The Bible has a lot to say about grumbling, complaining or ‘murmuring’. In 1 Cor 10:1-13, Paul looks at some examples from the Old Testament, most of which revolved around the Israelites complaining about Moses’ leadership, believing he had only led them out of Egypt to allow them to die in the desert (see Num 21:5, Num 16:1-4, Ps 78:17-64). The New Testament is equally explicit in warning of the dangers of this sin and urging us to be careful what we say (see Phil 2:14, Eph 4:29, 1 Pet 4:9, 1 Cor 10:10).

To understand the dangers of grumbling (which often seems to us relatively innocuous), we have to understand the heart behind it. So often, what lies behind grumbling is ingratitude, discontent and a failure to trust. It is because of these bitter roots that we must beware of grumbling, for the mouth simply speaks what is in the heart, and ingratitude, discontent and a lack of trust are roots which destroy faith.

How, then, do we avoid grumbling? We must tackle the roots ruthlessly:

Cultivate contentment

Instead of focussing on all that is wrong with our lives and the things we lack, we need to focus on the many blessings God pours out on us daily (Eph 1:3) and allow godliness with contentment to be our greatest gain (1 Tim 6:6). If we’re struggling to do this, we need to meditate on both the warning and promise of Heb 13:5: ‘Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”’

Be thankful

As with so many aspects of the Christian life, we’re urged to do something long before we feel like doing it! 1 Thess 5:18 urges us to give thanks in all circumstances; Phil 4:4 urges us to ‘rejoice always.’ Thankfulness and gratitude soon dispel discontent and ingratitude. Gratitude is from the same root word as ‘grace’. People who’ve received grace know they don’t deserve God’s favour or blessings; they don’t, therefore, need to grumble because they know they have been blessed beyond belief!

Be unselfish

The Israelites are a prime example of selfishness and shortsightedness. Phil 2:3-4 urges us to consider other people before ourselves and to live lives of unselfishness that are modelled on Christ.

Speak positive words or shut up!

If we can’t find anything good to say, don’t say anything. Negative words are poison that go deep into our souls; they also taint other people. James 3:1-12 warns of the dangers of an untamed tongue; 1 Pet 2:1 says ‘rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.’ Bear in mind that we don’t know everything about other people’s situations and hearts and hold off the judgment that seems to come to us so easily. Look for the plank in your own eye before reaching for the speck in someone else’s. (Matt 7:4-5)

Allow faith to grow in your heart

The Israelites constantly doubted God’s goodness and purposes. They lived by sight, rather than by faith. Despite the miracles they saw, they still found it easier to live in the flesh than they did to walk by faith. We need to meditate on all we know of God’s character so that when the heartache hits like a hurricane, we can still trust in who God is (‘Even If’, Kutless), rather than believing Him to be a killjoy who aims to hurt us. The Israelites’ constant tendency to doubt and put God to the test reflected their lack of trust in His goodness and love; we need to feed on the word of God so that faith grows in our heart.

In our eyes, we tend to ‘grade’ sin. Some sins (murder, adultery, incest) we classify as ‘deadly’ sins, whereas others (gossip, losing your temper occasionally, having a moan, telling a white lie to get us out of trouble) barely register on our ‘sin scale.’

In the film ‘Nativity’, a careworn teacher (Paul Maddens) tells a ‘little white lie’ to his arch-rival Gordon Shakespeare about their former friend, now working in Hollywood, coming to film the school nativity play Maddens is directing. That lie, overheard by the sackless teaching assistant Mr Poppy, becomes a noose around Maddens’ neck, for Mr Poppy (in all innocence) tells everyone Hollywood is coming and the whole school (and, later, community) is alive with hope, excitement and anticipation. How can Mr Maddens ruin everyone’s dreams by telling the truth?

St Bernadette’s is a Catholic school and one scene features Mr Maddens asking the parish priest about the difference between ‘white lies’ and other kinds of lies in an attempt to salve his conscience. The priest gazes at him blankly as he attempts to justify white lies on the grounds of tact: it would be rude to tell your hostess that the meal she has prepared for you is horrible, he argues, so that kind of lie isn’t really a lie. Surely it’s better, the priest replies, to tell her the truth and maybe help her to become a better cook as a result!

Though the film’s scenario is preposterous at times and undeniably saccharine, the idea that deception is a tangled web which easily enslaves us is a very deep truth. Paul’s choice of examples and warnings from the Old Testament in 1 Cor 10:1-13 may seem to us initially as bemusing as Mr Maddens’ ‘little white lie.’ We readily identify with the Israelites’ complaints in the wilderness: tired, hungry, frustrated by the endless journeying, they are fractious and ungrateful. Surely that can’t be sin on the same scale as murder?

Yet when we read the Old Testament passages afresh, we see how God classed those sins as idolatry and putting God to the test, and the punishments He sent were terrifying. Snakes killing people, earthquakes swallowing up those who rebelled against Moses’ leadership, death by the sword… there is no doubt that God will not tolerate sin in any shape or form.

One of the key lessons from this passage is that good beginnings do not guarantee good endings; spiritual privileges bring with them responsibilities. We have no room for complacency in this spiritual life we lead. God is holy; ‘our God is a consuming fire.’ (Heb 12:29) We have to learn to see sin through His eyes and then must do all we can to leave those ways behind.

1 Cor 10:1-13 acts as a history lesson to us, reminding us of the importance of learning from the past. Many people fail to see the importance or relevance of history: Stephen Fry says ‘The biggest challenge facing the great teachers and communicators of history is not to teach history itself, nor even the lessons of history, but why history matters.’ If we don’t see that history matters or why history matters, we will live very much in the present and will be doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past; as Edmund Burke commented, ‘Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.’

A failure to appreciate history leaves us remaining as a child (Cicero), leaves us ignorant of the fact that the leaf is actually part of a tree (Michael Crichton). There is a direct correlation between the past, the present and the future: Sir Winston Churchill said ‘The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see’ or, as Toni Morrison puts it, ‘I’m interested in the way in which the past affects the present and I think that if we understand a good deal more about history, we automatically understand a great deal more about contemporary life.’ Certainly, Paul writes to the Corinthians about events in the Old Testament to give us ‘examples’ and ‘warnings’ which will help us to live properly. Chief amongst these examples is how not to live, for he cites examples of Israel’s lack of faith, grumbling, complaining and tendency to test God while they were in the wilderness (quoting from Exodus 14-16, Exodus 32 and Numbers 16, 21, 25).

The Corinthians apparently had a tendency towards arrogance and over-confidence, and Paul’s salutary warning to them needs to be lodged in our hearts: ‘So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!’ (1 Cor 10:12) Thanks to the children’s songwriter Ishmael, this was one of the very first Scriptures I ever learned off by heart, and it’s a valuable lesson to us all. The Israelites were all led out of Egypt, were all guided by the cloud of God, were all fed by manna and given water to drink from the rock. Nonetheless, God was not pleased with the majority of them because of their lack of faith and disobedience and only Caleb and Joshua from that original group entered the Promised Land. We who have received the promises of God need to learn lessons from the past and continue towards that end goal, running with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus (Heb 12:1-3).

One of the lessons we taught our son and his fiancée during their wedding preparations was the need to spend more time preparing for their marriage than they did preparing for their wedding day.

A wedding lasts a day; a marriage lasts a lifetime. It’s very easy, in any stage of preparation for any event, to get lost in the detail; you can’t see the wood for the trees at times. Attention to detail matters enormously when you’re planning anything, but must never become the end in itself. We had debates over which font to use in the order of service booklet, which songs to sing during the ceremony, which shade of pink the bridesmaids’ dresses had to be. All of those things are important, but at the end of the day, they’re probably not the things which will be remembered in years to come! What matters more than a ‘perfect day’ is a marriage grounded in God and ruled by love.

It’s easy also in church life to be distracted by the details. Often, these details are important matters that do have to be sorted, but we must never become bogged down in the detail. Nothing matters more than God; nothing must come before God. Nothing must take the place of the love we first had for God (see Rev 2:4). If we speak in tongues and have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and have all knowledge, if we have enormous faith and endless generosity but lack love, we gain nothing. (1 Cor 13:1-3)

God calls us to wholehearted devotion and a lifetime of surrender. We have to keep the bigger picture always in view; we have to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, not allowing ourselves to become too settled in this world, for we are only pilgrims travelling through (see Matt 6:33, 1 Pet 2:10-12, Heb 11:9). Our preparations for that wonderful wedding must never be so focussed on a tiny detail that we fail to keep our end goal in sight.

Song of Songs 3:6-11 speaks of wedding preparations. I spent from July 2014 to September 2015 involved in the wedding preparations of my son and his fiancée. On the agenda included venues and menus, table decorations, reception room decorations, photographs, music boards, seating plans, flowers, outfits, backdrops, table covers, party favours, party games, music, registrars, hen & stag events and service preparation. It was a hectic time with minute attention to detail which culminated in a fantastic day!

Song of Songs 3:6-11 shows us Solomon’s preparations for his wedding and acts in some ways as a prophetic description of the preparations for another wedding still to come, that of Christ to the church. Solomon’s wedding preparations focus attention on the groom; we do well to gaze daily on Christ, to inhale His aroma and to allow our eyes to dwell on His majesty (that crown of thorns has been replaced by another one of gold, see Rev 14:14). Solomon’s carriage was made of the cedars of Lebanon; we do well to ponder that heavy beam carried by Christ on which He hung in order to save us from our sins.

Solomon comes out of the desert, and for many of us, we have to acknowledge the barrenness of our own lives and of our culture and society before any spiritual progress can be made. Solomon was accompanied by ‘sixty mighty men armed against the terrors of the night‘, and we too have to be prepared to engage in spiritual warfare, relying on the Word of God as the sword of the Spirit (see Eph 6:10-20, Ps 149:6, 2 Cor 10:4-5). Prayer involves the Word of God; we need to be soaked in this word and ready to use this vital weapon, for one reason the marriage celebration has not taken place is because there are still people to be saved. Only as we take our part in this battle for souls through prayer and witness can we help to speed the coming of the day of the Lord (see 2 Pet 3:12).

Charlie Cleverly says of this passage ‘May we leave the wilderness having been thoroughly trained through it. May we come out of it leaning on the Beloved, perfumed with Christ-like character. May we be armed in prayer – may we play our full role in the wedding!’ (‘The Song of Songs’, P 132)

My involvement in my son’s wedding was a once-in-a-lifetime privilege. I long to be as involved in the preparations for the wedding of the Lamb as I was in those other preparations. I long to see the Church, Christ’s beautiful bride, meeting her Groom face to face (see Rev 21:2-4), all shame and guilt and sin removed by the sacrifice of Christ. We were chosen in Christ before the creation of the world ‘to be holy and blameless in His sight’ (Eph 1:4). May all our preparations have this goal in sight.

Our society values competence. It’s an essential requirement of every job description. It’s what makes life function. Without competence we’re ignorant buffoons, bumbling around Laurel-and-Hardy style, and while slapstick may be a valid comedy form, it’s not a good prescription for life. Incompetent doctors kill patients. Incompetent teachers lead to disengaged learners. Incompetent police lead to increases in crime. Incompetence is the ultimate sin.

But in the Christian life, competence is not the bottom line, nor incompetence the worst sin. Competence is not the be-all and end-all of faith. In fact, it barely registers on God’s list of requirements. This is not because God is a bumbling buffoon, but because He operates on a different set of principles.

Competence depends on our abilities, skills and actions and as such very easily leads to a reliance on these abilities, skills and actions as the way to live. Faith asks us to surrender all we have and are to God, recognising that our competence will never be enough to lead us to God. Our righteousness will never be pure enough, clean enough, good enough to bring us to God’s standards. There has to be a repudiation of our skillset and a complete dependence on God for us to be counted righteous before God. Only when we have acknowledged our own spiritual bankruptcy can we become rich in God. Only when we have tasted our utter powerlessness can we receive the power of God. Only when we have understood our own emptiness can we receive God’s fulness. Only when we have acknowledge that our competence is never going to get the seal of God’s approval can we bask in the approval He freely bestows on His children.

There is no shortcut to God, no ‘surefire, easygoing formulas for a successful life that can be practised in your spare time.’ (Matt 7:13-14, The Message) The way to God is narrow. It’s the way of the cross, which, to the eyes of the world, looks like the most incompetent method ever for saving people, but which God says is ‘the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.’ (Rom 1:16)

On the other hand, this way leads to God-competence, which is far more effective. Paul says, ‘not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant – not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.’ (2 Cor 3:5-6) The only validation we need is God’s. The only way we receive this is by denying ourselves, taking up our cross and following Jesus. (Mk 8:34)

Turn your back on the cult of competence and cultivate God-confidence. E. M. Bounds writes challengingly: ‘Self-esteem, self-ability in some pernicious shape, has defamed and violated the temple, which should be held sacred for God.’ (‘E. M. Bounds onf Prayer’, P 468) Only death to self and crucifixion to the world can lead to spiritual life. Competence, if it robs us of our dependency on God, is no gain. Only God can satisfy.