As you go through your life’s circumstances, are you whining or winning?
I just finished perusing my life journals from 1986 through today, and consistently since 1986 I have vacillated from whining to winning. I must be very dense… or dumb!
Page after page, my journal reveals a pattern; a painful circumstance occurs, I go through a time of whining, then I finally win; i.e. I grasp what God is trying to teach me, and I obtain one of his characteristics. That’s the winning part.
So, you are probably wondering and wanting to ask me, “So, Sue, why don’t you just jump right to the winning and skip the whining? Why do you whine?”
The answer? My heart is not yet totally eternity based. I still want what I want when I want it: physical security, possessions galore, financial well-being, relationships abundant and my career to soar.
Well guess what? I totally believe that God wants to give all of his children many gifts BUT not at the expense of negating what He wants our spirits to have: his attributes of humility, compassion, kindness, goodness and tenderness.
So, He takes us through circumstances to humble us and to test us in order to know what was in our hearts, whether or not we would keep his commands. (Dt. 8:2).
As we learn his ways and wants and will, we then obtain his character. We become like him, and that is one of his heart’s desires. If we resist his tests by whining, we lose. We stay in our natural frame of mind and don’t walk in our supernatural mind. After all, scripture says, you have the mind of Christ- 1Cor. 2:16.
The Israelites in the Old Testament persisted in whining, and they forfeited their destiny. If we vacillate from whining to winning, that means we are double-minded. We are living by what we see and not by what God says. We are interpreting our lives through the grid of our circumstances, not through the greatness of Christ.
But here’s the neat part. With God, failing our tests is not permanent. He just simply lets us take the tests over and over until we stop the whining and start winning. If your first response to a life circumstance is to whine, you are not winning.
What would be the correct response to your circumstances? Praise! If you are responding with praise, you are winning.
Make sure you are choosing to win!