Generosity of Spirit  

Contentment happens when we look around at what we have—and don’t have—and we don’t feel a restless, nagging desire to have more, to be more, to have more thought of us. It’s precious and part of God’s desire for our lives.

So today, we’re going to look at one of the biggest thieves of contentment in our modern culture. It’s the desire for more money and the things that money can buy. 

God has a radical plan to break us free from this addiction to wealth, which constantly makes us discontented. Once again, he uses the Apostle Paul to get His message across.

Paul was desperate to raise support for the Christians in Jerusalem who were going hungry because of a great famine. So, he wrote to encourage the wealthy Corinthians to help. He encouraged them with the example of the Macedonians, who weren’t wealthy at all but had already shown incredible generosity:

“We want you to know, brothers and sisters, about the grace of God that has been granted to the churches of Macedonia; for during a severe ordeal of affliction, their abundant joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. For, as I can testify, they voluntarily gave according to their means, and even beyond their means, begging us earnestly for the privilege of sharing in this ministry to the saints…” (2 Corinthians 8:1–13)

Now the power of what God’s saying here to us through Paul is this: generosity breeds contentment.

Paul knew that if the Corinthians could give generously and sacrificially, the insidious control that wealth had over their hearts would be broken. 

This act of generosity, he explains, is following Jesus’s example. After all, Jesus is the One who gave up everything, so that we might have everything forever.

And as surely as night follows day, when we give sacrificially to God’s work, the lure of wealth loses its power over us and we start to experience the contentment that God always had planned for our lives.

If you want to be content, if you want to break the power of that desire for wealth in your life—a desire that breeds discontentment in your heart—then start giving sacrificially to God’s work. 

And pretty soon, sacrifice will turn into generosity, and generosity will overflow into a rich abundance of contentment in your life.

Life Application Questions:

• Have you ever felt God challenge you about your attitude to money and wealth? How did you respond?
• Reread what Paul writes about the Macedonian Church. How is it possible that people facing such hardships could be so generous? Ask God to stir the answer in your heart!
• Our culture constantly tries to convince us that we need to buy more, do more, be more. What’s one step you can take to move closer to contentment in Christ? 
• Spend some time praising Jesus, who gave up everything for you and me, for His infinite love and generosity. Ask that He’d fill your heart with peace and contentment.

Discover God's word FRESH for you each day. Receive the FRESH daily devotional in your inbox!