My Teacher In Contentment

My Teacher In Contentment

I have learned how to get along happily whether I have much or little. 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. –Philippians 4:11-12

“Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well, with my soul.” You’ve likely heard how Horatio Spafford wrote these words on an ocean liner at the place where his four daughters had perished when their ship sank. The reality of our similar sorrow hit me as I prepared to lead worship with this hymn one week. I wondered at his ability to say that, no matter what, all was well. As I read, “thou hast taught me to say,” I wondered, How did God teach you? I don’t know enough about Spafford to know what lesser hurts God had used as lessons in contentment. But evidently Spafford learned well from them so that when sorrow rolled over him, rather than being crushed by it, he was content in it; he was at peace in God and with God.

We might like to think that contentment comes naturally to some, and if we are not content, we just blame it on our personality. But contentment isn’t a gift or a personality trait; it’s a learned trait, a response we can choose to nurture or neglect. Paul said he had “learned” to be content. How did he learn contentment? By being inconvenienced, impoverished, encroached upon, unfed. He determined to find his contentment in God regardless of his circumstances. To be content doesn’t mean that you don’t care what happens, that you are indifferent to your surroundings or your suffering. To be content means that you are at peace in the sufficiency of Christ, regardless.

We think we’ll be content when we finally get what we want, but real contentment is when we accept less than or something other than what we want. Jesus is our source for the spiritual strength we need to live with what we didn’t ask for and less than we want, to be satisfied even when our stomachs or our hearts are empty. Do you have an unmet need, an unfulfilled desire, an unresolved injustice, or an unrelieved pain? Could this be God inviting you into the classroom of contentment? Would you allow him to teach you to find your contentment in him?

Teacher, I want to learn to be content in you rather than constantly comparing my lot to that of others and collapsing under waves of disappointment and discontentment. Will you teach me?

DIGGING DEEPER