I'm in a trust crisis these days. I won't go into the details but I’m finding out that I have developed my complaining skills to a truly fine point. My trust in God, on the other hand, has some huge gaps in it. Confession is a wonderful thing. It helps me make place for God to give some clarity. If life is an onerous burden then complaining groans underneath the burden. Trust in God, on the other hand, rides on top.
Let's go to Egypt to get some light on this. The Hebrew slaves groaned under the oppression of their slavery (Ex 2:23). The Hebrew word for “groaning” describes a reaction to being weighed down by the burdens of life; to sigh. Now the Hebrew slaves didn’t just groan, they also cried out. It is likely that the Hebrews didn’t even know who they were crying out to, yet it was an act of communication. So when God called Moses up onto Mt. Horeb He told Moses that He had heard the cries of the Hebrews and so began the process of their deliverance.
Groaning in and of itself is a simple reaction to the strain of life. We all groan. It’s where we go with our groaning that makes the difference. In their wilderness wanderings the Hebrews all too often went into murmuring; the biblical equivalent of complaining. Curiously, this word has the connotation of obstinacy; of digging your heals in and refusing to be moved. Murmuring was the primary downfall of those Hebrews that left Egypt. They refused to let go of their slave mentality. They were constantly dissatisfied with how God was leading them and wanted to return to Egypt.
Obstinacy is really the basis of our own murmurings. God is working to transform us into His very likeness (2 Cor 3:18). Yet we dig our heals into our own false self and resist the journey into the promised land of our true being. Here’s what God is just now teaching me: There is a difference between murmuring and crying out. We murmur against. We cry out to. The lesson is this; to learn how to turn murmuring into crying out. What God does not ask us to do is to put a smile on our faces and just “stuff it.”
So here’s the picture. We groan under the burden of life. Our tendency is to murmur and complain. But because we know complaining to be not very becoming most likely we’ll “just stuff it.” But it didn’t go away. It’s still there festering beneath the surface. What can we do? I believe God wants us to go before Him and cry out. Let it come. The trick is to keep it in the “crying out” category and not let it drift into murmuring. So how can we tell which is which?
Crying out has the quality of opening ourselves to help. It is an outward expression of our helplessness to God. In a way, it is a form of surrender. We express a desire to cooperate with God as He works to transform us but we don’t have to deny that we don’t understand it; that it really hurts and we don’t particularly like it. It has within it an expression of pain but with a willingness to endure. Crying out is upward-bound.
Murmuring, on the other hand, has the quality of closing off and resisting what God is doing in us. We want God to do things our way and we’re not happy when that doesn’t happen. We can detect murmuring by a sense of wrapping ourselves up within ourselves clinging to what little ground we think we’ve gained in life. When we sense a constriction within us like we are protecting our own agendas against what God might be trying to do – when we want to go back to Egypt – then we are probably in a place of murmuring. Murmuring is selfward-bound.
Murmuring is our natural human response in our fallen state. The trick is to turn murmuring into crying out. We don’t have to do this “nicely.” It’s a sort of throwing ourselves open against every inclination to stay closed and protective. It has the quality of, “O. K., O. K. Fine! Have it your way! I give it to You. After all, I’m just sheep for the slaughter.” It is, finally, an act of raw will. It is will against unwillingness and thus holds a quality of fighting against inner resistance. It is a surrender but not in the sense of a pious, folded-hands religious pretense. Rather it feels more like an act of violence against self. This is what makes it a crying out.
But here’s the good part. Though the battle still rages, once we break through murmuring into crying out we’re above the battlefield. We’re on top of Mt Horeb and in contact with God. We sense that He hears us. Our deliverance is in progress and we are flowing with it.
.
Let's go to Egypt to get some light on this. The Hebrew slaves groaned under the oppression of their slavery (Ex 2:23). The Hebrew word for “groaning” describes a reaction to being weighed down by the burdens of life; to sigh. Now the Hebrew slaves didn’t just groan, they also cried out. It is likely that the Hebrews didn’t even know who they were crying out to, yet it was an act of communication. So when God called Moses up onto Mt. Horeb He told Moses that He had heard the cries of the Hebrews and so began the process of their deliverance.
Groaning in and of itself is a simple reaction to the strain of life. We all groan. It’s where we go with our groaning that makes the difference. In their wilderness wanderings the Hebrews all too often went into murmuring; the biblical equivalent of complaining. Curiously, this word has the connotation of obstinacy; of digging your heals in and refusing to be moved. Murmuring was the primary downfall of those Hebrews that left Egypt. They refused to let go of their slave mentality. They were constantly dissatisfied with how God was leading them and wanted to return to Egypt.
Obstinacy is really the basis of our own murmurings. God is working to transform us into His very likeness (2 Cor 3:18). Yet we dig our heals into our own false self and resist the journey into the promised land of our true being. Here’s what God is just now teaching me: There is a difference between murmuring and crying out. We murmur against. We cry out to. The lesson is this; to learn how to turn murmuring into crying out. What God does not ask us to do is to put a smile on our faces and just “stuff it.”
So here’s the picture. We groan under the burden of life. Our tendency is to murmur and complain. But because we know complaining to be not very becoming most likely we’ll “just stuff it.” But it didn’t go away. It’s still there festering beneath the surface. What can we do? I believe God wants us to go before Him and cry out. Let it come. The trick is to keep it in the “crying out” category and not let it drift into murmuring. So how can we tell which is which?
Crying out has the quality of opening ourselves to help. It is an outward expression of our helplessness to God. In a way, it is a form of surrender. We express a desire to cooperate with God as He works to transform us but we don’t have to deny that we don’t understand it; that it really hurts and we don’t particularly like it. It has within it an expression of pain but with a willingness to endure. Crying out is upward-bound.
Murmuring, on the other hand, has the quality of closing off and resisting what God is doing in us. We want God to do things our way and we’re not happy when that doesn’t happen. We can detect murmuring by a sense of wrapping ourselves up within ourselves clinging to what little ground we think we’ve gained in life. When we sense a constriction within us like we are protecting our own agendas against what God might be trying to do – when we want to go back to Egypt – then we are probably in a place of murmuring. Murmuring is selfward-bound.
Murmuring is our natural human response in our fallen state. The trick is to turn murmuring into crying out. We don’t have to do this “nicely.” It’s a sort of throwing ourselves open against every inclination to stay closed and protective. It has the quality of, “O. K., O. K. Fine! Have it your way! I give it to You. After all, I’m just sheep for the slaughter.” It is, finally, an act of raw will. It is will against unwillingness and thus holds a quality of fighting against inner resistance. It is a surrender but not in the sense of a pious, folded-hands religious pretense. Rather it feels more like an act of violence against self. This is what makes it a crying out.
But here’s the good part. Though the battle still rages, once we break through murmuring into crying out we’re above the battlefield. We’re on top of Mt Horeb and in contact with God. We sense that He hears us. Our deliverance is in progress and we are flowing with it.
.
