To get the right things done well, we have to turn on the engine of joy with the fuel of gratitude.
We tend to notice it in others, but not ourselves: Complaining.
If we complain, we call it truth-telling. If our children complain, we call it rude and disrespectful. Perhaps that is because we perceive our children’s complaints as being aimed at us, at how we are running their world.
So could it be true that we don’t see the problem with our own complaints because we don’t see where they are direct. Are our complaints aimed anywhere? Perhaps we think it's ok for us to complain because we think we are only complaining to ourselves.
We take our children’s complaints personally because it demonstrates they don’t appreciate us. When we don’t like the situation we find ourselves in, do we assume we're only complaining against ourselves?
Complaints are always against God
Such hidden assumptions give us excuses and a cover for sin. It is pride to think we have so much control that we are entirely responsible for our situations, such that we are the only ones receiving any complaints we make. However, we are not the god of our own life.
Complaints are aimed at the one in charge. Whom do you believe is a charge? Believe it or not, God is superintending your life and my life, so complaints have no place. All complaints are sin - the kind of sin that banished Israel to wilderness wondering for 40 years.
Complaints express doubt about the goodness of God. God tells us that He graciously gives us all we need, that He works all things for our good, and we look at our life and say, “Nope. I don’t like it. Doesn’t look like God being good to me.” He who doubts, James tells us, is tossed about and unstable.
Want to get anywhere in life?
More of our life is connected than we tend to think. How we receive God’s providence will be a cause of either scattered burnout or cheerful productivity.
Productivity really is more a function of our attitude than of our systems.
Systems are the only lever unbelievers have. Refusing to acknowledge God, they must tightly grasp control of their life themselves.
Now, I’m not saying that systems have no value, but even the systems we work are merely tracks on which to run. Systems are not engines.
I think it is more likely that as busy, tired moms with a million thing to do we are more in need of an engine than pre-determined tracks.
Life as Oregon Trail
Let’s picture this as the Oregon Trail. We'll talk about dysentery some other time. For now, you are simply trying to get from the East Coast to the West.
You will need a wagon, a path, and motion. The wagon holds your duties. We all have different sized wagons, carrying different loads. We fall off the wagon sometimes, but we can hop back on.
After all, falling off is usually not about the load in the wagon but just our position and balance in the driver’s seat. Lightening the wagon load isn’t the best strategy for staying on board, though that’s the message most commonly sold us.
To get from one end of the country to the other, we’ll want to follow a trail if possible. However, many have done it without a trail. Instinct and a sense of adventure, along with not prioritizing speed and efficiency, took many a traveler from St. Louis to the Pacific. Certainly, a well-worn trail and a map will make your journey more certain, less dangerous, and more efficient. The trail is your system and the map is your planner. Plenty of people pull their wagons just fine without either, but both can be great aids to reaching your goal sooner.
No trail? Not really a problem.
Now, just as some people made it to the Pacific without any trails blazed for them, plenty also stayed in the East, spending all their lives studying and perfecting their maps but never feeling ready and prepared enough to depart. Perfectionism prevents you from getting anywhere. The systems alone don’t get you anywhere. You have to run them after setting them up.
Getting to Oregon with or without a trail, with a light or a heavy wagon, requires momentum, action, motion. The heavier your pack, the more energy required to get moving and keep moving.
So what gets you moving? What makes your systems even work? What provides the energy to propel your wagon of duties?
Gratitude.
Gratitude produces the fuel, joy, that burns clean and long. Wait. Stick with one metaphor before we switch.
Some have their overloaded wagon, a clear trail, and are out in front doing their best to pull the wagon along with sheer manpower. True, the trail makes it possible for them to get momentum at all, but it’d take a better power source, not a better trail, to really get anywhere. Also, lightening the load would help, but would also mean less gets to the destination.
You’ll hear unbelieving productivity gurus right and left proclaim that systems are everything. But the reality is simply that systems are the best tactic available to them. Adding an engine requires acknowledging God as the Maker and Ruler, and thanking Him for all we have.
But, because “they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him,” they then “became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened” (Romans 1:21).
God has given us horses. We have horsepower, not manpower. It's a gift, whether we're a two-horse or four-horse wagoneer.
Those horses eat gratitude. They run on thanksgiving. To get action out of those horses, God has told us what to feed them - and it's something that is so easy and cheap to give. The only thing it costs us is killing our pride.
Thankful productivity
Christians should be the ones getting the most done with the least anxiety and second-guessing, because we are not striving for our own personal goals, but walking in the good works God has already prepared for us.
Thanking Him every step of that walk is how our motor runs on gas that is like oil from the widow’s jar - as long as you need it, it’s there supernaturally.
However, listening to life advice from unbelievers without filtering it through God’s Word, many Christians grease their systems, putting their trust there instead of in God’s motive power. The motor is installed, but they never put any fuel in the tank. In fact, they ignore that their need for fuel, thinking they’ll add some after they get moving. That is, their thinking is totally backward.
We don’t trust in ourselves, work for our own way, and then thank God if and when things go according to our plan.
No, we give thanks no matter what and find we are able to make it through, no matter what - because we are moving forward in grace, not self-sufficiency.
God, our Prime Mover
Thanksgiving is our fuel, our mode of transport, our energy source - and God moves us against all odds, with or without a well-laid trail.
God also loads down our wagon so that it’s definitely impossible for us to carry it on our own steam. This is a grace to thank Him for.
The more dependent we are on Him, the better. He is the one getting us and our wagon to glory, not we ourselves - so we thank Him for the load and keep trucking.
A quiet disposition and a heart giving thanks at any given moment is the real test of the extent to which we love God at that moment.
—Francis Schaeffer, True Spirituality
Sure, there might be a time and a place to spiffy up a system or two, to clear the path a bit better, to know exactly where you’re going instead of always winging it. But it’s secondary to using the engine we’ve been given, pouring in thanksgiving in all circumstances.
If gratitude is the fuel to our engine, complaints are water to the engine - not good, not helpful, always detrimental.
Complaining v. Gratitude
Complaining is the opposite of gratitude - no arguing that. We are commanded again and again to give thanks. Therefore, complaining is the opposite of obeying (i.e. disobeying).
Don’t justify complaints. Don’t just try to stop. There is no neutral. Instead, replace your complaints about the weather with gratitude. Replace complaints about people’s attitudes (oh the irony) with gratitude for the people. Replace complaints about the menu or the schedule or the expectations of others with gratitude.
Get joy. Get going.
Joy is a fruit of the Spirit. Joy is a fruit we harvest when we sow thankfulness in all things. If we sow anything other than thankfulness, we will not reap joy but rather worldly sorrow, unproductive and strength-sapping.
The joy of the Lord is our strength. It is our stamina. It is our energy. If we need strength, stamina, and energy, we have to be planting all the seeds of gratitude we can. By sowing gratitude, we reap a bumper crop of joy, produced not by circumstances or things going our way, but by God.
This week, challenge yourself to express gratitude to God as much as possible, much more than feels natural or comfortable. Go all out. Be risky in giving thanks. Be daring in giving thanks. Then trust the Lord of Harvests to bring the fruit and to burn the chaff.
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