"Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me."
Philippians 4:11-13
What makes you happy? Is it physical comfort? Six-figure salary? Emotional stability? The absence of conflict? Sexual gratification? Any earthly or temporal achievement? What if these are all absent from your life? Are you therefore unhappy?
God has destined you to a state of soul in which we experience and express optimum happiness in God. True happiness is your whole soul resting in God and rejoicing that so beautiful and glorious a being as God is ours. God has so loved us and given us the privilege to be able to enjoy making much of him forever. It is there where true happiness lies.
Another word use by the apostle Paul for happiness is contentment. Which tent do you live in contentment or dis-contentment?
The apostle Paul in Philippines 4:11 says that he had to learn to be content. Contentment does not come naturally for us. We are all discontent by nature because though we think things on earth will bring contentment, the fact is that nothing on this earth can bring true happiness and contentment to us. So we have to learn the secret of happiness.
The lie we must fight is the frantic effort to think that money, drugs, chocolate, and a full equipped SUV can do for us with God cannot.
Contentment and discontentment is all a matter where you look or who you love or who's offer of pleasure you'll accept. If you look for anything in the world to find your happiness and joy you will inevitably become discontent. I have said many times that virtually everything you find on this earth that brings you happiness will one day make you sad. First, because nothing on this earth lasts. Secondly because the way God made your soul is so that nothing can satisfy your soul on this earth, therefore, you will always end up discontented in life if you think you can find your contentment here on earth.
Augustine said it best,
"Oh Lord you have made us for yourself and our hearts find no rest unless we find it in you."
You were made to find your greatest joy and greatest happiness and greatest contentment at the display of God's glory in Jesus Christ. Jonathan Edwards put it this way:
"The pleasures of loving and obeying,loving and adoring, blessing and praising the infinite being, the best of beings, the eternal Jehovah; the pleasures of trusting in Jesus Christ, in contemplating his beauties, excellencies, and glories; in contemplating his love to mankind and to us, in contemplating his infinite goodness and astonishing loving kindness; the pleasures of the communion of the Holy Spirit in conversing with God, the maker and governor of the world; the pleasure that results from the doing of our duty, and acting worthily and excellently; these are the pleasures that are worthy of so noble a creature as a man is."
So how do we learn contentment? We must endeavor to increase our spiritual appetites by meditating on spiritual objects. Every time I surrender my mind to meditate on base and sordid objects their grip on my life will be intensified. The apostle Paul tells us that these are the things that will elevate and deepen your joy to daily meditate on:
Finally, brothers,
whatever is true,
whatever is honorable, whatever is just,
whatever is pure,
whatever is lovely,
whatever is commendable,
if there is any excellence,
if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things. - Philippians 4:8
Paul is challenging us to actually think about these things, ponder them, pour over them, and become vulnerable to the power of God is invested in them to transform our values of happiness and feelings of happiness and to energize our wills.
Perhaps no one was more diligent on meditating on spiritual objects than David, king of Israel. I'm reminded of three statements in particular, which express the intensity and single-mindedness of his devotion.
"I say to the LORD, "You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you." Psalm 16:2
"I have set the LORD always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken." Psalm 16:8
"Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." Psalm 73:25-26
David was so diligent to avert his eyes from all lesser beauty. His resolve was to set the Lord before him, to concentrate his attentions and the energies of a sore on the majesty and power of the one who alone who would sustain him when all else is shaking. This was not just in frequent or occasional choice or one he reverted to in times of crisis,but was in orientation of life to which he was always committed.
Like David that was Paul's orientation in life. That is why he was able to say that no matter what state of life he was in abasing or abounding. He was a contented man. His happiness, his joy, his contentment, the color of his life, was bound not on anything in this world whether good or bad, rich or poor, not on any circumstances good or bad, not with whether life was going good or life was extremely difficult; no, Paul's contentment was rooted in God and God alone and is it no wonder why Paul can say things like "rejoice in the Lord always"(Philippians 3:1; 4:4)
One of my great heroes, Jonathan Edwards tasted this kind of contentment in the midst of the most bitter experience of us really life. After 24 years faithfully pastoring his church in North Hampton, Massachusetts, he wasn't just the fired by an overwhelming vote of the Mail membership of his church. But like Paul, he seemed to live above earth and hell, out of reach of everything here below, so that he looked in all the rage and torment of men with a kind of holy indifference and undisturbed tranquility. How did he do it? One church member sympathetic to Jonathan Edwards described in which reaction to being fired:
"That faithful witness received the shock, unshaken. I never saw the least symptoms of displeasure in his countenance the whole week, but he appeared like a man of God, who is happiness was out of the reach of his enemies and his treasure was not only a future but a present good, over balancing all imaginable ills of life, even to the astonishment of many who could not be at rest without his dismission."
I love this, "out of reach of his enemies and his treasure was not only a future but a present good."
That is the contentment that Paul learned and spoke about. That is the contentment that David knew.
Have you been living in the tent of discontentment? Oh dear reader order your in such away life so that you can be easily enticed by the beauty of Christ. Make it easy on your soul by exposing yourself to the things that will awaken your desire and deep in your holy longings. Ask God to become the epicenter of your life, joy, and as a result, to help you like Paul learned the secret of contentment:
"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." (Philippians 2:13)
Whether you are abased or abounding may you become a contented person because your joy, your happiness, and your life is routed not on this earth but I'm Jesus Christ.
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