The First Act of War

Wow! This is it! After the briefing and equipping for war last weekend, I get back to the battlefield and find the first act of war already pointed out to me. I visited Elijah List yesterday and the headline that greeted me? "Declare War on Ungratefulness and Grumbling with a Heart of Thankfulness."

Whoa!

The prophetic word from Francis Frangipane zeroed in on the problem with grumbling and how it can lead to moral decay. "The offenses we do not transfer to God in surrendered prayer inevitably decay and become a venom we transfer to others through gossip. In the process, we embrace slander, but we feel justified. We become malicious gossips, but in our minds we're only communicating a 'truth,' a character flaw, that we self-righteously 'discerned.'"

This sentence also spoke to me when I read it yesterday: "Grumbling caused people to stop seeing and appreciating miracles. It caused disciples to be offended by Jesus' teaching and they stopped walking with Him."

The old song used to say: "Give thanks with a grateful heart." That's the remedy, the cure, the weapon of warfare we should use against grumbling, ingratitude, gossip, slander, malice. Frangipane states, "An unthankful heart is an enemy to God's will. Can you join me with this? Can you crucify a murmuring spirit? We have received too much from God to allow ourselves opportunities for ingratitude and unbelief! We have received too many gifts and privileges to allow grumbling to disqualify us of our destiny."

{read the full text of the prophetic word here}

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I pray that we would keep our hearts grateful with what God has done in our lives. We need to recognize His hand of blessing, protection, provision, guidance, love, mercy and grace. There is so much we need to be thankful for. An ungrateful heart and a grumbling spirit has no place in the Kingdom of God.