more power. Perhaps he thought that he could do things better than God. Maybe he would have changed the way the angels worshiped to look to him more. Whatever his reasoning, he was critical of what God has created and now is eternally damned and unable to worship God.

When we give into a critical spirit and find continual fault in things, we are operating selfishly and saying our opinion is the only right opinion. Again I am not referring to standing by the standards of God’s word, but to a critical mindset. If we believe we are the only ones right and find fault with other things, we position ourselves to not hear His voice and His opinion.

There are many in the world who are critical of the church and if we in the church take the same position as they, how are we supposed to reach them with the love of God? We will continue to see God do amazing things that only He can do and unfortunately we will continue to see ourselves and others at times fall prey to being critical and not reflecting Him well. It’s in the moments where we are tempted to critique and to fault find that we need the help of the Holy Spirit. We need to invite Him in to show us His heart and His opinion. In moving forward He might lead us to pray for that pastor, that elder, that fellow church friend in our private times rather than remain critical of them.

If we don’t take care to eradicate a critical spirit from our lives, it will carry over to how we see God. Let’s pray for God to make us aware of when we are cooperating with being critical and ask Him to help us extend grace, mercy, and restoration.

Are you one who continually looks for faults in people or in a church service? Do you quietly rejoice with a “I knew it” mentality when other people particularly Christians make mistakes? Do you hold on to offenses and project them onto other people and scenarios? Are there stumbling blocks of prejudices in your heart that cause you to be critical? How is your life being reflected before non-Christians? Does it reflect a critical attitude about God or the church to them?

 

 

 

The Cost of Coveting

Yesterday I wrote about the cost of compromise and how was need to find contentment in who we were created to be. This topic transitions into today’s topic of covetousness.

When we covet we are ultimately revealing that whatever we are coveting is more precious to us than the Lord. One of the 10 commandments is, “You must not covet your neighbor’s house. You must not covet your neighbor’s wife, male or female servant, ox or donkey, or anything else that belongs to your neighbor” (Exodus 20:17). The definition of covet is:1. To desire wrongfully, inordinately, or without regard to the rights of others. 2. To wish for, especially eagerly 3. To have a wrongful desire.

In today’s society and the materialism that surrounds us, it doesn’t take long to find something we desire and feel we should or must have. Our friends buy a new house, a new car, get new clothes etc., and we feel compelled to have it. The traps come when we feel discouraged or disappointed with what we currently have, be that relationships or possessions because then we feel we must obtain something else.

The problem is that while acquiring things might give us temporal pleasure, if we bank our happiness on this we will never truly be satisfied. Coveting is in such a nature that it never ends. You will always desire something else by fixing your eyes on things of this world and you’ll never be content.

When you covet something, you have an excessive craving for what does not belong to you. This is not merely admiring something someone has or an aspect of someone’s life. This is an extreme dissatisfaction with what you have and a drive to obtain more. I think that God naturally put a desire inside of mankind to desire something MORE. We were made to not be sufficient in ourselves as we were created to need God, and to desire Him. When sin entered the world, this desire got perverted into selfish ambition and thinking that we could fulfill ourselves with things of this world.

Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 4:4, “I have seen that all the work done is because a man wants what his neighbor has. This also is for nothing, like trying to catch the wind.” Solomon knew more wealth than anyone reading this, yet he saw it was all vanity. In the end all of our work to acquire things is futile and doesn’t carry over with us into eternity. Yes we need a roof over our heads and clothes on our back and I don’t think it’s wrong to have nice things, but is it really worth it to invest all our energy and desire into obtaining things?

To redirect the covetousness tendency within us, we must seek the Lord and the pleasure of His life for us. I was listening to a testimony this past week of a man who used to be very famous and had been in a lifestyle of drugs including meth for two years. He made the statement that when Holy Spirit came into his life, that it was a greater sensation than anything he had sought out before in his life of drugs. That not even the best “high” before remotely compared to a moment in the presence of God and receiving His forgiveness.

That testimony is powerful to me especially when I’ve seen people earnestly seek more things through means of this world. I’ve seen tears fall from not being able to have the latest and greatest and I too have felt the pain of feeling like I’m missing out at times. Yet when I really consider where lasting pleasure is, I know my heart has deceived me. For ultimate satisfaction comes from knowing Him and not in what I can hold in my hands or see. When my life is over, I will give an account of how I knew Jesus and how my life reflected Him in the highs and in the lows. I will be asked what I did with what He gave me including the family and relationships I’ve been blessed with. I will not have my car, a house, or any possessions with me. This makes Solomon’s words ring loudly in my ears as I don’t want to live my life attempting to “catch the wind”. I want to catch the heart of God.

What do we desire more of—Jesus or this world? What is our motive for wanting more things? Is it that we need for example a newer car because it’s breaking down or because we just “want” it? Are we heartbroken whenever we can’t get what “we want”? Are we willing to compromise integrity to obtain something? Have we invited the conviction of the Holy Spirit to reveal weakness in our hearts in this area?

Hebrews 13:5 Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

1 Timothy 6:10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.

The Cost of Comparison

When we walk through our day, we are naturally evaluating and comparing circumstances in our heads. Think of going to the grocery store. If you’re like me, you examine the fruit and compare the one you pick up to the whole batch and see which ones are the best. My husband loves avocados and I’ve learned how to find the best ones by picking several up and comparing them. As I shop I always look and compare prices of brands and quantity. I ask myself if it is worth paying a little more upfront for lasting quality or for a lesser price per item in the end. As I go to check out, I compare the lines and the speed at which the cashiers are checking people out to see what line I should walk through.

Just this weekend I heard several songs on the radio and began to compare them against each other forming an inner conclusion of which one was really “the best”. While having a mindset of comparing fruit or songs might be beneficial to us in the end, if this mindset bleeds into other aspects of our life, it can be detrimental.

When we feel as though we are lacking, it’s not because we are looking exclusively to Jesus and His plan for our life. We feel we are in lack when we see our lives in comparison to where others are or when compared to our own ideal circumstances for our lives. When you compare yourself to others, you’re in essence telling God that what He has given to you or created you to be is not enough. It’s so easy in the day we are living in to find a “better” or more ideal situation than what we currently find ourselves in. However when we do this, we are often neglecting who God created us to be.

The comparison game is nothing new, it goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. What led Adam and Eve into sin in the Garden was the allurement that they could “become like God”, as Satan told them by disobeying what God had commanded. They weren’t content in being who God had created them to be and they began to listen to the lies of the serpent and compared where they were capable of to what God, their Creator was capable of. Genesis 3:6 says, “When the woman (Eve) saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it”. This act of sin went against what God had called “good” and it caused Adam and Eve to see themselves and their creator in a new way.

God had called the garden “good” and He called the man and woman “good” and asked that they only not eat the fruit of one tree. After they desired of the one thing they were asked not to have, their eyes were open and they stood naked and ashamed. I think when we give into sin and the lies of the enemy by desiring to be in a condition that we were never intended to be, we will resent who we were originally created by God to be.

Comparison inhibits us from being the unique creation that God made us to be. It is an enemy to who God created us to be because it creates insecurities, pride, and jealousy within us to strive and be something we were never created to be. If all we are is distracted and driven by comparison, we won’t have energy to be operating at our potential of who we are called to be. The more we compare our lives to others, the further we drift from fulfilling our God-given purpose. The more we act like Adam and Eve by focusing on the things we don’t have, we miss out on enjoying the rest of life that God has provided for us.

Take a look across your “garden” of life. See ALL that God has created within you and around you for you to flourish in that place. Listen and recognize the voice of the enemy lying to you and persuading you to believe that you are worse than or better than those around you. You can never keep up with the endless and meaningless trail the enemy will lead you down. You can however abide in who you were created to be and flourish in the unique expression of God in the earth.