“But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content” –  1 Timothy 6:6-7, ESV.

“The righteous has enough to satisfy his appetite, but the belly of the wicked suffers want” – Proverbs 13:25, ESV.

“If a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years, so that the days of his years are many, but his soul is not satisfied with life’s good things, and he also has no burial, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he.” – Ecclesiastes 6:3, ESV

“You have given me greater joy than those who have abundant harvests of grain and new wine.” – Psalm 4:7, NLT

For a while now, I have been reflecting on contentment. I’ve been reflecting on what it means to be content and to live a life that showcases contentment in God, as some of these verses above highlight. Beyond that, I’ve also been reflecting on how to reconcile yearning for more in life with the Biblical teaching that we be content.

Contentment is like a tree, and it manifests the beautiful fruits of gratitude, peace, joy, hope, faith in God and His Word. This brings God so much pleasure, for “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Hebrews 11:6a, BSB), and our faith in God is truly evident when we are content in Him, irrespective of what is happening in our lives at the time.

Conversely, we know the tree of discontent is growing in our garden by its fruit of greed, murmuring, bitterness, wordly sorrow, complaining, comparison (the thief of joy, as someone wisely said). Philippians 2:14, 1 Corinthians 10:10, Exodus 14, Numbers 14 and lots of other Bible passages give us an idea of how God feels when we manifest these negative fruits, and just how much he hates them. Why? Because they show a distinct lack of trust in God, in His plan for our lives, His work in us, and His timing. God was so displeased with the Israelites exhibiting this fruit, that an eleven day wilderness journey ended up as a forty year journey! (Deuteronomy 1:2).

As Christians, our aim should be to be wholly and completely satisfied with God. We should be so full of God, so conscious of His presence and saturated in Him, that there is no room for anything else to wiggle its way into our hearts and become an object of our desires, not to talk of taking God’s place in our lives. There should be no space for any such objects, unless they relate to God and His call on our lives. When we are completely content in God, in who we are in Him, in being His child above all else – status in society, education, career, gifting – then we can say we are content. We are content and satisfied in God when we place God’s opinion of us much further up than the opinion of men, so much so that when we stand in the place of God’s opinion of us and look down, we can’t even see the speck that is the opinion of men. As Philippians 3:8 notes “Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ” (NLT).

John Piper notes that “God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in Him.” This state of being satisfied with God does not necessarily correlate with having enough physically to satisfy us, because really, how many people can say they are well and truly satisfied, even after obtaining the things they want? When is enough really enough? In Philippians 4:11-13 (NLT), Apostle Paul states: “Not that I was ever in need, for 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.” This is true contentment. Incidentally, Philippians 4:13 is a very famous verse, but it is not often quoted in the context Paul set it in. I think the point is that contentment is not dependent on our status in life and what we can do for ourselves, but on Christ, and what He can do for us. As Charles Spurgeon notes, “Birds sing on a bare bough; O, believer, canst not thou?”

How then can we develop contentment in our lives? One way to do so is to “discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified” (1 Corinthians 9:27, ESV). This is where fasting can be so helpful, we empty ourselves of food and fill ourselves with God instead. We seek satisfaction from God instead of food (or any other thing that pulls us away from God). We spend time with God and saturate ourselves in Him through prayer, worship, soaking up His Word like a thirsty traveller. We bless God and others with the blessings God has given us. Isaiah 58 shows us the kind of fast that pleases God. In doing so, we can release the hold that possessions have on us.

When we develop contentment though, does it mean staying where we are, and never wanting more, never daring for more? Not necessarily. Contentment is different from comfort. Sometimes God can put a yearning, a desire in our hearts for something He wants us to do. However, we may choose to ignore it and play it safe. He may be calling us to a different ministry, a higher calling, but when we analyse the risks, and realise how far out of our comfort zone it will take us, we may be tempted to respond with “thanks but no thanks”. Unfortunately, this does not show contentment in God, but in our current ‘safe’ state. It can look like Biblical contentment, but it is far from it.

A key way to test our hearts on this matter is to honestly search our hearts and ask ourselves what our motives are. Are we yearning for something for the purpose of bringing glory to God, or to bring glory to ourselves? Restlessness in Spirit driven by a hunger for God, for His will to be at work in us and in those around us, is different from restlessness in body driven by comparison or selfish desires. God rewards the former and not the latter. James 4:3 notes that “and when you do ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may squander it on your pleasures” (BSB).

The great examples of faith in God listed in Hebrews 11 show a list of people who dared for God, who were willing to take audacious risks for Him, purely because He told them to. They didn’t always know the destination, but they were willing to risk the journey with God. We should never become so familiar with these examples of faith that we underestimate how tough it would have been for these heroes to make those decisions, to hope and trust God above all else. One of the most heart breaking responses to Jesus’ call is in Matthew 19:16-22, the story of the young man who really wanted to do right by God. Despite his earnest intentions though, in the end, when Jesus told him, “If you want to be perfect, go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me,” his response was to walk away sad, for “he had many possessions”. His contentment was in his possessions, and he could not imagine a life where he had only Jesus and none of those possessions. In a way it scares me, because I can see how easy it is to fall into that trap. All I can say is God help me! May our yearning to be used by God never cease, and may we submit to however God chooses to use us, or whatever sacrifices He asks us to make. May we wait patiently on the Lord for His wisdom and direction, and respond to His instructions with faithful action.

I pray that as we reflect on this, we will learn what it truly means to be content in God, and how it specifically applies to our lives. I pray that we will never choose possessions over following Jesus. May God give us the wisdom and discernment to see things like He does, to know what He is calling us to do and how to do it. May we receive the grace to obey God, to turn back from the lure of the world and look resolutely to God, “pressing towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14). May we truly enjoy sweet fellowship with our Father in Heaven, and as we do so, may God give us “greater joy than those who have abundant harvests of grain and new wine.”

Image source here.