Whipping A Whiney Spirit – Part VIII
What Beats A Whiney Spirit:
"Progression – Forward Advancement"
Ezekiel 20th Chapter
32" `You
say, "We want to be like the nations, like the peoples of the world, who
serve wood and stone." But what you have in mind will never happen. 33As
surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I will rule over you with a
mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with outpoured wrath. 34I
will bring you from the nations and gather you from the countries where you
have been scattered — with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with
outpoured wrath. 35I will bring you into the desert of the
nations and there, face to face, I will execute judgment upon you. 36As
I judged your fathers in the desert of the land of Egypt, so I will judge you,
declares the Sovereign LORD. 37I will take note of you as you
pass under my rod, and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant.
To close out this series, we will
discuss one final element that helps us beat a whiney spirit ——
Progression. The definition of
progression is "to go forward with steady improvement toward a
conclusion." Now one problem that
many of us Christians have is the "tada syndrome." This is when we want to get where someone
else is without going through what he/she went through. In other words, we want all the results of
the blessings of God without going through the fire or the fight.
Instead of waiting on God or
letting Him "try" our faith to work our patience, we sometimes get
out of that trial the best way we can and even whine and complain in the
process. Yet, we should fully submit to
God’s master plan because He knows that by trying our faith and working our
patience, we shall come forth complete and progress spiritually to where He
wants us to be.
James
1st Chapter:
2
My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; 3
Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. 4
But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire,
wanting nothing.
A
whiney spirit keeps you from having your patience "worked." All the time while God is trying to get you
to His "conclusion, " your whiney spirit would rather be in its
comfort zone with no trials and no fire; just the "tadaaaa." Like that magician pulling a rabbit out of
the hat, we want instant gratification.
But it can’t be that way everytime because we wouldn’t come forth
complete —— only spoiled. In this
week’s text, this is where the children of Israel wanted to be, but guess
what? the Lord loved them too much to
let them be that way.
32"
`You say, "We want to be like the nations, like the peoples of the world,
who serve wood and stone." But what you have in mind will never happen. 33As
surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I will rule over you with a
mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with outpoured wrath. 34I
will bring you from the nations and gather you from the countries where you
have been scattered—with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with
outpoured wrath.
One
thing we need to always be mindful of is that the Lord disciplines those He
loves. Here is an example of that. He loved the Israelites so much that He
wouldn’t even let them fall victim to a scheme that resided (and was probably
created) in their own minds (32nd).
You see, this mentality was going to push them away from Him. But no matter what it took for them to
"get it," He was going to make sure that His children "got
it." Now let’s see where the Lord
was trying to get His children.
35I
will bring you into the desert of the nations and there, face to face, I will
execute judgment upon you. 36As I judged your fathers in the
desert of the land of Egypt, so I will judge you, declares the Sovereign LORD. 37I will take note of you as you
pass under my rod, and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant.
The
37th verse tells us that the Lord was trying to get His children
into the bond of the covenant. Of course we all need to be there because if God
be for us, then it doesn’t matter who is against us. Yet, the problem is we don’t want to go through the desert (35th)
to get there. We want that testimony of
God bringing us out of our situation, but many of us can’t stand the test that
will get us the testimony. By the way,
we should take note that we can’t even spell "testimony" without the
word "test." So know that
your desert experience is only a test. You’re not going to die there. It’s only
a means to get you out of what you’re in.
So why the desert? I mean, why
do we have to go into the desert to get out of what we are in? If I had to choose one word that to explain
it, I would have to say "SEPARATION!!"
(1)
Separation for God
To
be holy means to be separated or set apart for God. So for us to become holy,
we’ve got to have a desert experience where it is just us and Him. No backwards friends, no longtime pastor, just
you and Him. Also, the desert
experience is to keep others from knowing your business. Here’s a question for
you. Have you ever had someone in your office, class, etc. who always had to
tell everyone what he/she was going through?
When the boyfriend/girlfriend left them everybody just had to know. When they lost their job or got fired,
everybody just had to be told. When they had family problems, more people
outside the family knew than inside.
In
most cases, the Lord loves you enough to put you in the desert so that nobody
will know —— unless you tell them. There’s nothing wrong with telling the
saints of God what you’re going through so that they can intercede in prayer
for you. But my question is why go "whining" to Willy Watercooler? If he can’t pray for you and help bring
about your change, then why should he know what you’re going through WHEN
YOU’RE GOING THROUGH IT.
Now
it might just be the divine will of God for you to tell Willy about your desert
experience AFTER you’ve gone through it just for Him to see how the "bond
of the covenant" worked for you—— how you kept your head up through
something that would have "broken " him completely—-how you knew
without a shadow of doubt that the Lord was going to bring you through. By not
yielding to the whiney spirit, we can have a greater testimony to win souls for
the kingdom of God. Believe it or not,
this is probably why we have to go through the desert anyhow. So when Brother Willie goes through, he can
lean on us and our test/testimony will be encouraging and empowering to him.
(2)
Separation from the demons
Your
desert experience is also to bring about a permanent separation from the
demonic forces in your life. In other words, it’s to make you hate those demons
you are facing. Let’s get real here. If
we don’t learn to hate those demons, we will continue to "lay-up"
with them. This is why too many Christians are "Dancing with the Devil
Called Debt." (Look for this series to come)
Some
of us feel that as long as we have our demon (credit) "under control"
it’s O.K. to be in debt. So to show us how wrong this is, God may put us in a
financial wilderness and make every creditor we have call us just so we can
understand that this is not the way it should be. (Hint: We shouldn’t be living
from payday to payday either.)
Sometimes
we just have to get "spanked" to get the message. All of this is done simply because the Lord
loves us so much that He wants us totally out of our situation and not dabbling
in it. "Our desert" is to strengthen the relationship between
creation and creator, and also it’s to crush any spirit that’s not from Him.
Proverbs
3:12 – "For whom the LORD loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son
in whom he delighteth."
We
should never forget that the Lord loves us enough to deal with us and our
shortcomings. As we are going through
the desert, remember that whining about the situation can never be a part of
the solution, but it can make the problem bigger than it is. More than likely, our desert experience is
for God to work "off" something that’s keeping us bound, and that
thing might just be that whiney spirit.
So as we go through the desert, remember these three words: Praise, Progress
& Purpose. As we praise God through our trials and tribulations, we will
progress much sooner toward our purpose if we don’t whine.
