Complaining in Advance

Gracie played outside with her friend, Sydney, over the weekend. Gracie adores Sydney. She is our next door neighbor and a convenient playmate. Because Sydney is a few years older than Gracie, Sydney will often say things that blows Gracie's mind. While outside playing this weekend, Sydney informed Gracie that she is a cheerleader and even showed Gracie a cartwheel or two. She went on to tell Gracie what all cheerleaders do: "they cheer, jump around, and boys pick them up and throw them into the air!" Gracie was horrified. She ran into the house crying hysterically, "I don't want boys to throw me up in the air! That's crazy! It won't happen to me! I'm just gonna tell those boys I don't want them to come near me!" I tried to calm Gracie down and tell her that's what some older cheerleaders do and she didn't need to worry about all of that right now. After all, she may not want to follow her mom's footsteps, but Gracie was still complaining about "those boys" for another hour after our conversation.

Satan wants us to negatively prophesy our future. He wants us to be critical of the situation in advance. If Satan can get us to be negative, he can provide us with negative circumstances. Many times we call for our own problems. We "call those things which be not as though they were," only we do it in the negative way.

A blender will work regardless of what is placed in it. If you put ice cream and milk in it, a milkshake is made. If you put water and dirt in it, you get mud. The blender works and is created to work. It is up to us to decide what to put in it. What we put in, we get out. The same is true with our minds and hearts and mouths. What goes in is what is going to come out--for good or for bad.

Psalm 19:14 says, "May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer." Complaining or worrying in advance is a waste of time in God's eyes and shows a lack of faith.

And in the meantime, I'm going to hope and pray Gracie remembers to "tell those boys she doesn't want them to come near her"!