Gospel and living a life of gratitude.

   It is so easy to complain and honestly I am pretty good at it!  Most of us seem to be pretty good at complaining and do not find difficulty in finding multiple things every single day to complain about.  However, as followers of Jesus it is very clear that we are not to complain.  Philippians 2:14 states, "Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world."  Do all things without grumbling.  That is hard, really hard, but it is what we are called to do!  Did you see what this verse says will happen if we do all things without grumbling or disputing?  You will shine as light in the world!  Why?  Because everyone is complaining and grumbling all the time!  

 We are looking at why it is so important to get the Gospel right because when we get the Gospel right it helps us live out the radical life that we are called to live, and living a life without grumbling and arguing is a radical life.  Instead of complaining we have been called to live a life of thankfulness, Ephesians 5:20, "Giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. "  So how does the Gospel help us move away from a life of complaining to a life of thankfulness?  

In the Gospel we see grace; incredible, amazing, astounding, incomprehensible, undeserved, unearned, grace!  The Gospel tells us that there is absolutely nothing that we can do to restore our relationship with God.  Nothing.  We can't be good enough, we can't go to church enough, we can't read our bibles enough, we can't pray enough, we can't tell enough people about Jesus.  There is nothing we can do to restore our relationship with God.  We broke the relationship through our sin and we are powerless to restore it.  That is a pretty helpless place to be.  It is our fault that it is broken and we can do nothing to fix it.  Here is where the Gospel enters in.  God did for you what you could not do for yourself.  God restored the broken relationship by sending Jesus to die in your place, in my place!  That is incredible!  Not because you are good, or deserving, or worthy, but because He LOVES YOU!  WOW!  Let that sink in and I guarantee you the more you grasp what God has done for you the more gratitude and thankfulness will come bubbling up from deep within you and overflow into the life that you live day by day.  

So what do we do when we catch ourselves in those complaining moods?  Tell ourselves the Gospel message.  Tell ourselves what Jesus did for us.  Tell ourselves how God restored the relationship that we broke and that we could not fix and don't stop preaching the Gospel to yourself until gratitude and thankfulness begin to take over the complaining and grumbling spirit that you found yourself in.