Content in Christনমুনা

How Can We Learn Contentment?

Contentment helps us appreciate what we already have. It is learned through crisis. It is rarely learned in times of celebration or when things are going great. Contentment is not complacency. It is not false peace based on ignorance of the circumstances. We are content when we realize the content of our heart belongs to Jesus. I will find contentment when I find the content inside me is Jesus. We don’t find contentment only in passing the day relaxing and doing nothing.

Contentment comes from counting the blessings that you have in Christ—the resources, the heavenly gifts—that you have in Him. When we speak about being content in Jesus, we are not talking about, “Oh, yeah, I’ve done that Christian thing. I went to church a few times.” We’re talking about an on-fire, active pursuit of Jesus Christ. A growing, deepening relationship with Jesus is where we find contentment.

The Apostle Paul would say it like this: "Christ-contained. I am in Him and He is in me. He has everything that I own. He has everything that I am about. He has every thought that I have. He has everything in my heart. I am content because Jesus Christ and His content live in my life."

The word content in Greek means to “learn by experience.” So, Paul has learned it by experience. You learn marriage by going through difficult times in marriage, not only by reading books, although we should be reading books on marriage. You learn how to deal with money by going through a difficult time financially, by trusting the Lord, and continuing to give to God and being a generous person, not by just reading the Wall Street Journal combined with reading a Bible verse and hoping those two go together sometimes. It is by actively going through the experience, and moving forward that we learn. We ask for wisdom. We get through crisis. 

There are a lot of crises going on in our society. Social, racial, financial, and medical crises. We know that there is no solution to the racial crisis or the medical crisis or the economic crisis without Jesus Christ. So we say, “Lord, we need You in all of these things that are taking place. We need You and we want You to lead us through this situation. We want to find our contentment in You.”