Contentment
Psalms 118:24, “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”
I love that scripture! It is so easy to raise your hands and rejoice when everything is going our way!
What about those days that seem like nothing is going our way?
How do I rejoice and be glad in it?
It's really easy to trust God when everything is awesome. “Oh God you're soooooo good! Everything is perfect. All my dreams and desires are answered and I am living from one mountaintop to another.” Now if that’s how it always was, I could say that “this is the day the Lord has made; now I can rejoice and be glad in it.” Wouldn't it be great if life worked that way, but it doesn’t, does it? When I really meditate on this scripture, His Truth, I see a person who praises in all things is somebody who is contented.
It is good for us to have dreams, desires, and goals. God wants us to believe and have faith for the promises in His Word, His good plans (Jeremiah 29:11), but how do we react during the process of answered prayers , dreams, desires? Are we contented or are we frustrated and always wishing for something else?
Being contented doesn't mean that we don't want things to change or that we are just going to settle where we are. Contentment is being totally at peace and totally committed to the process of God.
He is working on our behalf in every situation in our lives. We don't have to be frustrated with where we are in life! We know that God is always moving, just as our faith is always moving, and that He is doing His will in our lives and at His perfect timing. Now that is contentment!!!
In Philippians 4, Paul talks about this. It's funny how the Word of God always has the answers. Paul says that, "I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances." Don't you just hate that word: “learned?” We have to learn to be contented, so to learn something means we have a test! The test is on how do we live life during the waiting for our dreams, desires, prayers to be answered. For example, do you get on Instagram and suddenly you are discontented with your life? The posted life seems amazing, perfect and everything you want. Competition and Comparison will steal your joy and your destiny because you are consumed with what you think you don't have and you will miss what you do have. You will take for granted what God is doing NOW in your life.
I remember when Camille was little and I would tell her to clean her room and she wouldn't. She would end up playing with the toys all over the floor. She would say, "why do I have to pick them up? I am just going to make a big mess." My response was this, “if you want that new toy, you have to take care of the ones you have and be thankful for those.” Then I would say, “God will never give you the new thing unless you are thankful for what you have.”
I didn't really know any scriptures back then for my sound doctrine, but it got her to clean her room! Later in my life, we lived in a house that we had outgrown, and I was not contented, I didn't want to clean it, decorate it, or take care of it, but one day I started thanking God for my small house. I started looking at it as a blessing. I started decorating it with joy and excitement. It's not what my dream house looked like in my own thinking, but I had a new perspective. Thank you God! I can rejoice and be glad in it! I had contentment in the process of learning who God was in every circumstance in my life. Not too long after this learning, we bought a bigger house. Your contentment is not based on what you have or don't have. It is based on, "This is the day that the Lord has made; and I will rejoice and be glad in it!"