Contentment

CONTENTMENT

 

This word is describing something that is seldom seen in our world today, in fact we might say it is a very "scarce" commodity. Outside of knowing Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and trusting Him for the "salvation" of our soul, I doubt if contentment can even be achieved in our lives. Certainly having more money will not bring contentment, as viewing the lives of those who win a lottery will prove. No matter how large the jackpot is, it seems that people want "more". I recently read about a record $640 million jackpot last year in the US, the estimated value of what was spent on the purchase of tickets was $ 1.5 billion, and the chances of winning were a staggering 1 in 176 million, and yet people lined up to buy the tickets. And it didn't say how contented the winner was. I expect he would have lots of people wanting to help him spend his huge jackpot.

 

In the Bible we can read about a man named Agur in (Prov 30:1-9), who asked God for just two things. 1/ "Remove falsehood and lies far from me" and 2/ "Feed me with the food allotted to me". Read the whole 9 verses to get the context, but I would think this could very well be a recipe for a life of "Contentment". There are many verses of scripture that give us more or less the same answer, but I would suggest you read (1 Tim 6:3-10) where Paul is giving his young disciple named Timothy some good advice including in verse 10 "For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil". It would seem that from God's perspective verse 6 would contain the proper answer to contentment "Now godliness with contentment is great gain". This of course demands that we understand the meaning of "Godliness", which I understand it to mean a life that would please Father God in every way. This type of life is only possible when we are part of His family by being "adopted" by Him, after being "born again" by believing in, and accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior. And then being "filled with the Holy Spirit" as Paul states in (Eph 5:18-21), which is phrased in the form of a command. And the verb for "filled" in the Greek language means to be continually in the process of being filled. Someone asked Dwight Moody "why are you always talking about being filled with the Spirit?" To which he replied

"Because I leak!" That I believe to be the proper answer for all of us, because we leak and need to be continually filled. Some old Pentecostal saint used to say "stay under the spout where the Spirit comes out", which is also good advice in my opinion!!

Sincerely submitted.

Dave Jamer                                                                              

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