In addition to what we have looked at in our previous postings, contentment is also rooted in how we see our present circumstances.
Your perception is your reality. How you perceive things to be is how they are to you, no matter who tells you different! If you see your situation as hopeless and never changing you will most certainly be discontent. Rather than focusing on you, again look to Jesus as the example:
fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Hebrews 12:2
Jesus did not focus on the torture of the cross; He looked past it to the joy of what would be accomplished by the cross. He did not focus on Himself; He focused on our redemption, our forgiveness, our reconciliation with God that would come only by His actions. Jesus focused on seeking God and the things of God. It was enough for Him to have food, water, and a place to lay his head at night in this world. Nothing else of the world mattered to Him.
Is that enough for us? Or are we busy seeking all this earthly stuff that we believe we have to have to make us happy and content? We have become so earthly minded in our country of abundant goods! Every wish and whim is available to us from literally any place on the globe for the right sum of money. We seek after many of the wrong things, and become discontent when we cannot have them.
Our desires will never be satisfied with earthly treasures or goods. There is always just one more thing that we think we need… We pursue the wrong solutions for our struggles too…
Drugs, alcohol, sex, a new woman or man, a new job, new home… and now of course we have psychotropic medications as the supposed solution to feeling better.
If only I had…
If only I did…
If only I didn’t…
Contentment resides in the heart.
Jeremiah Burrough’s says, “You must learn to know your own hearts well, to be good students of your own hearts. By studying your heart you will come soon to discover wherein your discontent lies.” In other words as the cartoon strip Pogo says, “We have met the enemy and he is us!”
So many counselee’s want to blame all their problems on Satan. We want to believe that we have so much goodness residing within us that to turn our hearts in the direction of discontent that Satan must come and afflict us as he did Job.
I am here to tell you that Jer. 17:9 reminds us that there is enough wickedness and self-deception residing within each one of us that Satan does not have to bother with us much…
We are discontent because we want more of all the wrong things.