Episode Transcript
PRAYER OF CONSECRATION
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.
Jesus, we belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
Exodus 16:1–3
The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt. In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”
CONSIDER THIS
In case there was ever any doubt, the honeymoon is now officially over. Forty-five days in and the wheels are falling off.
In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron.
Grumbling. What a word. It’s the place where griping and complaining meets mumbling. It implies a speaking against someone rather than talking to or with someone. Worse, it really takes two to grumble. It’s something two or more people do together against someone else who is usually not present. Children grumble together against their parents. Parents grumble together against their children (and their parents, too). Management grumbles together against labor. Employees grumble together against the boss. Parishioners grumble together against the pastor. Pastors grumble together against their flocks. Citizens grumble together against the mayor or governor or president or any number of their other duly elected representatives.
There is simply no end to our grumbling. Why do we grumble? We gripe and complain because our expectations are not being met. We mumble because we don’t really want the people we are complaining about to hear us—otherwise, we would be talking to them instead of each other. Why is it that it feels so much more satisfying to commiserate with fellow dissidents than to confront directly? Grumbling is a very contagious infection. In this situation, the text tells us the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. Finally, someone ponied up the courage and obedience to actually talk to them.
The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”
Read that bit again and note how grumbling is filled with criticism and blaming, and in full bloom, it becomes open contempt. Most of the time, grumblers play the victim card, and they tend toward passive-aggressive behavior patterns. And truth be told, we have all done it and are prone to do it again. Why are we grumblers?
Better question: Why am I a grumbler?
Here’s my take. It’s because I tend to live at the level of my needs-and-wants-driven expectations rather than the deep-seated, God-given longings of my soul. I must get beneath the shallows of my needs-and-wants-driven expectations and entitlements I so readily foist on other people. This is why I grumble against them. Our needs and wants will lead us like breadcrumbs to our deeper longings. Because our core longings are God-given, they can only be God-filled. Emotions are things like anger, fear, sadness, happiness, surprise, and disgust. Those can easily lead to grumbling and complaining against other people. Core longings are things like love, safety, understanding, belonging, purpose, and significance. These are the deeper realities under the felt emotions.
So the next time you are feeling angry or sad (which are common causes of grumbling against other people), ask yourself this question: What am I really mad or sad about? Even better, ask God to show you what you are mad or sad about. Most of the time, it will be something completely different than the situation or person you are grumbling against. It will be something like, "I'm sad because I feel alone in life right now and like my own children couldn't care less about me," or "I'm angry because I feel almost constantly misunderstood by my husband (and before that, my dad) and I can't get that across to him." The Israelites weren't mad at Moses and Aaron. They were mad because everything in their life had changed, and they moved from a predictable existence (secure but awful) to an unpredictable life (which felt free but very insecure).
We must learn to make the wilderness pivot, which is the shift from wants-and-needs-driven expectations to core God-given longings. This will mean the movement from grumbling against people to groaning with God. As the Scripture says.
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. . . . In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. (Rom. 8:22–23, 26)
From grumbling against Moses and Aaron to groaning before God? Sounds simple. It is simple. And hard. It will take them years to get it. This is wilderness life, remember? We have a major league unfair advantage, though. The Spirit is on constant standby, ever ready to help us.
THE PRAYER FOR DELIVERANCE
Lord Jesus, you are my Deliverer.
I confess I see myself in these Israelites. I am a grumbler and a complainer. I want to grow beyond this. I receive your deliverance from this condition of allowing my feelings to dictate my actions. I receive your deliverance into feeling something beyond my feelings. I receive your deliverance into access to my core longings—the ones you put in me and the ones only you can fulfill. Would you unveil the brokenness in my inmost self, those ways I have tried to get my core longings met by other means? And would you unravel the mess that I made by filling my longings with things that could never satisfy them? And would you forgive me for the ways I have hurt other people in that process, trying to selfishly make them more than they could ever become? You are the Lord, my healer. I receive your healing. And would you train my innermost self to live and move and process at these new levels; not being driven by impulses but led by longings back to you? Teach me to groan with the Holy Spirit instead of grumbling at other people.
All of this will be for my good, others' gain, and your glory.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be. World without end, amen! Amen!
