Are You Content?

My sister-in-law sent us notes she had taken at a conference led my Linda DeMoss.  The conference focused on the subject of contentment and the notes are worth sharing with you.  I pray you will benefit from these thoughts.

Characteristics of DIS-contentment:
Discontentment is a heart condition that is not satisfied but craves for more.  This can be a craving for sinful things or good things.  Usually temporal not eternally-centered in its focus.  Comparison to others often involved.  Doubts the goodness, love, promises, power, presence of God.   Forgets past provision, rejects present provision, doubts future provision of God.  Fails to see and accept the purposes of God upon our lives.  Goes hand in hand with rebellion.

How it Comes Out
See it most in our thinking about: possessions, where we live, family and other relationships, health and other unchangeable characteristics/circumstances of us/our lives.

The Choice to Make:
Too often our mindset is this: We have what we don’t want.  We want what we don’t have.  We think that getting what we think is missing from our present situation will change us/fulfill us.  But, if we are not content with where we are now, getting what we think we need won’t fix it.  The problem - and solution - is deeper.  It’s in our view and attitude towards God and in whether we really think God is “for real” in having HIS specific purposes for everything in our lives.  And that He is always 100% successful in achieving what He wants in all the circumstances in our life - no mistakes, no errors.  When we truly believe this, everything done God’s way all of a sudden becomes all that we want.  It is very important and very exciting when we really believe that His good, perfect, loving hand is in it all down to the finest details.  How we respond to each and everything comes down to responding to Him, not just to whatever temporal situation we’re in.  “Our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the powers and principalities.....”  That’s where contentment lies: in understanding where the real battle is fought and won.  Therefore circumstances are the skirmishes in the battle the Lord has us in.  We need His direction in the battle He chooses for us and then we get on with the skirmishes, realizing that every situation, every person, every even small job or choice becomes primarily orders from His hand.  It is not change of circumstances that brings true contentment.  It is change of view of what’s really going on, what’s really important in our circumstances.  What great things God is doing even in what appears to the world to be small, seemingly meaningless, inconsequential events of our lives.  But the world doesn’t get what it’s really all about.  True significance, true purpose is seen only by the Holy Spirit-opened eyes of a child of God.

The Fork in the Road
Unfilled longings/desires are a spiritual fork in the road: will we complain or will we look to God for however He chooses to fill our desires by giving us our hearts desire, something different, or simply sufficient grace to endure with no change?  Will we be so serious about Him as to give up our lives to His purposes in this way?

God knows His plan... God fulfills His plan... He provides for our needs but knows our deepest need  is for Him to reveal Himself to us, to know Him and for us to glorify Him with our lives as He sees fit, as He always intended.  This he WILL do in the lives of His children.  Our discontent comes from not wanting this but other things more.  Discontent is unnecessary, as hind-sight from heaven will clearly confirm.  But more than that, discontentment is sin especially grievous for Christians.  We knew better of God and we still chose to complain against Him.

This doesn’t sound good enough?
Pray for God to change your heart to delight more in Him and His ways.  Remember that God does not love in abstract, but personally.  By His very own choice, for His own delight, to fulfill His plans he loves blemished, wrinkled lives that look more like something that belongs in the laundry pile.  His love nurtures, cherishes, sacrifices for sinful people who could never be punished as much as we deserve.  He makes us His bride.

When someone asks, “How are you?” The most appropriate answer is ALWAYS: “Better than I deserve.”