Check Your Attitude
James 5:9 Do not grumble against one another, brothers, so that you may not be judged;
behold, the Judge is standing at the door.
behold, the Judge is standing at the door.
That statement has always seemed kind of ironic to me. There’s been a few times the kids have been in the bedrooms playing, and I’m not in there – but everything gets quiet. If you have little girls, it’s okay – they’re just playing nicely with their dolls! But if you have boys, and it gets all quiet, you’re either going to hear something very, very loud or someone screaming in the very near future, so you need to go check it out! So that’s what I do from time to time, walk in and check on the kids, make sure they’re okay, nothing’s on fire, nothing’s broken, the couch still looks like a couch – and what happens? I’m standing at the door watching, and they have no idea that I’m there. This verse carries the same kind of connotation. He’s watching you! You’re not hiding anything. When you start grumbling, you’re not hiding anything.
What happens when you become impatient? I’m going to throw out a math term: grumbling and patience tend to be inversely proportional. As your patience goes up, your grumbling goes down. But the reverse is also true. As you become more impatient, your grumbling goes up. Because we’re not patient in our trials, sufferings, and burdens, because we don’t focus on the faith and we don’t establish our hearts, we don’t focus on Christ, we’re in fight, fright, or flight mode, our impatience builds and so does our grumbling.
What happens when you become impatient? I’m going to throw out a math term: grumbling and patience tend to be inversely proportional. As your patience goes up, your grumbling goes down. But the reverse is also true. As you become more impatient, your grumbling goes up. Because we’re not patient in our trials, sufferings, and burdens, because we don’t focus on the faith and we don’t establish our hearts, we don’t focus on Christ, we’re in fight, fright, or flight mode, our impatience builds and so does our grumbling.
When we become impatient, we begin to think to think we’re the center of our universe. We throw, let’s just be honest with ourselves, amazing pity parties. We are fantastic, it makes us the center of our universe. We are so good at telling others our troubles, and laying everything out, and just grumbling and complaining. Example: let’s say you’re in line, and you went to Disney World or King’s Island, or a new movie, or the coolest concert, and you see the ticket office, and there’s only 25-30 people ahead of you. But those people are moving SO slowly! What happens? Especially with kids. They start getting antsy, are we there yet, I have to pee, why aren’t we moving, I want to get on the ride, I’m hungry…The bad thing is that when we grow up, we don’t outgrow that! We still grumble! It comes out in sarcasm, different forms of complaining that will lead people away and frustrate those around us. We being complaining because we begin to make our universe center around us, and our problems start determining who we are. Because we are so focused on our burdens, our suffering at any given time, we start grumbling because we are the center of our universe. That’s what James is talking about here.
