Complaint or Comply? | Numbers 11-12

What will it take for God’s people to trade compliance for complaining in their relationship with God?

A posture shift in the heart of God’s people from compliance to complaining takes place when…

1. They allow their personal circumstances and influences to distract them from God’s plan and provision to this world’s pain and pleasures (Numbers 11).
   1. Problem: God’s plan and provision or worldly pain and pleasure? – Coveting (despondency and debauchery).
   2. Solution: Divine discipline, divine enablement, divine audience – Prayer and thanksgiving.
2. They allow their personal pride to lure them into the self-seeking pursuit of power and position (Numbers 12).
   1. Pride and jealousy: a challenge to God’s established authority to establish one’s own.
   2. God’s leadership: humility.

Those who refuse to comply with God’s word Will inevitably complain. Don’t trade your loyalty to God For the fickle alliances of this world.

1. Discontentment distorts our memory. It makes the past look better and the present look worse than it is. Have you allowed this distortion to cloud your vision of what God is doing today and what he is calling you to do for him? How about replacing complaining with thanksgiving?
2. A complaining spirit is a sign of a prayerless life; bring your burdens to God instead of bottling them up or turning them into bitter complaints.
3. Be careful who you criticize; accountability is always necessary but selfish ambition is deadly.