2/17/08 "Complaining"

I can't stand complainers....oh wait...did I just complain?!?

A form of the word "complain" is found 29 times in the Bible.

Philippians 2:14 "Do everything without complaining or arguing..."

Here's a question for you...how have you done just today with obeying this particular scripture?

For me...I struggle with this. Complaining seems to follow me around; whether I am complaining about UK's recent basketball struggles or a church member is complaining to me about something going on at church.

Unfortunately, it seems that staff members (since I have been in the ministry) encounter complaining as they walk down the hallway to assist in worship and even sometimes...the bathroom!

This tells me a couple of things.
1) You have to have tough skin to lead people in any environment. If you have more than one person in a room, you automatically have two opinions.

2) Sometimes, we as worshippers, tend to lose our focus when coming into corporate worship. On Sundays, is your focus on the order of service, the fact that the music minister has picked out too any songs you don't know, or is it on the God we serve, worship, and bow down to?

3) Flexibility is key when working with people. In the ministry, especially I have grown to understand that no matter how much effort we put into planning, things usually don't go they way we want them to.

The next time you go to worship...do your very best not to complain. When you complain, I assume someone is around you listening. That is one negative opinion shared in a group setting which you never know how many people are listening. A negative comment in a group setting releases the positive energy in that setting like a inflated balloon that was let go to release it's air. It has been proven that it actually takes fewer muscles in the face to smile than it does to frown. Figuratively, you can also say it take s less effort for us to NOT complain than it does TO complain.

You never know until you try it. Let me know how it works!