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Contentment

One of those problems that we all struggle with, to one degree or another, is the issue of contentment. Paul raises this issue in the Scriptures in Philippians. He talks about contentment as something that he has learned. Now, I find that interesting because the Apostle Paul is talking about circumstances that he has dealt with. He’s encouraged us previously in Philippians 4 to rejoice, and now he’s telling us that he has learned how to be content. Remember, he’s writing this from prison. As he’s talking about this idea of contentment, he’s contrasting it with several things. This is where this becomes very practical for all of us.

We’re moving into this season of Thanksgiving. This has to be one of my favorite times of the year. I love the cool breeze when it begins to blow during the fall. I love the celebration of the holidays. I love everything about this time of year. But we have to remember, for many folks this is a very difficult time of year where families are getting together. Maybe folks who joined us at family meetings will not be at this year’s family meeting for one reason or another. Maybe death is the cause of a person not being around this holiday season, or there could be conflict. It could be a number of different things. The point is that many of us are reminded of the different ways in which we struggle with this issue of thankfulness and this issue of contentment.

Now, I want us to work through a couple of these issues when we think about counseling. Of course, when we’re dealing with formal situations and we have people who are describing different issues that they might have, we can go to the Scriptures. We can help discern some of the problems that people may have and help them work through some of these issues of ingratitude or not being thankful about certain dispositions or aspects of their life if their life is not going well. But this time of year, we’re going to be interacting with lots of people on a more surface level, and on a more normal level. How is it that we can be ministers of the gospel as we go about our daily lives through these holiday meetings?

I want us to think a little bit about how you can take some of these principles from the Scripture, in a counseling setting that’s much more informal, where we can be an encouragement to people. Now if we think about this, obviously, this is a struggle that we all have, especially in a first world country like the United States of America where we feel entitled about several things. We think we are owed certain things. This is a part of our culture, where, when something doesn’t go our way, or we get stopped at a traffic light, or the mall is busy, we start to get very discontented in so many aspects of our lives. I want us to look at a couple of things in this book of Philippians.

I remind you that Paul is writing this book from prison. One of the things that he says in Philippians 2:14 is he encourages us to do everything without grumbling or complaining. That means everywhere we go, everything that we do, we are to have this particular disposition. The opposite of the disposition that we are to have is grumbling and complaining. I can recall in my days as a minister of the gospel in a local church dealing with young people, and this was one of my favorite verses to remind them of consistently. “Guys, do everything without grumbling or complaining.” We need to think about the disposition that we ought to have as followers of the Lord Jesus.

There are so many things that Paul reminds us that we are to be grateful for. This disposition is easy to recognize, in part because we’re all quite experienced at it. When you think about grumbling and complaining, what in the world is grumbling? This would be the quiet murmurs that we have or the secret disposition of displeasure. We feel this especially this time of year with certain things that we want but do not have, or we feel like we can’t have.

Then this other aspect in Philippians 2:14 of complaining. Do you find yourself grumbling and complaining about your current situation? Do you see others around you also doing the same? What about even in your own family? These are ways in which we can raise the standard in our communication with people we are in close proximity with, people that we have good relationship with. We can encourage them to have the disposition that Paul is talking about here, to stay away from grumbling and complaining.

As he further develops this in the book of Philippians, he’s going to contrast this with the idea of rejoicing. He mentions this idea of rejoicing several times. I think it’s eight times throughout this book of Philippians, and he develops it most in the final chapter, in Philippians 4. As we look at Philippians 4, there are a couple of things to keep in mind as he encourages us to rejoice in Philippians 4:4. Here he’s reminding us about how we are to rejoice in the Lord always, “and again,” he says we are to rejoice. Notice that’s right before a primary teaching that we talk about all the time about anxiety, where Paul here is calling us through the Holy Spirit, he is writing inspired by God to encourage us not to be anxious about anything.

I want us to bring this together, and what it helps us to understand is, the call of God is that we live with an attitude of rejoicing. That’s more of a frame of our soul. It’s a frame of our spirit. It’s like our primary disposition as those who have been called by God, redeemed by His blood, and made alive by His Spirit. There’s a primary disposition of rejoicing and of being content in whatever situation that we find ourselves in. But in contrast, what Paul has helped us to understand is that there are a couple of ways in which we see symptoms coming out of us that happen in attitude, actions, body language, or words that we say that would be an opposite of this disposition. These should accompany those who believe those things in opposition—things like grumbling, things like complaining, and things like being anxious.

Notice, when he’s describing this in Philippians 4 and following, he gives this contrast of that which is our normal disposition and rejoicing, with that of anxiety. And then he finishes that section by telling us that we should think on that which is true, and those true things should lead us in the direction of learning how to rejoice and learning how to be content. Then, in the process of doing so, what’s being crushed would be grumbling, complaining, and anxiety.

I’ll give you an example of the way that I use this in normal daily life, even in my own house. I have six kids. There’s a lot of chatter that goes on in my house on a daily basis, and it’s not occasional, unfortunately, where we see lots of bickering, sometimes grumbling and complaining, and it’s not always the kids. Sometimes, it might be my wife and I. We struggle with this issue of grumbling and complaining. One of the things that we’ll do is, we’ll pause in that moment and ask my kids, “Should we be grumbling about those things? Should we be complaining with all that the Lord has done for us in this particular moment?” We’ll just pause for a second. Maybe they’ve said something against one of their siblings and I’ll say, “You know what, you’ve just said something that has torn your sibling down. Would you say three things that you appreciate about them? Would you give me three things that you are grateful for about them?”

What I’m trying to do is I’m trying to change the way that they’re seeing that scenario. I’m trying to help them to see the disposition that we’re called to is to see good in others, not to grumble and complain about their situation. That’s a common practice that we try and do at least in the house. One of the things that we’ve found out is it really begins this disposition of contentment, and this disposition of thankfulness or gratitude. We begin to look at each other with the ways in which we are thankful for the other person and what they do. Yeah, they’re flawed people, but we have a way in which we see them where we see them through a lens of gratitude and thankfulness and being contented with our relationship with them.

Now, I want you to think about this in ways that you can apply this personally, but also as a counselor and also during your time at Thanksgiving meals or during the holidays. Paul goes back to this in Philippians 4 after he tells us that we are to think on things that are true, right, just, noble, and of good report. In verse 10, he says, “I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at length you have revived your concern for me. You were indeed concern for me, but you had no opportunity.” In verse 11 he says, “Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.”

Now when he says, “I have learned,” I find that interesting because if Paul is writing this at the end of his life when he’s in prison, this is something that he’s been in the process of doing for quite some time as a mature believer. We’re not going to be perfect at this. This is why we have to continually pursue mortifying those things that we grumble and complain about, reminding ourselves, just as Paul does in this book of Philippians, of who we are in the Lord Jesus positionally and what He has done for us. The response of that is that we learn to rejoice and be content.

I remind you of all the things in Paul’s life that God was using, the suffering and the struggle, the thorn in the flesh. All of these things God was using in Paul’s life to teach him these things. He says it was because of all those things that he had learned this disposition, which is consistent with those who trust in God. It’s consistent with the disposition of those who can squelch grumbling and complaining, because we see our life in Christ and how grateful we ought to be.

He even says, “In plenty or in want, I’ve learned to be content.” Now I find that interesting because, for us, this is something that sometimes we as Christians think ought to just be simply automatic, or maybe sometimes we think, “Well, during this time of year I’m thankful.” We should be reminded that a heart of contentment or a heart of gratitude is not a one-time act. It’s not something that we do in a single moment where we feel this flood of emotions where we’re thankful for this thing or that thing. Oftentimes, when we respond in that way, we’re not excited about who we are or God’s providence at that moment. We’re excited about what this particular thing or that thing could do for us.

The idea of contentment here, Paul is saying, “I’m not determined by the environment that surrounds me.” He’s saying, “I’ve learned, in my position in relation to who God is, that I can be content no matter what the external environment is.” Now that’s very different than the culture in which you and I live in, where we think it takes a perfect pristine environment, “nothing going bad around me,” for us to achieve some sort of contentment. But here, Paul is making very clear that it’s not the environment that actually dictates his emotional disposition, his internal frame of thinking. Rather, he says something very different.

What is this idea of contentment? This idea of contentment, Jeremiah Burroughs actually says, is, “Freely submitting to and taking pleasure in God’s judgment.” The basic idea is simply this: that we’re well pleased in what God does. We are contented with however God chooses to use our life, in whatever situation we find ourselves in. Now, that doesn’t happen by accident, that’s as life unfolds, as life occurs—just like it did for Paul.

The fact that Paul had to learn this through the situations of his life demonstrates that he probably wasn’t successful at it every time that he was in a bad scenario. What it demonstrates is, though, he was working through the process constantly when those bad situations would occur, that he was reminding himself that he is to rejoice always in the Lord. In doing so, what he learned is that he could do this and be content and be thankful for all that God was and all that God had done in him, no matter the external situation.

Can you just think for a second about how freeing that thought is? That we are free from being determined by what someone else might do to me. We’re free from being determined about another family member’s attitude when we sit down to Thanksgiving dinner. That I am free in the Lord Jesus to respond in a way that’s pleasing to Him that’s contented with whatever situation I find myself in.

Can I encourage you during this holiday season to have a disposition of gratitude, to have a disposition of contentment, that you would be in the process of working diligently to learn these things in the way in which Paul talks about this? That when you’re tempted to grumble and complain, you would turn that around and come up with ways that you can rejoice in the Lord? That our eyes would be fixed upon Christ, thinking about all the ways in which we have to be thankful for all that He’s done for us, seeing the good in what He allows, which is grace to us?

Then in times where we find ourselves feeling anxious, we can have a calmness in our soul, a quietness in our soul. That frame of reference in relation to Christ, knowing that it’s not the external that dictates the person that I am, but the internal being at peace with satisfaction in Christ and who He is, changes the game. This changes the way that I now see everything. It doesn’t matter if I’m hungry or facing plenty, whether I’m with or without. We can find a place where we can be content, and that God is providing all the things that we need.

A second way to think about that, not just personally, but now also in the ways in which you can take those truths and minister to those who you see during this season, are in points of grumbling and complaining. Those who are maybe highly anxious about all kinds of various cares and concerns of the world. You can encourage them that they are not in bondage to those external things if they are believers in the Lord Jesus. You can encourage them gently, kindly, and with compassion and remind them that the power of Christ, which He has given to us by His Spirit, that we can learn in these difficult situations or points at which we want to grumble and complain. We can learn to be content no matter what.

You have an opportunity to minister in very mundane ways in the upcoming season. I want to encourage you during this week where we think about Thanksgiving, that you would be mindful of the way in which God frees us from captivity of those things that are around us and the environment that we often succumb to. Would you be thankful during this season? Would you gratify Christ? Honor Him as Lord as you learn to be content in whatever situation that you find yourself in.