This past week God used a speech assignment to open our eyes to a character issue we have been working on. The presentation was based on Phil. 2:14 “Do all things without complaining or arguing.” Seems pretty straight forward, yet, when my son was suppose to explain this verse, he stumbled over defining complaining and arguing.
We looked up the definitions, but still found it difficult to
discern the difference. He worked up his presentation, only to have a classmate comment that he couldn’t see the difference between his examples for complaining and arguing. Thankfully he also explained what he thought the difference was.
Although a rewrite was necessary, through the process we saw what we had missed.
At our house we had not used the word complaining to describe
anything, we would say fussing or grumbling. As I read James 5:9 in the NIV it said, “Don’t grumble against each other.” Next I read that verse in the Message and it read, “Friends, don’t complain about each other.” That confirmed our new understanding of complaining; it is equal to fussing or grumbling.
Look at previous post to see JTs presentation on Phil 2:14