Episode 5: Contentment
Show Notes
It is unlikely that we could talk about a more counter-cultural topic than contentment. Contentment is a very rare thing in our modern society. And it would seem that there are many forces at play to ensure that we stay discontent. We are a pretty unhappy society, and I can tell that by the fact that there are so many books and resources telling us how we can be happy. And yet it would seem that happiness, depends greatly on where you are in the world and what your interpretation of happiness is. The truth is, I think what we are really trying to say when we suggest ‘happiness’ as our heart’s desire, is that what we really want is satisfaction.
So what exactly is contentment? It’s not a complicated idea really. Contentment is the state of being satisfied. To be pleased. Or to be fulfilled. It can apply to what we have, both relationally and with regard to our possessions...and even where we are at in life. Contentment is also quite scriptural.
In 1 Timothy 6:6 it says:
“But godliness with contentment is great gain.”
Hebrews 13:5
“Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have”
Job 36:11 says:
“If they obey and serve him, they will spend the rest of their days in prosperity and their years in contentment.”
And In Luke 3:14 John the Baptist is advising a Roman soldier to be content with his pay.
What I find rather interesting is that instinctually we know that being content is a good thing. But most of us aren’t pursuing a life of contentment, in fact, it’s often very much the reverse. We also wouldn’t see it as a form of worship to God. Often if we have decided to pursue contentment, we’ve done so because of the complexity that not being content has produced.
But being content with what we have is possibly the greatest expression of worship to God. It communicates that we are satisfied with His plan, even if it doesn’t seem like it would directly benefit us at the time. And this is important because we are told time and again that things like joy and peace are not situationally based qualities. Likewise, contentment is also an inner journey that flows out into behaviours and choices.
We have often failed to acknowledge that our relationship with God is so deeply affected by our level of contentment. So often our prayers are focused on that which we want, that we do not believe we have. We believe that we can and should have life just as we want it. AND we presume that when we have everything exactly as we so desire THEN we will be pleased with our life. So in a nutshell, we are often waiting for a set of circumstances that we’ve deemed satisfactory to declare ourselves happy and content. Of course, this is not at all what the scriptures describe as contentment. The scriptures describe contentment as something that can be experienced in every situation.
See the way I believe a lack of depth impacts this issue is that we don’t understand what we stand to gain when we are content. Here are just a few of the things we gain when we are content:
We have more endurance
When we aren’t reliant on the circumstances to fuel our faithfulness, we are more able to sustain ourselves. Our steadfastness is a product of a revelation of who Jesus is, rather than what He can do for us to obtain the pleasures we seek.
We are more grateful and experience more joy
With the increase of depression, there have been significantly more messages out there about gratefulness and joy. I think the missing piece with all of them though, is that we are often trying to be grateful when we are simultaneously convinced that things should be different. That’s where contentment can be a more effective vehicle in the journey to gratefulness. Because contentment accepts the situation, knowing that nothing ever ultimately stays the same.
The lives of others wouldn’t affect us
There are so many messages being preached about comparison today on account of social media.
But I have often wondered whether comparison begins with discontent. Why would what someone else possesses have any bearing on us unless we want what they have? Maybe that’s not the case all the time, but I’m sure at least some of the time the real reason we are prone to comparison is that we aren’t convinced that what we have is worth being happy about.
Discontentment, on the other hand, is when you are dissatisfied and much can happen in this mindset:
Firstly, it’s a significant distraction from the things that God wants us to do or that he might be trying to talk to us about. Often we miss opportunities for God to heal us because we are so distracted pursuing those things that we think will give us satisfaction. Even though what we are pursuing out of discontentment only promises to be a crutch.
Secondly, as a society, we struggle with envy and jealousy. The thing about envy and jealousy is that it reveals what we really want. I have never been envious of something that I already have and are satisfied with. For instance, I have never felt envious of my friends who have daughters. Because I absolutely love my daughter and would never want her to change (except for her sleeping habits...dear Lord change her sleeping habits!) But I do sometimes feel envious of my friends who post photos of their multiple kids playing together, you know #sisters or #siblings. Because I so badly want my daughter to have a sibling and so does she (it’s literally the most consistent thing she prays about…) but unfortunately for some reason, it hasn’t happened for us yet. But when I see those photos on Instagram or Facebook, it reminds me of what I really want that I don’t have right now.
Thirdly, issues like greed are often rooted in discontent. It is hard to ignore the overriding message of society that money is the solution to our satisfaction. We are all simply convinced that we need more, and more, and more. And greed isn’t only a rich person's problem either. At the end of the day, greed is simply an intense and selfish desire for wealth and possessions. We might reason because we need it for good things, like paying off our mortgage or financing our kid’s private school education, that it means we aren’t greedy. But the determination of what is a reasonable thing to pine for is very subjective. The rich guy who wants to buy another Porsche probably genuinely thinks he needs it.
The fact is that most of us are quite wealthy in the western world especially in comparison to our brothers and sisters in other developing countries. I think if you have a choice on what you can eat, you are doing alright. I remember reading the book Mao’s Last dancer thinking - wow they basically ate potatoes or yams or something all the time because they were so poor. They didn’t even have a choice. Or Angela's Ashes, where they ate eggs and bread pretty much every day. If you have the luxury of choosing, you’re probably doing alright. And there are far more things we deem necessities, that if we were really to think about it aren’t that critical. See it’s simply discontentment that makes us think we don’t have enough even when we do.
Fourthly, we can begin to covet. I have heard so little in the Christian world about coveting because we don’t think it’s a life-giving message. But the fact is it is a commandment. It’s up there with committing adultery and stealing. Just think about all the stuff that isn’t on that list. Swearing is not on that list. Submission to authority is not on that list. Sex before marriage is not on that list. Tithing is not on that list. Now I’m not trying to make any comment on the theology of swearing, submission, sex before marriage or tithing. I am simply trying to show you that coveting has probably not been given the airtime it deserves if it makes the list of 10 commandments over so many other topics that we preach about often. Even if you theologically believe coveting is the least important of the 10 commandments because it appears last, it doesn’t change that it makes the list.
So what is coveting? I didn’t realise this until I was going through my own journey with contentment, but coveting is used in the bible in two ways. There is a positive way and a negative way. The negative is obviously what is referred to in the 10 commandments. We’ll talk about the positive ways a bit further on, but the negative version of coveting is when we have an insatiable desire for something that doesn’t belong to us. And it’s not just about whether we act on those desires. Say with the example given in the actual 10th commandment: Do not covet your neighbour's wife. Committing adultery is already one of the commandments. It doesn’t make sense that God would essentially restate the same commandment in two different ways. Theologians agree that coveting is a sin of the heart and mind. The inclusion of this commandment was God’s way of saying that sin isn’t just whether you act on something, it begins in the desires of our heart.
So on that basis, the fact that people say pornography is fine because you’re not acting on it...that’s incorrect. According to the law of coveting, it is a sin. Sidenote, I’m not trying to shame you...I know that there is so much more to the issue of pornography than the question of whether it is sin or not. I promise I will propose some thoughts in later episodes to help people, guys and girls, who are struggling with this.
So to bring it back to the overall message of this podcast. Sometimes the reason we feel like something is missing, is because we are excessively chasing after external sources of satisfaction. It wouldn’t really be a surprise if our faith isn’t nourishing us, when our driver is to be situationally satisfied. Because the truth is, deep faith is not really what you want. Or at least you don’t want it bad enough that you would give up all other pursuits to have it.
BUT, I recognise...that it is so incredibly hard not to fall into the trap of discontentment.
Why is it so hard?
Messaging & Marketing
It’s hard because every day we are receiving a message through multiple avenues that what we have in our hands is not good enough. It’s the entire basis for marketing. Good marketing will make you think that you need what they are selling. Which means you become dissatisfied with what you have, even if it’s good. Social media, whether it intends to or not, sets you up to either strive for more or feel hopeless about your present circumstances and your future.
It's not modelled well in the Christian community.
We are often critiquing and criticising every little element of the church community experience and using that to determine whether we are staying or going. Our leaders don’t measure up to our standards - I’ve literally heard all of the following: they're not pastoral enough, not prophetic enough, not funny enough, not focused enough, not missional enough, too outward focused, not charismatic enough, too pushy, too quiet, unrelatable, inaccessible, too in your face, too emotional, not inspiring enough, too visionary...I could go on.
But having sat on the other side of the table, I can also say that leaders are often just as bad! They want more people and not necessarily for good reasons, they want more money, more space, more buildings. And often it’s not because they need it. It’s sometimes just because it would be cool, or they want to emulate some other leader or just to keep up with the Joneses.
3. Desire is inbuilt.
We have been designed to desire. We can see this in the fact that Adam and Eve had a desire for the fruit, even before sin had entered the world. The ability to desire was given to us for a reason. The problem we grapple with is that our desires can be misdirected, and we often don’t know how to handle our desires. The desire for love is firstly filled by God, and then others. But often we have that the other way around. The desire for significance is filled by recognising how God has pursued you personally, not through prominence, status and popularity. And when our desires can’t be met in obvious ways, we get really confused. For instance, our desire for love and relationship can often get morphed into sinfulness when we seek sexual escapades. Or the desire for financial security might really be a desire to feel safe and protected. Or we might want to experience peace so much that we avoid all conflict. We are sometimes unable to ascertain what it is that we truly desire, at the core of our being. Because we are so used to simply responding to what we think we feel in that moment.
So where does discontent begin? Why would it even occur?
The birthplace of discontent is...LACK. We conclude that we are without something, that we’ve reasoned we should have. I used to find it really hard when I was growing up, to see a group of blonde girls having fun together. As a child, I was often the only non-white Australian person in a group. I had blonde friends, but when it became a group setting, I would very quickly notice how different I was. I would feel like one of them until they started to talk about how they don’t have to do anything to their eyebrows. Now I’m pretty sure I was born with a monobrow. Courtesy of my Indian heritage!
It took a really long time for me to get to a place where seeing blonde girls in a group didn't represent feelings of rejection and shame. But I was terribly dissatisfied with my physical appearance. I tried everything to be thinner, I’d straighten my hair, I dyed my hair, I’d massage my nose to try and make it smaller, I wore coloured contacts for ages...
But what I didn’t understand was that the sense of lack in my God given-design was never going to be satisfied as long as I wasn’t them. Because I believed that I wasn’t enough and THEY were. And we all have our own things when it comes to our appearance, our personality, our intelligence. We all have these things that we’ve cursed, that we’ve wished were different...because somewhere along the line we got the impression that we aren’t good enough.
So the Bible has something to say on why we think we lack. In 1 John 2:15-16 it says:
“Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. (This next bit is the key) For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world.”
This passage shows us something very helpful. It shows us that the world is the initiator of misdirected craving. It’s the values of this world that cause us to want physical pleasure, visual gratification, possessions and even accolades as it is referred to in this passage. The values of this world produce craving. Earlier I mentioned that our desires are often misdirected...well this passage is telling you why. Because the culture of the world encourages and leads us to these misdirections. It teaches us that if it feels good, it must be right. Which basically affirms us to live to please our senses, instead of directed by the Holy Spirit. It encourages us to value a trophy spouse over a spouse of good character. It encourages us to pursue possessions and comforts, a semi-pointless pursuit when our destiny is eternity, and none of these things will accompany us.
And as the verse suggests it encourages us to have pride in our achievements, including status and titles.
The degree to which we are influenced by the values of this world is what determines how COMPELLING the craving is.
Here are the facts: there is nothing I can do or gain in my life that will make me satisfied in the deepest parts of my heart. If it were possible to look toward external means to gain that type of satisfaction, it would not last. Because it would still be hinging on circumstances. Which can change, and usually do, frequently. True contentment is far deeper. It isn’t reliant on circumstances. The famous passage Philippians 4:12 says:
“I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”
This passage is saying that we can expect to be content in every situation, whether we have plenty or we lack. Because God is capable of supplying us the strength necessary to endure either.
His strength is actually that good! That it is capable of giving us such perspective. Because when you know the strength of God, that has literally conquered the grave, you know that so many of the battles we face have already been won. When you are reliant on Him, it’s His strength that becomes the greater factor...not yours! Which means you don’t have to strive anymore.
Hebrews 13:5 says
“Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, BECAUSE, God has said,
“Never will I leave you;
Never will I forsake you”
In this instance, the writer of Hebrews believes that we can be content because of God's presence in our life. To Him, that is a good enough reason. Your security depends on how much you acknowledge His presence with you in every season of life, rather than whether YOU perceive that you have enough.
It is possible to be content in every situation. Because we don’t really need to change our lives as much as we need to change the source of our satisfaction. That is the secret to contentment, that the world doesn’t understand.
There are 3 exceptions to this conversation of contentment
The amazing thing about boundaries is that even if we haven’t defined them or stated them, we can easily sense when an internal line has been crossed. If you are being abused or are in an abusive relationship...I want to tell you that you need to seek advice for your specific situation. This podcast can’t address the intricacies of your experience. Abuse is not a situation that you are simply meant to be content with. This also is the case if you are suicidal. Please seek help - this is not the episode for you to apply to your situation.
Secondly, there are a set of situations in which scripture supports discontent. Earlier I mentioned that there were instances where coveting is discussed in a positive light. For example, when Paul says that He desires to know Christ more. When Jesus strongly desired to have the Passover meal with his disciples. And when Paul is telling the church to earnestly seek spiritual gifts. This again demonstrates that desire, this inbuilt system, has been designed with certain intentions. God intended for our desires to be directed toward certain things... an intimate love relationship with Him and devoted servitude of our neighbours.
Thirdly, God often stirs a righteous discontent. He does this because he is meaning to produce some kind of change in us or make us take action. I knew that I needed to write a book about Disillusionment, because I had a dream where I was chasing after a very broken and hurt person. The fire that this dream initiated in my heart produced a determination in me to do something for those who are disillusioned. And sometimes that is what God is trying to do when he allows a righteous discontent...He wants to stir us to action.
You’ve heard the cliche...but it’s all truth: Jesus is enough for us. The proof of this is the multiple times we read the gospel story of Him feeding the masses on a bit of bread and fish. The recurring sentiment is that the people were full. They were satisfied, with a meagre piece of bread and fish.
See we are so used to defining satisfaction by what the world decides. But the world's destiny is not the destiny of the children of God. We are called to another way of life. One without lack. Psalm 34:10 says that those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. Psalm 23:1 says “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing”. We already have everything good that we could possibly need. And anything we genuinely need that we don’t have, God can provide or lead us to. What we’ve always really needed is not a possession, a quality or a trait. It’s a person. Jesus. If He still doesn’t satisfy you, maybe you haven’t given him a decent enough chance to be satisfied by Him. Because the fact is we don’t lack because God cannot lack. We just need to let go of the desire for circumstantial happiness. And pursue deep inner contentment that is sourced in and through Jesus, and fills up our soul. Let me share one more passage with you.
Revelations 12:10-11 says:
Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:
“Now have come the salvation and the power
and the kingdom of our God,
and the authority of his Messiah.
For the accuser of our brothers and sisters,
who accuses them before our God day and night,
has been hurled down.
They triumphed over him
by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony;
they did not love their lives so much
as to shrink from death.”
In the final days, the victorious ones, which I hope will be you and I...are believers who are more attached to God than the satisfaction that can be attained in this world. They are the ones that are so aware of what awaits them, that they aren’t so invested in the here and now. The fact is, we will find contentment, the kind that gives great peace when we are able to comprehend that the greatest rewards that could possibly exist aren’t monetary. They aren’t mansions, private jets, decadent meals, and honourable titles...No, the greatest rewards are being meticulously prepared for us the body of Christ, right now, by Jesus…in our eternal home.