Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Trinity
Sermons. This week we are continuing our teaching
series called Spring Cleaning, where we're looking
at some of the bad habits in our life that we
need to get rid of in order to make more space
for good things to grow. And this week Rob's
going to talk to us all about complaining. You
know, those negative Nellies, those grumpy Gusses,
those people who just always seem to have something.
to complain about. But maybe those people are
us. And if they are, what should we do about
it? Today's reading is from Philippians chapter
2, verses 12 to 16. Therefore, my friends, as
you have always obeyed, not only in my presence,
but now much more in my absence, continue to
work out your salvation with fear and trembling.
For it is God who works in you to will and to
act in order to fulfill his good purpose. Do
everything without grumbling or arguing so that
you may become blameless and pure. Children of
God, without fault in a warped and a crooked
generation. Then you will shine among them like
stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word
of life. The word of the Lord. You might remember
that last week we got started by talking about
how to clear out comparing and how when we compare
ourselves to others it does all sorts of bad
things inside of us. And today a part of our
spiritual tidy up is to conquer complaining,
conquer complaining. We are however going to
need more than just a janitor to do this work
and we're going to need God's help. So that's
why every week when we start this kind of interior
cleanup, we want to pray. And so what we're going
to be praying, just like last week, is this section
of Psalm 139. And this, again, is just to be
a reminder to us that the goal of this teaching
series is not to try harder or to kind of clean
up your own life. That's not what it's about.
This is work that God needs to do in us. And
so if you would. Once again, would you pray with
me? Search me, God, and know my heart. Test me
and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is
any offensive way in me and lead me in the way
everlasting. Amen. Well, now, our janitor friend
over here was quite humorous, but actually, complaining
is no laughing matter. Complaining makes us miserable.
Complaining makes everyone around us miserable.
And it's a real hard habit to break. I tried
to do a little bit of a research on complaining
this week. And the research says that on average,
a person will complain something like 15 to 30
times a day, which is like a couple times, few
times for every waking hour that we are awake.
And partly it's because We've been conditioned
this way. You don't go home and turn on the news
and hear, look at all the wonderful things going
on in the world. You go home and you turn on
the news and it's everything that's broken. It's
everything that's wrong. It's everything that
we should be worrying about. So there's this
whole environment around us of complaining. The
thing about complaining, though, is it actually
rewires your brain. So every time you complain,
you're actually training your neural pathways.
You're training your brain. to complain, which
means the more you complain, the more you complain.
And the same is true if you hang around a complainer,
soon you'll be complaining more too. It's quite
contagious. It gets worse though, because complaining
actually shrinks your brain. That makes you dumber.
And there's research that shows that if you're
exposed to 30 minutes of complaining a day, or
if you yourself are complaining for 30 minutes
a day, it actually does physical damage to the
hippocampus part of your brain, deep inside your
brain. It can even physically shrink it. And
on top of that, of course, complaining... It
affects your health because when you complain
a lot, it releases cortisol into your bloodstream,
and that can increase, you know, heart disease
and weaken your immune system. And there's actually
really good evidence to suggest that people who
are optimists live longer than people who are
pessimists and constantly complaining. And what
do we complain about? Well, we complain about
the weather. You know, it's too hot, it's too
cold. We complain about other drivers. Everybody's
a bad driver except us. We complain about waiting,
whether it's in line, whether it's on hold. whether
it's at the traffic light. We complain about
all the aches and pains in our lives. Oh, my
trichine, or oh, my bunions are acting up today,
whatever. Or we always complain about the generations,
right? Oh, kids these days, these kids, when
will they learn? Complain about the cost of things,
gas, rent, groceries, everything. And we love
to complain about customer service. Oh, where
is my food? We ordered... 20 minutes ago and
the appetizers aren't even here yet. So that's
what the kind of research and science tells us
about complaining. But what does the Bible tell
us about complaining? Well, Philippians 2, which
Beulah just read for us, we read, do everything
without grumbling or arguing so that you may
be blameless and pure, children of God without
fault in a warped and crooked generation. Now,
the Greek word there for grumbling could also
be translated complaining. And it is an onomatopoetic
word, which means it's a word that actually sounds
like what it means. So in Greek, that word grumbling
is gungusmos. Gongusmos, gongusmos. So grouching,
gongusmos, grumbling, groaning, right? Griping,
gongusmos, right? Do you know a gongusmos person?
Do you know a complainer? If you don't, let me
introduce you to some of the most famous complainers
out there. Let me introduce you. This first person
I want you to meet is Wilma the Winer. Wilma
the Winer. Now, her sister you may have met.
If you haven't met Wilma, her sister's name is
Negative Nelly. And actually, her best friend
is Karen. Wilma wakes up every single day whining,
and that's what whiners do. As the saying goes,
they don't rise and shine, they rise and whine.
And Wilma's famous phrase is, this sucks, right?
Everything sucks, right? If you're stuck in traffic,
this sucks. If your food takes too long, this
sucks. If the Wi -Fi goes down, this sucks. This
sucks. Everything sucks. I think Wilma would
have fit. right in with the people of Israel
as they wandered through the wilderness. Because
right after God liberates them from slavery,
right after they go through the Red Sea, as they're
on their way to the promised land, man, oh man,
do they whine. Oh, if only we had died by the
Lord's hand in Egypt. Well, there we had lamb
stew and we ate all the food we wanted. But here
the food sucks. Here the weather sucks. Here
this manna, it sucks. right Moses our leader
even he sucks right so so whining always focuses
on the negative and forgets all the good things
around you so I wonder have you ever met Wilma
the whiner Wilma the whiner. But if you haven't
met Wilma the whiner, then let me introduce you
to the second type of complainant, Martin the
martyr. Martin the martyr. Now, Martin's favorite
phrase is, oh, no one appreciates me. right he
feels like he's carrying everything he's doing
everything he's sacrificing everything and he
wants you and he wants everyone to know how much
he's giving and martin loves to throw pity parties
oh i'll just do it myself or i always do it myself
i guess i'm the only one around here who cares
Now, I think Martin is actually distantly related
to Moses himself. Moses would say stuff like,
oh, the burden's too heavy for me. If this is
how you're going to treat me, God, please just
go ahead and kill me. Now, Moses was under a
lot of pressure, granted, but there's a fine
line here between, you know, just having a little
bit of an honest struggle and moving into self
-pity. And that's what Martin does. He moves
from, oh, this is hard, to, oh, woe is me. Nobody
has it as hard as me. Now, if you don't know
Martin the Martyr, you'll certainly know Cynthia
the Cynic. And Cynthia, her sister, by the way,
Debbie Downer. Do you guys know Debbie Downer?
Cynthia's favorite phrase is, nothing's ever
going to change. Nothing will ever change. What's
the point? Why even try? Cynthia isn't as loud
as Wilma and maybe not as emotional as Martin.
She's just defeated. Oh, forget about it, right?
Nothing's... ever going to change? Who even cares?
Why even bother, right? Solomon is a classic
example of a cynic. Oh, everything is meaningless.
Generations come and generations go, but it's
always the same story forever and ever. What
has been will be again. Kids these days, right?
So have you met Cynthia? Or are you a little
bit of a Cynthia? Like, do you have a relationship
that just never seems to be working? You're like,
what's the point? Or you turn on the news and
you see one problem after another and you're
just like, you know, nothing's ever going to
change in the world. Finally, the fourth person
I want to introduce you to is Pete the Perfectionist.
And Pete's favorite phrase is, this isn't good
enough. This isn't good enough. Hey, you missed
a spot over here, right? Now Pete's different
from the other three. His biggest complaint.
is that nothing meets his very high standards,
right? Nothing is ever quite good enough. The
house is not good enough. The job is not good
enough. The church service is not good enough.
The sermon is not good enough. I'm working on
it, Pete. Give me a break. I'm trying. But Pete,
he shows up in readings like, you know, Proverbs
27. A nagging spouse is like the drip, drip.
Drip of a leaky faucet. You can't turn it off
and you can't get away from it. Drip, drip, constant
criticism. Drip, constant fault finding. Drip,
nothing is ever good enough. It's just draining.
And it makes your relationships with people so
much worse. So there you got it. There's Pete
the perfectionist. So who did we meet? We met
Wilma the whiner, Martin the martyr, Cynthia
the cynic. Pete the Perfectionist, by the way,
if your name is Wilma, Martin, Cynthia, or Pete,
my apologies to you this morning. These four
have very different personalities, but they all
have the same problem. They're complainers. And
if we're honest, we don't just know them, but
sometimes we are them. And so the question is,
How do we conquer complaining? How do we clean
up this mess in our hearts? Well, thankfully,
the Bible does not just show us the problem.
It also gives us a cleanup plan. So I want to
just look at five, I think, simple but also very
powerful things that we can do to deal with complaining.
Just think of this as your spring cleaning checklist.
And step one on that checklist is the simplest
of all of them. And that is to admit that this
is a problem for you. Not to admit that it's
a problem for your spouse. Not to admit that
it's a problem for your kids or your coworkers,
but for you. You see, complaining is one of those
things that is so easy to see in other people,
but so hard to see in ourself. You know, you
hear Wilma or you hear Cynthia and you say, oh
yeah, that's her. That's her. I know her. Or
you hear Martin and you hear Pete and you're
like, oh yeah, I've met someone like that. But
then we skip right over top of ourselves. Paul
says, you got to work out your salvation. with
fear and trembling. For it is God who is working
in you, right? He says, don't, he's not saying
fix the people around you. He is saying. Work
it out in you. You work it out. You do everything
without grumbling. It doesn't start out there
with someone else. It actually starts in here
with ourselves. Proverbs again, 28 says, whoever
conceals their sins does not prosper, but the
one who confesses and renounces them, they find
hope. They find mercy. So you can't fix what
you don't face. And to clean up complaining,
we have to come clean about complaining. So like
we prayed, God, search us. God, where is complaining
showing up in my life? And maybe I don't even
call it complaining. Maybe I... I just say, oh,
can I vent to you for a little bit? We love to
vent, but it's not complaining. Or maybe it shows
up like in your life group during the prayer
request time. And you're like, oh, can we just
pray for my husband? He's been such a pain in
the butt lately, right? We say, oh, it's a prayer
request. No, it's just a way that we're complaining
in a spiritual way. So wherever it is hiding,
God, we just pray that you would dig it out because
that first part of the cleanup plan has just
gone. to be admitting that we have this problem.
Okay, the second part is kind of connected, but
it is not just to admit the problem, but it's
to accept responsibility for our own life and
our own decisions. Complaining is very closely
related to blaming. We blame others. We blame
circumstances. We even blame God. Complaining
is a way of us saying, this isn't my fault. I
didn't do anything. This isn't my fault. This
is all somebody else. But the Bible pushes back
on that. Again, Proverbs says that a person's
own folly leads to their ruin, yet their heart
goes. and rages against the Lord. In other words,
we make a mess in our lives, and then we go and
we complain to God about it. I want to give you
an example of how this worked out in my own life
this past week. Last week, after a long day of
work, it was the last thing we were going to
do before the end of the night. Sally and I decided
to take our dog, Holly, for a walk, which is
normal. And so, you know, it was 10 .30, 11 o
'clock at night. We're walking around the block,
and we always take her to this one spot where
we take her off the leash. and she can run around
a little bit. Now, we took her off the leash,
and Sally was the first one to spot it. There
was a skunk running around. And Sally said, Rob,
you better put the dog back on the leash. And
I said, oh, Sally, come on, don't overreact.
She's a good dog. She's a good dog. She'll come
if we need her to. And besides, I think I saw
the skunk run to the fence. I think he's gone
anyways. And then again, she's like, I think
you should put the dog on the leash. And I said,
just relax. Everything will be just fine. It's
late. We're going to go home. Well, about 15
seconds later, Holly darted for the skunk that
appeared, and she got blasted point blank. It
was horrible. Yesterday, I was talking to our
neighbors, the Bemons, who live three blocks
away, and they were like, that was you? It was
horrible. It was a horrible, horrible smell.
And so I went home that night, and for the last
three days or more, we have been washing and
rewashing and chemicaling our dog. And man, oh
man, when I was doing that, I complained so,
so much. Oh, we never should have got a dog.
I hate this dog. This dog is worth more trouble
than it is worth. This dog should be ashamed
of itself, right? The truth is, it wasn't the
dog's fault. It was my fault. It was my folly
that led to her ruin and the ruin of the whole
Streetsville neighborhood, right? I had to accept
responsibility in the end. And sometimes that's
the thing. The things that we complain about
the most are connected to choices that we made,
right? We complain, oh, I'm always so exhausted.
But we stay up like super late. Or we complain,
oh, I hate being in debt. But we refuse to kind
of put in a spending plan that would actually
get us out of debt. The Bible has a phrase for
this, by the way. It's, you reap what you sow.
Yes, you are free. You're free to choose your
own actions, but those actions have consequences.
In one of Rick Warren's books, he says there's
three kinds of people. He says there are accusers.
excusers and choosers. Accusers say, it's your
fault. Excusers say, it's not my fault. And choosers
say, I choose to take responsibility. So again,
let's pray. God, search me. Where have I been
blaming and complaining instead of owning things
and taking some responsibility? Step three. in
the cleanup plan. Sounds a bit like last week,
but it's a recurring theme. And that is the way
we get rid of complaining is developing an attitude
of gratitude. Everybody's heard that phrase,
but it is so true. Paul says, he says, give thanks
in some circumstances. No, he doesn't. He says,
give thanks in good circumstances. No, it doesn't
say that either. He says, give thanks. In all
circumstances, for this is God's will for you
in Christ Jesus. Now notice, Paul doesn't say
give thanks for all your circumstances. He says
give thanks in all circumstances. When Paul wrote
this, he was sitting in jail, right? God is not
asking us to pretend that everything is good.
He's asking us to trust God and to trust that
God is good. So you can always look at your life
and say, here's what's wrong with my life. Or
you can look at your life and say, look what
God has given me. You can say on the one, oh,
that dog stinks. I hate that dog. Or you can
say, oh, but she's so cute. You know, Joni Mitchell,
you remember that song? Don't it always seem
to go. That you don't know what you've got till
it's gone. So let me ask you, what in your life
right now have you like stopped being thankful
for? And that what would it take for you to start
thanking God for it again? That is actually part
of the cleanup plan. Step four of cleaning up
this complaining is to look. for God's hand in
all of our circumstances. You know, indeed, there
are some things in life that are really hard.
There are some things in life that are really
confusing and painful. And this isn't about pretending
to be fine when you're going through tough times.
It's totally fine for us in those moments to
ask God, God, why is this happening to us? That
is actually not a complaint. That is an honest
question. That is even a lament. But at the same
time, there is another question we could be asking
God in those difficult moments. And that question
is, God, where are you in this? James writes
this. I put the whole thing up there because
it says it all. Dear brothers and sisters, when
troubles of any kind come your way, Consider
it an opportunity for great joy. For you know
that when your faith is tested, your endurance
has a chance to grow. So let it grow. For when
your endurance is fully developed, you will be
perfect and complete, needing nothing. And James
here, he's not minimizing pain. He's just reframing
it. And he's just saying, there's more maybe
going on in your pain than first appears. When
I complain about my circumstances, I'm kind of
saying, God, you don't know what you're doing.
God, you're making a mistake here. I don't think
you care about me. But sometimes the thing we
complain about the most is the very thing that
God wants to use most in our lives. That problem
you're facing, that delay that you've been waiting
for, that relationship that is a constant struggle.
You wish that situation would just go away. But
maybe God's saying, hey, I can use this. I'm
going to use this. Again, I'm not pretending
this is easy. But instead of just complaining,
saying, God, why me? We could also say, God,
what are you doing in me? God, where are you
shaping me? God, how are you forming me through
this? And that brings us to step five of the
cleanup plan. And that is simply to start practicing
speaking positively. As we've already seen, complaining
is a habit that rewires your brain. But those
neural... connections that are made through complaining
can be undone healed and reconnected when we
change the way that we speak when we start thinking
more positively and using uplifting speech habits
don't just go away we often have to replace bad
habits with good habits the bible speaks over
and over again about how important it is to just
watch what it is that is coming out of our mouths
don't let unwholesome talk come out of your mouths
but only what is helpful for building others
up according to their needs. In other words,
don't just try to cut out complaining, but replace
those words with words that build people up and
do that in your home or do it in your workplace
or do it with your friendship group or do it
in your classroom. You can always walk into a
room and bring criticism or you can walk into
that room and bring encouragement instead. You
can tear people down or you can build people
up. One way drains people, but the other way
fills people up. So I want to challenge you to
something this week, and that is to see how long
you can go in any one stretch without complaining.
Use a stopwatch or something. I don't know. As
soon as you feel yourself starting to complain,
oh, this isn't good enough, or Debbie Downer,
or whatever, catch yourself, and instead, Switch
it. Say, you know, well, thank you, God, for
what you've done here. Because part of the cleanup
plan is to just pay better attention to our words.
Admit it's a problem. Accept responsibility.
Develop an attitude of gratitude. Look for God's
hand in it and practice speaking positively.
Paul says, do everything without complaining.
Man, Paul, that is a really, really... Big ask.
It's a tall order. But he actually gives us the
reason why this is so important. This is kind
of where we need to end. He says, this is important
so that you may become. blameless and pure, children
of God without fault in a warped and crooked
generation, which is true. We do live in a generation
that is very, very negative. You turn on the
news, scroll your social media, listen to conversations.
It's complaint after complaint after complaint
after complaint. But if we can conquer complaining,
and we can show people some kind of different
attitude or a different way of life, then yes,
guess what? We do shine like stars in the sky.
Just like the stars in the sky are these dots
of light that stand out against the black background,
right? We can stand out in a dark and dreary
world as a genuinely positive person. A complaining
Christian. I think it's very difficult for a
complaining Christian to lead someone to Jesus.
But a person who speaks life, a person who trusts
God, a person who carries gratitude even in the
hard times, that kind of life makes people say,
wow, there is something different about that
person. I want to figure out why they have a
completely different attitude. And as we do that,
those people may even begin to see Jesus in us.
And if you think about it, if anyone, had the
right to complain. It would have been Jesus.
He was betrayed by his friends, falsely accused.
He was beaten, mocked, nailed to the cross. He
was oppressed and afflicted. But look, he never
said a word. As a sheep before his shearers is
silent, so he, what? He did not open his mouth.
Jesus didn't lash out. Jesus didn't complain.
Jesus didn't accuse. He didn't gunguse moss.
Instead, he speaks words of life. Father, forgive
them. And you know, as Christians, the same spirit
of Jesus lives in us, enabling us to live like
him. So, yeah, Wilma the whiner, Martin the martyr,
Cynthia the cynic, Pete the perfectionist. We
don't just know these people. We are these people.
Sometimes we rise and whine, right? Sometimes
we throw pity parties, and sometimes we just
expect everything to be better than it is. But
if we admit it, if we own it, if we choose differently,
we can rewire our lives. What would happen in
your home if you replaced complaining with encouragement?
What would happen in your workplace if you replace
negativity with positivity? And what would happen
in this church if we replaced grumbling with
gratitude? I'll tell you what would happen. We
would shine like stars in the sky. So thanks
be to God. Amen. Thanks for tuning in to this
week's episode of Trinity Sermons. This sermon
was recorded at Trinity Church Streetsville in
Mississauga, Ontario on April 19th, 2026.