People are always seeking way to find contentment.
Have you ever found yourself struggling to fill in these blanks:
• “When I am _________, then I’ll be happy?”
• “When I have __________, then I’ll be happy.”
The reason we often fall into this trap is that we find ourselves happy for a while, but it doesn’t last. More often, something or someone comes along and drains our lives of any contentment we do have.
The Bible tells us that contentment is not getting what you want, but rather being happy with what you have. God has given us so much. The problem is, we often get in a rut and focus on those things we don’t have and we forget what we do have - important things, like family, friends, a job and a home. We need to realize that we have a choice to be happy right now with the many things God has given us to enjoy.
Perhaps what you and I have to do is adjust our expectations. Sometimes we set our expectations so high, that we set ourselves up for disappointment.
Have you heard the story of the man who went to the pet store to buy a singing parakeet? The man was a bachelor and his house was too quiet and so he wanted a bird that would fill his house with singing. The store owner had just the right bird on hand, and so the man bought it. The next day the bachelor came home to a house full of singing.
And so, he went to the cage to feed the bird and noticed something that he hadn’t noticed before... the bird only had one leg. Seeing this, the man felt cheated, so he decided to go back to the store to complain.
The store owner looked at the man and said, “What do you want, a bird who can sing or a bird who can dance?”
That’s a good question to ask ourselves when we’re not experiencing contentment. We need to adjust our expectations. We need to choose to find our contentment in what will really help us to be at peace.
One of the things that can really make us feel content is knowing that there is hope for us, that there is a real hope that everything we’ve ever done wrong can be forgiven. It’s choosing to embrace what God offers us. He offers us a forgiveness that extends to all who will ask for it, no matter how bad we are, no matter what we’ve done. Contentment is found in resting in the fact that God has offered us His grace.
What is grace? It’s getting something good that we really don’t deserve. As people we’ve turned our backs on God and we don’t deserve to be forgiven, to be given hope, to be given a second chance. But God long ago made the decision to offer all of this to us anyway. We don’t have to work for it, we don’t have to try to earn it, all we have to do is ask for it.
If God’s only gift to you was grace, would you be content? The contentment that God offers helps us to ride out life’s difficulties. The contentment God offers is a life jacket that holds us up above the waves of life. It is a reigning peace knowing that God is in control of the course our lives take. John 3:17 states, “For God did not send His Son to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”
- This Faith Matters column was provided by Tri-Community Baptist Church in Beiseker.
