To discover contentment is a ‘great gain’ for everyone who trusts God
By Dean Collins
What is your preference: gain or loss? About the only thing I can think of that people generally want to lose is weight. We want gains in most everything else. Our desire to come out ahead instead of behind seems to be our daily motivation.
Paul is a hard tutor for me when it comes to the subject of learning contentment. I love the beauty of his words and the depth of his faith in circumstances I cannot really comprehend. I’ve never been stoned by rocks or anything else for that matter. I have never been shipwrecked. (Although I do have a general aversion to boats after a deep sea fishing attempt about 40 years ago.) I’ve never been to prison except to visit. I did take a couple of whippings as a boy that were harsh and in my opinion both unnecessary and certainly not moments of good parenting on my father’s part. The apostle Paul had many experiences I cannot relate to, yet his godliness, contentment, endurance, grace, and mercy are all qualities I try to develop in my walk of faith.
His provision, our contentment
Sometimes I think I get close, and then a new problem, setback, or difficulty falls into my lap or jumps on my shoulders and I go back to admiring Paul but struggling to live with contentment and joy in the middle of the struggle. For my benefit and maybe for yours as well, I will review a couple of the apostle’s teachings on the subject.
1) We brought nothing into the world. I was there of course, but have no memory of the simplicity of the slap on the naked bottom as the doctor got me to take in my first breath of the world’s oxygen. But I have seen a few births in person and on video, and I can verify we don’t bring anything with us at birth. We all start with nothing.
2) And we cannot take anything out of the world. I haven’t left yet, but as far as any of us can tell, the memorabilia we place in the caskets of loved ones does not enjoy a heavenly voyage. No matter how many trophies, dollars, titles, or possessions we manage to own at life’s end, they stay behind when we journey on to the next life.
3) But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. There are many around the world and some not many blocks away with scarcity more severe than most of us can imagine. For the majority of us we have enough clothing that we must take time to decide what to wear, and enough food that we struggle to consume it all before it spoils. Of course, we must do what we can to help those who are without. Paul’s words convict us that if we have food and clothing we will be content.
We will be content. That’s what the good apostle said. Yet we are not. The temptation and the reality are that the snare catches us regularly, and we can’t seem to help ourselves in our pursuit for more. Paul said we need to be careful because unchecked we might plunge into ruin and destruction. The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. There are plenty of other temptations to evil, but our pursuit of money and stuff is a root big enough to trip us up.
4) Godliness with contentment is great gain. The implication is that if we get these truths right, we will be protected against not just our running after material stuff but that it just might be the centering of life that prevents us from tripping over many roots that lead us further and further from God and from the rest and peace that he offers us daily.
I bet I am not alone in sometimes thinking that because I was tripped up by some root that can lead to evil I cannot go forward. When you trip you sometimes fall. Tripping at the least can be embarrassing. It can drain time. And it can place you flat on your face or back if you fall. I suspect most of the time we don’t actually fall; we just get tripped by some distraction the enemy or life has placed in our paths. Before you know it, discouragement and fatigue set in, and then the risk of trying to figure it all out without God can be a temptation. But we must resist.
His grace, our surrender
At a different time in Paul’s life he explained that he believed God had allowed him to have a thorn in his side to keep him from being conceited and prideful. Even people focused on Kingdom things can fall to the temptation of thinking they are the king of things instead of surrendering to the King and doing things according to the King’s will. Paul laid out a beautiful teaching that we must cling to in times of struggle and even in times of great success.
“My grace is sufficient for you,” he said, “for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
I am confident that if we learn this truth and lean into our weakness we will discover that godliness and contentment are taking ground in our lives. And when they do, we will experience gain. But the path to our spiritual and personal gains is to surrender to God first and daily that he might accomplish his will in us. It is in his will that we will discover his contentment.
Some days I think I have it, and then some days I think I cannot find it. The secret to contentment is our confession of our weakness and our dependency on God, no matter which day we are experiencing!
Your time with God’s Word
1 Timothy 6:6-10; 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 ESV
Photo by Kampus Production at pexels.com
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