Relinquish your right to complain so that you’ll glorify the Almighty God through your hardships. Anything less shrinks your soul. After all, this life isn’t yours – it was purchased by the blood of Christ.
SHAUNA: This is Shauna on Joni Eareckson Tada Sharing Hope. And I don’t know about you Joni, but I just love it when we give tours of our Joni and Friends headquarters.
JONI: Oh, me too Shauna! I especially love to share hope-filled words whenever a group stops by my office. I always welcome them in to show them my art studio. And my favorite books on the shelf above my desk. For me it’s a chance to spend time and explain to them the reason behind my smile in this wheelchair. Usually is what it occurs is after a couple of comments, I’ll pick someone out of the crowd to reach for the Bible on my shelf, flip to the book of Jude [I have the page marked for them]. And then I’ll ask the person, “Read the 15th verse, please.” And adjusting their glasses, they’ll recite, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”
It seems an odd passage to ask someone to read, but I’ll follow it up, and I’ll ask them, “Who are those ungodly people? Pedophiles? Mass murderers? Drug dealers in schoolyards?” And a couple people will nod in agreement. Then I’ll turn to the one still standing with the open Bible, and I’ll ask them to read the next verse, Jude 16: “These people are grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires.” I close the little lesson, explaining how we tend to think of sin on a sliding scale. We place on one side, gross wickedness like barstool swearing and Satan worship, and on the other, nitpicking [that is, complaints that appear respectable]. We think we are not as ungodly as those evil reprobates who take part in orgies or follow the horoscope. We’re not ungodly at all; we’re merely spewing off about things now and then innocently enough. But Jude’s scathing judgment proves that God does not split hairs when it comes to sin, especially the sin of complaining. So [get this], he does [in the book of Jude] what we’d consider scandalous – he places grumblers at the top of a sordid list of apostates, connivers, and loud-mouthed boasters “for whom the gloom of outer darkness has been reserved forever.” That should make us tremble.
Oh, friend, there’s so many ways we can and should encourage one another. There are so many times we should hold our tongues. There are moments, many of them, when it would be best to hold our peace and let the Lord have revenge. There are countless arguments that could quickly de-escalate, if only we wouldn’t snap back. The book of James says that we complain because we want to have our own way. And we do not like it when things don’t go as we’d like. After all, we’ve got our rights [or at least we think we do].
But actually, you and I possess no rights. As Christians, we laid them all at the foot of the cross. The Holy Spirit tells us in 1 Corinthians 6:20, “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” Friend, the Son of God was ripped to shreds, then hung up to drain like a bloodied piece of meat on a hook, and if this is what Jesus endured to rescue me and you I refuse, I refuse to dignify any sin that impaled him to that cursed tree. I will not coddle anything that helped drive the nails deeper. As I often tell people who visit me in my office, I relinquished my right to complain so that I might glorify the Almighty God through my hardships. And anything less shrinks my soul. And it does the same for all of us.
© Joni and Friends