Are you content? Does your current life arrangement gnaw away at you as you’re drifting off to sleep? Maybe you’re single and you want to be married. Maybe you’re childless and want to have children. Maybe you’re in an unpleasant job and you want something that’s a better environment and pays better. Maybe you’re sick and you want to be whole again.
Paul teaches us that godliness with contentment is great gain (1 Tim. 6:6). Knowing Christ as an all-surpassing treasure, makes the Christian able to bear all circumstances with joy and contentment.Â
If you have plenty, gratitude wells up. If you have little, you rejoice that in Christ You have all things. If your life has taken unexpected––and seemingly unfortunate––turns, you rest at ease in the confidence that God is sovereign over all the details of your story and is working all things, even hard providences, out for your good. If your circumstances are remarkably wonderful––good health, happy family, full tables––you can humbly receive it all from God’s hand as a gracious, undeserved gift.
Godliness is a chest full of eternal treasure. But when augmented by contentment, not only do we find delight in the glorious joys of eternity, but the ebbs and flows, the trials and triumphs of earth become a bank-vault of reasons to praise the Giver of every good and perfect gift.
So, are you faced with hard trials? Thank God for every last inch of that trial. Through it you will taste the sweetness of God’s sanctifying grace. Are you surrounded by blessings? Humbly receive those blessings, and use them to praise God. Then we can truly sing, with godly contentment, the wise words of one old hymn:Â
And if our dearest comforts fall before his sovereign will,
He never takes away our all – Himself he gives us still.
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