You’ve got the spouse, the kids, the job, the house, a fridge full of food and your own ride. You’re blessed with love and good health.
You are content and happy.
But what about the poor? You hardly notice them anymore. And that strained relationship with a colleague? And then there’s the debt you’ve gotten yourself into. Your salary no longer stretches till the middle of the month, let alone pay-day. And how does God fit into your rushed and busy life? Has He also become a peripheral and convenient add-on?
You push back from these niggling thoughts and focus rather on yourself. If you resist long enough, your heart will crystallise and harden against the sharp pang of guilt and shame.
We all have the capacity to venture outside our own contentment, to seek out personal growth and do something about the needs of others, but too often comfort has become our worst enemy and we do nothing.
The apostle Paul wrote in the Bible about contentment. He was beaten, imprisoned, shipwrecked and lived on the generosity of others and wrote this:
“I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:11-13).
He never allowed himself to be contained by his ‘contentment’ however.
“I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us” (Philippians 2:12-14).
Are you living with discontent? Are you contentedly discontent, or have you deliberately turned a blind eye and hardened your heart to anything and anyone that makes you feel uncomfortable?
Being uncomfortable is usually a sign that it’s time to make a change. When you have everything you think you want but that illusive ‘something’ is still missing, maybe it’s time to take a closer look at what you really need in life. The Bible tells us that we were made to live in life within a relationship with our Creator, God. When that relationship is missing, there will always be something dissatisfied within us.
“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” – C.S Lewis
If you would like to know more about how you can find contentment in life and know the comfort of being in a relationship with Jesus, please click on the link or leave a comment.