We have a crisis of discontentment today. We have more than we have ever had - but we are less content that we have ever been.
So, here is the deal. If you want to be content - you have to foster a healthy discontentment.
Seriously. You can't be content without it.
A lot of people think of contentment as a passive state of simply being "OK" with your life. That isn't contentment. It is denial. Or worse, it is despair - the loss of hope for something better.
Contentment is not a passive acceptance of what is - it is the result of an active pursuit of what is better.
We are discontent because have a hunger for something we don't have. The problem isn't the hunger - the problem is that we try to feed that hunger with the wrong things. We crave something - so we try to feed it with buying stuff, or with the distraction of entertainment, or with more and greater achievement. And it doesn't work.
You can't satisfy a desire for rest with food - nor can you satisfy a desire for love with a computer.
If we have desires, it is because there is something specifically designed by God to meet those desires. And if we find that we desire something we don't have, we need to look elsewhere to satisfy it.
And that is because we can't feed our unsatisfied desire for more with more of what we already have. We can pacify it - but we can't satisfy it like that.
The solution isn't to pacify our desires - or to kill them and make them go away. The solution is to have our desires satisfied in the right place - we need to feed them the right thing.
At the heart of all human desires is a black hole of need that can only be filled by God's love and affirmation of us. Some of us try to fill that hole with food. Others with exercise. Others with Sex. Still others with personal accomplishments.
A need for God's love simply cannot be satisfied with earthly pleasure.
That is why we need a holy discontent. In the same way our hunger will drive us to work to eat - we need to develop habits that both satisfy and increase our hunger for God. Unlike our earthly appetites, the more satisfied we are in God the more of God we want.
The more content we are in God's declaration over us that we are his because of the finished work of Christ - the more we are driven by a holy ambition to experience more.
So, here is the deal. If you want to be content - you have to foster a healthy discontentment.
Seriously. You can't be content without it.
A lot of people think of contentment as a passive state of simply being "OK" with your life. That isn't contentment. It is denial. Or worse, it is despair - the loss of hope for something better.
Contentment is not a passive acceptance of what is - it is the result of an active pursuit of what is better.
We are discontent because have a hunger for something we don't have. The problem isn't the hunger - the problem is that we try to feed that hunger with the wrong things. We crave something - so we try to feed it with buying stuff, or with the distraction of entertainment, or with more and greater achievement. And it doesn't work.
You can't satisfy a desire for rest with food - nor can you satisfy a desire for love with a computer.
If we have desires, it is because there is something specifically designed by God to meet those desires. And if we find that we desire something we don't have, we need to look elsewhere to satisfy it.
And that is because we can't feed our unsatisfied desire for more with more of what we already have. We can pacify it - but we can't satisfy it like that.
The solution isn't to pacify our desires - or to kill them and make them go away. The solution is to have our desires satisfied in the right place - we need to feed them the right thing.
At the heart of all human desires is a black hole of need that can only be filled by God's love and affirmation of us. Some of us try to fill that hole with food. Others with exercise. Others with Sex. Still others with personal accomplishments.
A need for God's love simply cannot be satisfied with earthly pleasure.
That is why we need a holy discontent. In the same way our hunger will drive us to work to eat - we need to develop habits that both satisfy and increase our hunger for God. Unlike our earthly appetites, the more satisfied we are in God the more of God we want.
The more content we are in God's declaration over us that we are his because of the finished work of Christ - the more we are driven by a holy ambition to experience more.
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