Let The Veil Down

Grumbling and Complaining
with Bayless Conley

One of the things I believe grieves the heart of God is when His children grumble and complain. In Jude 6 we find some interesting insight into this destructive behavior,

These are grumblers, complainers, walking according to their own lusts; and they mouth great swelling words, flattering people to gain advantage.

The word complainer is really two Greek words stuck together. The first word means to blame, and the second word means your fate or lot in life. The point is that complainers blame someone else for their lot in life.

Isn't it always amazing how someone can make wrong choices, and when they have to face the consequences of those choices, it is always somebody else's fault?

I have two pieces of advice for you on this. First, if you are a complainer and grumbler, stop. God is not honored, and you are only showing that you are "walking according to your own lust," not according to God's Spirit.

Second, stay away from people like that or you will end up being like them. Proverbs 22:24-25 says,

Make no friendship with an angry man, and with a furious man do not go, lest you learn his ways and set a snare for your soul.

Their attitudes and mindsets will bleed off on you.

Did you ever throw a pair of jeans in the washing machine with a red shirt? What happened to your blue jeans? They turned pink, didn't they? The red dye bled over into the blue jeans, and the blue jeans were no longer blue. They were pink.

If you hang around with people who grumble and complain, their attitudes will bleed over into your way of thinking. And the last thing you want to be is a grumbler and complainer.

Visit the Answers with Bayless Conley website for more ways to Connect with God






Preparation for Greater Service
Dr. Charles Stanley

1 Kings 17:17-24

In Luke 17:5, the apostles asked Christ to increase their faith. The Lord told them that if they had faith as small as a mustard seed, they could do great things. God does not enlarge our faith instantly. He begins with what little we have and proceeds to grow it.

Elijah was in a faith-building program. The Lord gave him increasingly difficult challenges of reliance and obedience. Back at the brook, the prophet had to depend on the Lord for his own survival. But at Zarephath, he trusted God to provide for both himself and a widow. And in today's passage, he served her in an even larger way by raising her son to life.

Each act of believing God and the ensuing step of obedience resulted in increased opportunities for Elijah to serve the Lord and others. Raising the dead may seem like the height of his ministry, but it was to be followed by an even greater opportunity to influence an entire nation for God. Elijah was about to face the biggest spiritual battle of his life (1 Kings 18)—all his previous demonstrations of faith and obedience were the Lord's way of preparing him.

God wants each of us to be influential in His kingdom. He knows which faith challenges to present so that we can be entrusted with even greater tasks.

The Lord will provide occasions for you to believe Him and respond in obedience. These situations are what we call "problems." Begin to look at each difficulty as an opportunity designed by God specifically for the purpose of increasing your faith so He can do great things in and through you.

For more biblical teaching and resources from Dr. Charles Stanley, please visit www.intouch.org.







What Is Justification?
Pastor Adrian Rogers

"...and whom He justified, them He also glorified. "Romans 8:30

What does it mean to be justified? It means to be declared righteous.

Justification is not being good, though being good gives God glory. When you put your faith where God put your sins - on the Lord Jesus Christ - then God stamps "righteous" over your name in His "Book of Life."

It's not because of what you have done or ever can do, but because of His justification.

No court on earth can justify anybody. But what God does is take a guilty person and not only give that guilty person a pardon, but He makes that guilty person just as if he had never sinned. That's justification.

If you lived every moment believing in the justification that God has given you, how would your faith be strengthened? Would you be more vocal about the gift of God's love?