At the Dead Preachers Society, I read and post quotes from some of the great Christian books.
I like the advice given by CS Lewis, “For every new book you read, read an old book”.
As book reviews editor at Evangelicals Now I am aware of the avalanche of new books that emerge from publishers each year. It can mean that hidden gems are missed and readers can have little time for the older tried and tested books.
One such book is The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment by the puritan Jeremiah Burroughs. Burroughs begins his book by referring to the following verse:
“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.” (1 Timothy 6:6–7)
Burroughs makes the reader think about the value of contentment and warns of the dangers of discontentment.
“I beseech you to consider that God does not deal with you as you deal with him. Should God make the worst interpretation of all your ways towards him, as you do of his towards you, it would be very ill with you.”
I feel that this brilliantly highlights the heart of the issue of discontentment. God does cut us a little slack and yet we do not return the compliment!
There needs to be a dramatic shift in our thinking if we are to discover the liberating effects of contentment in our lives. As Burroughs reminds us,
“Our contentment does not consist in getting the thing we desire, but in fashioning our spirits to our conditions.”
Of course, preachers need to be careful about such preaching. It is possible to confirm a “low bar” approach to life that lacks imagination, settles for the status quo, and is happy with mediocrity. That is not something we see in the life of the apostle Paul. We need help to discern the difference between healthy and unhealthy approaches to contentment.
I like the honest and realistic way that Burroughs thinks about the process of preaching on contentment:
“I have spent many sermons over this lesson of contentment, but I am afraid that you will be longer in learning it than I have been in preaching of it; it is a harder to learn it than to preach or speak about it.”
Paul writes in Philippians 4 about learning the “secret” of contentment. It is clearly not an easy lesson to learn. Preachers can sometimes assume that a congregation will grasp in half and hour what it has taken them a week to study or a lifetime to learn.
Preachers need to be patient with their congregations, willing to circle back to a topic and wise in giving guidance about what contentment looks like in practice.
It is interesting that the passage on contentment on Philippians follows a passage on moving by prayer from anxiety to peace. Discontent often arises from a troubled mind; contentment from the “peace that transcends understanding.”
Contentment, as with so many virtues, requires reshaping the habits of the heart.
Photo by A Chosen Soul on Unsplash