Grumbling vs Gratitude: Reading Plan (Day 10)

(This devotion is day ten of a 30-Day Thanksgiving Challenge. Each day includes a daily reading that will be accompanied by a post on this blog.)

Read Exodus 14:10–14; 15:22–16:8; Philippians 2:14

Do you have any complainers in your life? They possess a special calling to share their grievances with the world—whether you want to hear them or not. How do you feel after a few minutes around them? There’s something off-putting about murmuring and complaining. It’s easy to see this in someone else, but we all grumble.[1]

I can testify to this from personal experience. One reason I started studying giving thanks is because I’m prone to ingratitude and complaining. Instead of noticing blessings, I gravitate toward problems. I’m not quite Charlie Brown in my outlook of the world, but I’m far from being an optimist. I took up the practice of thanksgiving to recalibrate my heart in these battles.

If you’re done judging me, take a minute to search your own heart. Do you tend to think about blessings or the unwanted circumstances you wish were different? Would people describe you as grateful? Is your prayer life full of saying “thank you” or “give me more”? When you don’t get what you want, have to wait for something, or experience delays to your plans, how do you respond?

Feel guilty yet? If you have an ounce of self-awareness, you’ll admit you’re not exempt from bellyaching, griping, and ingratitude. Just like Israel cried out for deliverance from Egypt one minute (Ex. 3:9) and then complained when they got what they wanted (14:11–12), we skid down the mountain of gratitude into the valley of groaning as soon as things don’t go the way we like.

Forgetfulness and Ingratitude

Do you ever experience spiritual amnesia? Answered prayers or God’s gracious acts fade from memory. We forget our stubbornness and think much better of ourselves than we should. It’s a common spiritual ailment.

Sometimes we forget, but other times we mis-remember. As discontented thoughts rise to the surface of our mind—often lies and misperceptions—it shades our view of God. Rather than celebrating God’s provision of manna in the wilderness, Israel grew tired of it and murmured. They fondly recall bondage in Egypt as if they had been staying in an all-inclusive resort (Num. 11:4–6). Sometimes our remembering doesn’t square with reality, and the result is we overstate how splendid life used to be and minimize God’s blessings in the present.

A grumbling spirit is rooted in a wrong view of God. “Grumbling about our circumstances is grumbling about God’s character.”[2] Ingratitude is rooted in idolatry and unbelief.

If your vehicle squeals, squeaks, or rumbles, the problem isn’t the noise (though that’s embarrassing and concerning) but something bigger. It alerts us to an underlying cause that might be less visible or audible. Grumbling, murmuring, and complaining are symptoms of a more severe problem. They should act as a check-engine light that warns us to look under the hood. Consider a few of the causes of grumbling.

While a demanding spirit isn’t unique to today, contemporary Western culture feeds our sense of privilege. We expect lightning-speed Wi-Fi delivering immediate answers, microwavable meals ready in an instant, and two-day shipping to fulfill my wants without delay. We’re demanding, entitled, and easily agitated. Now mix in a participation-trophy mindset where everyone must be lauded with praise, sprinkle in cultural themes about how amazing and limitless we are, and add a dash of social media breeding discontentment with its filtered images of everyone’s “best life now,” and the conditions are ripe for grumbling.

Connecting our grumbling to its source helps us identify what’s really going on. We’re not just “venting;” we’re unhappy with God because of the circumstances He’s allowed. Those are the deeper issues we need to attack. You must apply grace and the gospel to your disgruntled heart. Only a heart change can replace our groaning and griping with gratitude. Consider the following remedies to ungratefulness.

We need grace to combat our grumbling. We need to nurture a habit of thanksgiving, but even more than discipline, we need to warm our heart next to the fires of the gospel. A right view of self, aware of our sin and how undeserving of anything good we are, and a grasp of God’s kindness to us through Christ, jolts our memory with gratitude.

God has treated you infinitely better than you deserve. You’re entitled to nothing but death and judgment, but God, in His lavish grace, pours blessing after blessing on us. The gospel awakens gratitude and buries grumbling six-feet under the ground.

We will always tilt toward grumbling or gratitude, and we resist the former by choosing the latter. “The longer praise is in our hearts and in our mouths the less time complaint has opportunity to dominate our words.”[3] If you want more gratitude in your life, get the gospel deep into your bones.

Footnotes

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[1] For more on grumbling, see: Ex. 14:11–12; 15:24; 16:2, 7–8; 17:3; Num. 11:4–6; 14:2, 27–29; 16:41; Deut. 1:26–31; Ps. 106:24–26; Mal. 2:17; John 6:41, 61; 1 Cor. 10:10; Phil. 2:14; James 5:9; 1 Peter 4:9; Jude 16.

[2] Erik Raymond, Chasing Contentment (Wheaton: Crossway, 2017), 117.  “…grumbling is directed at the One who is sovereign over such things. Grumbling and complaining, then, are a theological issue that casts God as incompetent, unfair, or irrelevant” (27).

[3] Paul David Tripp tweet. @paultripp 10/19/16

To go deeper in biblical thanksgiving and understand how it leads us to know and enjoy God, check out my book The Grumbler’s Guide to Giving Thanks: Reclaiming the Gifts of A Lost Spiritual Discipline.