Which word describes you best? Would you say you have contentment or discontentment? When you have contentment--your soul is at rest, you feel a sense of peace, you have deep abiding joy. But when you have this underlying discontentment--life feels crazy, your soul is restless, and everything feels out of balance. In general, there is a whole lot of discontentment out there. Not much contentment!
What would it take for you to experience greater contentment? Maybe you've made an actual list? What kind of home, car, or things? What kind of job/ position? What kind of opportunities, connections? Maybe a relationship? Maybe a change in your health? There's always something that'd make us more content, right?
Advertising doesn't help us any. In exchange for listening to your favorite song on Pandora, a video clip on YouTube, or a movie on cable--you must subject yourself to several minutes of discontent-making. Advertisers are like, "Your life would be so much better with this device, this pill, this cruise, this dining experience, this service..." But after a while we start to believe them.
Companies cater to every imaginable whim! These whims establish higher and higher baselines of "need." (1) Here are handerpants--underpants for your hands. (http://mcavanaugh.me/e-portfolio/html/stores/oddities/Handerpants.htm). (2) Here are special chopsticks designed to cool your noodles as you eat. (http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploads4/soupchopsticks1108421689.jpg) (3) Here's a special shield to keep you from splashing spaghetti sauce on your face. http://www.alletop10lijstjes.nl/25-bizarre-producten-uit-j/ (4) Here's a pillow for those who want to cuddle w/o drama of relationship! http://www.alletop10lijstjes.nl/25-bizarre-producten-uit-j/ (5) Here's the all new baby mop! Clean while you crawl. http://blog.sfgate.com/sfmoms/wp-content/blogs.dir/2300/files/wacky-baby-inventions/baby-mop.jpg
I don't think we realize the extent we get bombarded with discontentment. New is an idol. Better is an idol. Bigger is an idol. Multiple is an idol. You need five TVs in your house, one is not enough. You're not okay. You need more, more, more. How would you describe your baseline for contentment? What's enough? At what point do you start being content? Fill in the blank: I Need ________.
Here's a verse to think about, 1 Timothy 6:6-8: "But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that."
Is food + clothing a sufficient baseline for contentment? You may not be aware, but people in need weekly contact the church. Every fifth Sunday we collect a special offering, specifically to help people in need. Today is one of those Sundays. If you choose, you can put cash, or a check into the envelope that's in the bulletin.
Sometimes folks come off the Interstate--these are the most challenging. Sometimes folks call through the Yellow Pages until they find a Church willing to hear their story--you should know most churches will not take these calls. We always do. More often, people are referred by someone we've helped.
The most common person we help are single mothers, w/children, who are often a utility bill or a rent payment away from homelessness. We've helped dozens of young mothers in their twenties, and few older couples, stay in their homes... find work, or get on their feet.
But if food + clothing is the baseline, Lakeside probably has a 100% track record of meeting needs! More recently we partnered with Brianne Impson, who purchased a small building that she uses to distribute clothing in Illiopolis. People have legitimate physical needs--and it's not generally because their lazy, immoral, or ignorant. There is true injustice that occurs in our city. There are evil hurting vulnerable folks, children.
But notice Paul makes mentioned of godliness. For him contentment isn't just food and water, its a God-ward life, a God-ward orientation. When people come to the Church in need, I always feel like I've failed them, if I haven't in some way helped them take steps toward God. Sometimes we're only able to pray with them. Sometimes we're able to share a few Scriptures, or practical wisdom. Occasionally we're able to share the whole gospel.
In this verse Paul is talking about something foreign to our culture. And it's this... Can our relationship w/God (and more specifically w/Jesus) be a source of contentment? Paul says "godliness with contentment is great gain." We believe we need all this stuff. But do we have Jesus?
Last week I sat w/a couple, the wife just discovered she had stage 4 cancer. She practically quoted this verse to me. "We think we need all of this stuff. We don't." Pointing to her husband, she said, "‘we just need this right here... and God.'"
I've met people who have little more than food and clothing, but because they have Jesus, they have joy. I've met people who have just about everything you can imagine wanting, but because they don't have Jesus, their restless, dissatisfied. I've also met Church-going people who've yet to discover true contentment in Jesus, and are just as dissatisfied as though far from God! Which type of person are you?
When we don't have that baseline of contentment in our relationship with Jesus, it opens up the door to all sorts of ugly imbalances. There is nothing more ugly than a desperate soul, scrounging around the world, for an ounce of satisfaction.
We talked about one kind of ugliness last week, when a person turns to their sensual desires for satisfaction. Paul describes this in Ephesians 2:1-3, "As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts..."
Another kind of ugliness is described in 1 Timothy 6:9-10, and relates to wealth: "Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs."
In Luke 12:13-21 Jesus talks about material possessions: "13 Someone in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me." [How many of you have had a similar conversation/dispute in your family?] 14 Jesus replied, "Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?" 15 Then he said to them, "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions." 16 And he told them this parable: "The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. 17 He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.' 18 "Then he said, ‘This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. 19 And I'll say to myself, "You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry."' 20 "But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?' 21 "This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God."
But then he has this to say... Luke 12:22-34, "Then Jesus said to his disciples: "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. 23 For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. 24 Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! 25 Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life? 26 Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?
27 "Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 28 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you--you of little faith! 29 And do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. 30 For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them. 31 But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.
32 "Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. 33 Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
Daniel Thompson threw a phrase at me a while back that's so true! He said, most Christians have a bad case of the "Christ-Ands." Christ isn't enough. Jesus isn't enough. We need Christ And Food And Water And Clothes... (which is true). But then we continue on from there, and it never ends.
When we don't have that baseline of contentment in Jesus, we tend to develop an over-attachment to things. We might even turn to a life of excess, where because our soul is restless, we begin over-compensating in everything. We over-eat, over-exercise, over-work, over-save, over-spend, over-sleep, over-do everything only to end up bored.
Boredom is the only reality the godless soul knows. Boredom is when you've tried to plug the hole in soul with a bit of everything except relationship with Jesus. Solomon in Ecclesiastes was bored. Apart from God nothing had meaning, purpose, satisfaction. Not work, not relationships, not knowledge, not his accomplishments...
The one anchoring point we have for the soul is a relationship with Jesus. Tell you what, read the book of Ephesians this week and write down all the phrases Paul uses to describe the abundance of his relationship with Jesus. Paul realizes in Jesus he's been blessed, chosen, adopted, loved, redeemed, forgiven, enriched, given an eternal inheritance, marked, sealed, filled with the Holy Spirit, enlightened, raised, made alive. Paul prays that we'd know how wide, long, high and deep, is this love of Jesus. He says you cannot imagine the power of God at work in us. God does immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine!
What Jesus said in his parable was that if we seek first the Kingdom of God all these other things in life fall into place. Food. Clothing. Christ comes first, and then everything else follows. But if you try to run after all these things, oh, what a restless, worried soul you'll be indeed.
In Ephesians 5, Christ makes the church beautiful. He loves her. He gives himself up for her. He makes her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word. He presents her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. But Jesus does more. Paul says Christ feeds and cares for his body the church. He loves the church as his very own body.
God-ward life, a God-ward orientation, Godliness with contentment is great gain. It's the kind of gain that gives your soul the rest it's been yearning for... that sense of peace, that deep abiding joy for which you've longed.