Learning Contentment
In the Student Group (Rooted) this term, we have been reading and discussing a book called ‘Respectable Sins’ by Jerry Bridges. Of course, no sin is ‘respectable’, but the book focuses not on the obvious sins of our culture but on the subtle sins of believers. It is a good book, but it is also a very painful book! Time and again we have found God putting his finger on a sin we didn’t even realise was a sin, let alone realising that it was a sin we faced in our own lives! So we have thought about the ‘respectable sins’ of anxiety, pride, envy and a few weeks ago we read a chapter about discontentment.
The author defines discontentment as ‘a negative attitude about circumstances that I don’t like and I can’t change’. He writes about a ‘godly discontentment’ in which we might be unhappy with sin in our lives or frustrated about evil in the world. But, much more common is what he calls ‘sinful discontentment’ where we grumble about things in our lives not going how we had planned them. What was particularly striking in the chapter was the idea that our circumstances are not the main reason for discontentment. The problem is not our circumstances but our response to the circumstances. The apostle Paul didn’t always have the best of circumstances and yet he could write in Philippians 4:12: ‘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’.
At the end of the chapter, Jerry Bridges suggests a prayer to help us learn contentment whatever circumstances God gives us. Maybe it will help you as it has helped me:
Lord, I am willing to receive what you give, lack what you withhold, relinquish what you take.