THE SECRET OF CONTENTMENT || PHILIPPIANS 4:10-14
THE TREADMILL OF ENVY
We are actually born into this world and already feeling that enough is never enough. From the beginning of time humanity has struggled with contentment. (ie: Adam & Eve)
“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who
more, who is poor.” —Luciius Seneca
“The most unhappy person in the world is not someone who didn’t get what he or she wanted. The most unhappy person is the one who got what he or she wanted and then found out that it wasn’t as wonderful as
. The secret of a happy life is not to get what you want but to live with what you’ve . Most of us spend our lives concentrating on what we don’t have instead of God for what we do have. Then we wake up, our life is over, and we missed the beauty of the present. You think about that.” —Steve Brown
“Yet true godliness with contentment is itself great wealth. After all, we brought nothing with us when we came into the world, and we can’t take anything with us when we leave it. So if we have enough food and clothing, let us be
. But people who long to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and destruction. For the love of is the root of all kinds of evil. And some people, craving money, have wandered from the true faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.” —1 Timothy 6:6-10 (NLT)
THE SOURCE OF CONTENTMENT
Contentment is found in us letting go and letting God, in us stopping to strive and struggle and trusting God to work out the circumstances of our health, our marriages, our children, our jobs, our finances, our wants and so much more.
“Many Christians estimate difficulty in the light of their
resources, and thus they attempt very little, and they always fail. All giants have been weak men who did great things for God because they reckoned on His power and His presence to be with them.” —Hudson Taylor
“To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is
for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am , then I am .” —2 Corinthians 12:7-10 (NLT)
“We think you ought to know, dear brothers and sisters, about the trouble we went through in the province of Asia. We were crushed and overwhelmed beyond our ability to endure, and we thought we would never live through it. In fact, we expected to die. But as a result, we stopped relying on
and learned to rely only on , who raises the dead.” —1 Corinthians 1:8-9 (NLT)