How Complaining Can Become Your Coffin



For everything there is a season,
    a time for every activity under heaven. 2 A time to be born and a time to die.
    A time to plant and a time to harvest. 3 A time to kill and a time to heal.
    A time to tear down and a time to build up. 4 A time to cry and a time to laugh.
    A time to grieve and a time to dance. 5 A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones.
    A time to embrace and a time to turn away. 6 A time to search and a time to quit searching.
    A time to keep and a time to throw away. 7 A time to tear and a time to mend.
    A time to be quiet and a time to speak. 8 A time to love and a time to hate.
    A time for war and a time for peace. -Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
 Every season, or time period, in our life there is a certain identifying theme. These seasons can be full of joy, sorrow, wonder, excitement, disappointment, or heart-break. Some seasons in life we expect and plan for, and others we did not see coming. Take a moment, briefly reflect upon the seasons of your life, does it look like what you thought it would?

My guess is that you answered no--your life does not look like what you thought it would. What do we do with this? How do we reconcile our hopes and dreams with the fact that our life is nothing like we thought it would be?

Trusting God

During the many seasons of life there are two choices we can make: 1) follow God, or 2) do not follow God. What does it mean to truly follow God, even if we are in seasons that we do not understand?

The hard reality of following God is seen when he takes us into seasons beyond our own ability, resources, and even desires. If we are to follow God through all of life's seasons, it will require trust. Trust, meaning we may not know the destination, or fully understand the season we are in, but we choose to follow God anyways.

This is not as easy as it may seem. Trusting in God was Israel's task during the exodus and they did not do so well. The Israelite's were "terrified and cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, '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!'” (Exod 14:10-12 NIV). During Israel's most victorious season, they complained against God and accused Moses of bringing them out of Egypt to kill them. This is the opposite image of trust.

 Israel did not have a clear-cut path from the exodus to the Promised Land. All they had been told was that God was going to deliver them and bring them into the Promised Land (Exod 6:6-8)--that's it. Israel's job in the exodus season was to trust that God would bring them out of captivity and into the Promised Land.

Complaining and Coffins

Israel did just the opposite. They "grumbled" and "complained" against God and did not enter the Promised Land because of it. They met their fate with by their own words:
"How long will this wicked community grumble against me? I have heard the complaints of these grumbling Israelites. So tell them, ‘As surely as I live, declares the Lord, I will do to you the very thing I heard you say: In this wilderness your bodies will fall—every one of you twenty years old or more who was counted in the census and who has grumbled against me. Not one of you will enter the land I swore with uplifted hand to make your home, except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun...For forty years—one year for each of the forty days you explored the land—you will suffer for your sins and know what it is like to have me against you.’ I, the Lord, have spoken, and I will surely do these things to this whole wicked community, which has banded together against me. They will meet their end in this wilderness; here they will die.” -Numbers 14:27-30,34-35
The root cause of their grumbling and complaining was a lack of trust. Israel ascribed more authority and power in their situation than they did in God's spoken promises. The results of this was that they wandered in the desert for forty years and ultimately died in the desert--their complaining became their coffin.

Only two families, and those younger than 20 years of age, out of millions of Israelites entered into the Promised Land.The millions that did not enter died wandering because of their complaining and grumbling against God. Essentially, they perished because they did not trust, did not believe, did not have faith in, the word God had spoken to them. Their complaining cultivated distrust and unbelief in their life, and they did not meet their destiny that God had laid out before them.

Rejoice or Complain


Israel had two choices in their exodus season: 1) rejoice and trust, or 2) complain in unbelief. We have the same choice in our seasons of life. Scripture clearly shows us the way through the most difficult times in our life is to rejoice and trust in God's word and destiny for us. The alternative will surely lead us to death, as it did the Israelites. It does not make sense to rejoice and trust in trying times, but by faith it is the most rational choice for a Child of God. What will you do?

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