What If – Slinkard On Success

By: D. A. Slinkard

Stop complaining! How many times have you thought about saying this, have said it, or have had this said to you? I am amazed that we live in the greatest country known to man, yet instead of being thankful for everything we have, we want to reflect upon the things we are lacking in; and we lose our focus on what our life needs to be. If we could get clarity and some meaningful purpose for our lives, just think about how different the world could be? I am a firm believer that we need to turn away from our wicked ways we live, put our focal point on Jesus Christ, and then ask, “What if?”

What if I read my Bible? What if I turned from my sinful nature? What if I walked in the Spirit of God and avoided the lusts of the flesh? What if I started trusting upon Jesus as my Saviour? These are important questions that we too often fail to ask ourselves because of the direction our lives are headed in. Too often we let the social norms dictate to us what is right and what is wrong when really we need to adjust our way of thinking. If we just started with dusting off our Bibles, our King James Bibles (KJB), our life perspectives might just change.

If we listened to the Bible and started taking the words as the final authority in our lives, we just might stop complaining! Philippians 2:14 tells us to do just that, in which it states, “Do all things without murmurings and disputing:” Here we have God’s Word telling us what not to do; but we too often want to make it about us and do as we please. If only we could get out of our own way and allow for God to move in our lives, how powerful would this be?

It seems as if every time we turn around there is some kind of bickering, murmuring, and violence going on around us. It may be gang versus gang, Republican versus Democrat, but no matter the people involved it seems as if life has become all about complaining. Life has become all about the sufferings of the world. We live in a world that puts our focus on keeping people from getting offended. Yet by trying not to offend people, and to be all inclusive, we find too much compromise happening in our lives. We start to lie to ourselves. We start to give just a little ground in how we live our lives. We become pretenders in how our lives actually are versus what we want them to be like.

Look at Facebook and just know peoples’ lives are not as great as they want you to believe. There is a country song that says, “I am so much cooler online.” Truthful statement for many people because we live in a society built upon lies. We have not asked the what if questions and grounded ourselves in our faith. We will continue this decline in our societies as long as we make reasons to keep Jesus out of our lives. I stand firmly in the belief that a life without Jesus is a life built upon the hardships, the struggles, and the pains we currently see inflicting the world around us. I am not saying that becoming a Christian will make life easy, but there is hope in the Risen One.

I find my hope for life in knowing where I will spend eternity and who I put my trust in. I find my hope for my wife and my two daughters in knowing where they will spend eternity and whom they put their trust in. Where and who are you trusting in? Just maybe if we had more Christians speaking on the Great Commission, we could live in a society that would stop complaining and start focusing in on how great our lives can be with Christ as our Saviour.

Proverbs 17:22 states, “A merry heart doeth good [like] a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.” Yet another example of how following the Bible can make a positive impact upon our lives. That merry heart mentioned in scripture is one that does not complain, that does not murmur, and does not dispute, and we see that the merry heart does good like a medicine. This is an example of what we need in our lives to stop complaining and start living a positive life.
By: D. A. Slinkard
D.A. Slinkard is the manager of the Athens Staples store