3 Ways I'm Learning to Be Content
How do we find peace and contentment when we want something about ourselves or our lives or someone in our lives to look radically different?
I can think of so many examples from my life when I lived in utter discontentment and irritability, because I desperately wanted something to change. I wanted my husband’s priorities to change and match mine. When God opened doors for me to teach the Bible and speak at women’s events, I wanted certain people to notice and affirm me. When my kids were young and I worked outside the home, I wanted to stay home like my friends. Then when I worked from home, I longed to know what it would be like to not work at all. I have dreamed of going to Africa with my friend Kristen to love on the girls and babies Mercy House rescues there, but James doesn’t have a peace about it (yet). I’ve wanted to pour more of my time into writing, ministry, and missions, but I have been needed other places in other ways. I’ve hoped for a publisher, but the time has never been right for my family or the support hasn’t been present. I’ve wanted certain relationships to be intimate and transparent, yet they’ve remained surface level. I have wanted to experience healing, reconciliation, and deep and meaningful connections with people who simply aren’t in the place to do so. I have wanted to eat whatever I want and not worry about gaining weight. I have wanted to make my body perfect, because I was convinced that would make me happy and loved. I have wanted my husband to fire me (I work for him in our family business), but he continues to find great peace and assurance knowing that I’m the one who does the work I do for our company. I have wanted to see my children in different places, making different decisions that would bring them peace and joy. I have wanted to see my heart change toward difficult people, but continue to encounter my own hard heart.
What I have learned and am learning is that contentment has nothing to do with circumstances or whether or not other people are who we want them to be, doing what we want them to do, being the way we hoped they would be.
It’s like Paul says in Philippians 4:11, “I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content.”
He didn’t wake up and suddenly have it. He didn’t perform it. He didn’t force it. He learned it.
God has me in a season of learning to be content. It comes on the heels of a season of being broken. Humbled. Teachable. Softened. Open.
As I Iearn to be content, I’ve noticed a few things that seem to move me in that direction. For me, it boils down to these “3 Ts to Learn Contentment.”
3 Ts TO LEARN CONTENTMENT
1. Thinking.
In each moment of my day, I can choose my thoughts. I can choose to divert them from what I think I have a right to and instead set them on what God has given me in that moment. What does He have me doing? Who does He have me in contact or relationship with? What need has He given me to meet? Am I living true to who I am in Christ as I live the life God has given me instead of the life I think I should have?
Here are several areas of thinking God is transforming.
Gratitude
No matter what is going on or what is not going the way I want, I have so much to be thankful for. Just this morning, as I prayed for a friend whose mom fell and needed a hip replacement, I found myself thanking God for every time me and my family members walk from one place to another uninjured. I thanked Him for every time we get in our cars and safely arrive at our destination without an accident. I am so deeply grateful. I am deeply grateful for health, a home that provides shelter, heat, air conditioning, running water. I am deeply grateful for God‘s provision, for my husband, for my children, for friendships, for our church family. I am deeply grateful for the ways that God makes Himself known in unmistakable ways—in little things and big things—in His word, in the way that I experience just how real He is when my heart is set on Him, and my will is set on keeping His word.
Are there areas of discontentment in your life? I’m that exact area, what is every single thing you can thank Him for? Be absolutely ridiculous with the smallest of things you can think of and make the list as long as you can. Now thank Him for every single thing. When discontentment threatens again—and it will—determine to divert your thoughts to gratitude instead.
Humility
To learn to be content, I have to be teachable. To be teachable, I have to be humble. I have to drop my demands and ideas of what I deserve. Maybe I don’t verbalize these beliefs , but I certainly imply them in my thinking. I deserve to go to Africa. I deserve to decide what I want to do with my time. I deserve to go where I want to go and do what I want to do. I deserve to be treated differently. I deserve…just fill in the blank.
The truth is, as a child of God, when He saved me and made me His, I received Christ’s death as payment for the penalty of my sin and eternal life as my reward. My life is now His. He is Lord. He decides the details of my moments and days according to His perfect and pleasing will, not just for me, but as He intertwines my life in His good for others (see no. 3)? Who am I to say I know better than God? Who am I to demand my life look different than He orders it? Who am I to say He should have wired my body differently? Who am I to say the life or calling He’s given me is inferior to someone else’s? I have to lay all of this down, confess the sin of pride and unbelief, and humble myself before Him.
Belief
Unbelief is probably one of the greatest obstacles to contentment. Many times, we just don’t believe what God says to be true. If we did, we would live, forgive, and love radically different. Consider what God says about fear, glory, being first or best, anxiety, forgiveness, loving money or the world and its things, being double-minded, loving our enemies, serving the least. What I believe determines what I do. What I do reveals what a truly believe about God.
2. Trust.
For me, this is where belief equals action and obedience. This is where belief equals doing things God‘s way instead of my way, because I’m convinced that what He says is true, and He will do what He says He will do. This is where I choose faith over fear when I have a concern about a loved one or there’s a health scare or the way this world is going threatens my sense of security.
Peace and rest are found in trust and surrender.
3. Today.
When I keep my mind, attention, heart, thoughts, and focus on today, I am content. Today I have everything I need. Today I am ok. Today God is with me.
I can do today! It’s when I get into tomorrow and beyond that I get overwhelmed and off kilter.
Also, I have come to the place where I’ve decided that if God wants something to be different in my life, He will change it. If He wants us to live in closer proximity to where we do life with our family and church, He will put it on both our hearts, not just mine. If He wants me to do something other than work for our company, He will bring about that change. If He wants me to go to Africa, He will make it possible. If He wants me to spend more time writing and teaching, He will make it so. We can agree with Job and say, "I know that You can do everything, and that no purpose [of Yours] can be withheld from You” (Job 42:2).
Wherever I am and whatever I’m doing with whomever I’m doing it in a given day, I am learning to believe and trust that God has me right where He wants me doing what He wants me to do. I try to keep my focus on that, to be content in the moment, to be present in the moment, to be thankful in the moment, and to take joy and pleasure in doing my very best in whatever is before me in a moment.
Jesus teaches in Matthew 6:25-34:
“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? 26 "Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 "Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? 28 "So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; 29 "and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 "Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, [will He] not much more [clothe] you, O you of little faith? 31 "Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' 32 "For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 "But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. 34 "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day [is] its own trouble.”
To believe this is to live content in today.
In what ways do you battle contentment? Does your thinking need redirection? Do you need to trust God? Do you need to reel yourself back into today?
We can learn to be content and live with Paul’s same conviction: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13).