I Won’t Complain – Fix your Focus #thankyou
Sunday, November 20, 2022
Speaker: Pastor Denny Blake
Series: Thank You
Wasn’t everything about Sunday’s service just awesome?! At DOJM, we always have powerful worship and a revelatory Word. It consistently encourages and uplifts us, but every now and then, the Word comes to challenge us, correct us, and redirect us. Through song and the spoken word, God did just that. After a mighty opening prayer, the choir later sang, “God’s been good to me; how can I let Him down?” What a sobering thought. God picked us up, turned our lives around, and saved our souls… how can we let Him down? Whew! Pastor Denny gave us another thought-provoking reflection. He asked, “How can I sit at His table and complain about His food?” Ouch, right? Many of us are guilty of grumbling about our circumstances even though we also praise God for being good. We serve and we give, but our words show that we are not truly grateful. Pastor Denny told us from Philippians 2:12 – 18, specifically verse 14, that the Bible says not to complain.
Disciples, we’ve got to do better. We must fix our focus. Instead of murmuring about our finances, our ailing health, and other issues, we must focus on the goodness of the Lord. God wouldn’t require it of us if we couldn’t do it. We must decide that our praise will not be swayed by our troubles. Pastor Denny told us that God is tired of our complaining. He then directed us to Numbers 14:26 – 32, where God asked Moses and Aaron how long He must listen to the children of Israel’s murmurings against Him after He’d miraculously delivered them from Egypt. God told them that He would give the people what they’d been saying. Not only would they not enter the Promised Land, but God said they would die in the wilderness. Y’all, we better watch our tongues and how we handle our disappointments! We better monitor what we say about God! No matter how it looks right now, God is still a Miracle Worker. He is a Healer. He’s still Jehovah Jireh, God our Provider. Whatever He’s done before, He can do again – even for us. We must change our language and attend to our hearts, for there are dangers to adopting an unbelieving, faithless attitude with God.There are dangers to acting as if we create our own air. Pastor Denny named five:
- Lack of fellowship with God
- You get what you deserve
- You reap the harvest of your words
- Death or stagnation
- You won’t attain the promise
None of us can afford any of these perils, but that’s what happens when we zero in on our problems and not our God. We must allow the Holy Spirit to write us a prescription for new lenses. When we can see clearly, we won’t complain. When we fix our thoughts on God, God fixes our thoughts. Let’s choose to see through our spiritual glasses so we can see and thank God for the victories He’s already won. Even if nothing changes around us, our disappointments pale to God’s. We don’t have to let Him down. Let’s align our confessions with what we already know: God is good, He’s always been good, and He’s working things out for our good.