Repentance is the key action step. To repent may seem hard. It will be humbling. But there is blessing there. To help you, a suggested prayer follows. I’m including one at the end of each chapter as an encouragement for you to bring the matters we have been thinking about to God while they are fresh on your heart and mind.
Look Up
Lord, in this moment, I want to say thank You for dealing with my heart about covetousness! Lord, my life is racing by so fast; please forgive me for wanting things other than You. Forgive me for longing for stuff that is not Your heart for me and for believing that I can be satisfied in this life apart from You. I repent of covetous attitudes this day, and pray that You would cleanse my heart.
Teach me what it means to love You above all else. Help me recognize the futility of begging You for things that are not essential. Continue to remind me that things will never fill the longing in my heart that’s made for loving You. Might You become all to me, and other things be in their rightful place always.
I look forward with joy to Your continued work in me, and I delight to move on to replacing a covetous attitude with what Your Word will supply. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
NOTES
1. Harrison Rainie, “The State of Greed,” Newsweek, 17 June 1996, 67.
2. Ibid.
3. The $400 billion amount comes from “Report to the Nation,” a publication by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), 2000, as shown at the ACFE web site: www.acfenet.com/newsandfacts/fraudestatistics; the percentages of boys and girls engaged in stealing come from “New Survey Reveals Moral Illiteracy that Needs to Be Addressed in Educational Reforms,” a press release of the Josephson Institute of Ethics (Marina Del Rey, Calif.), 16 October, 2000; accessed at the web site, www.josephson institute.org, on 7 December 2000. The final two bulleted facts are from Rainie, “The State of Greed,” Newsweek, 62.
4. “Greed with John Stossel,” an ABC News special, 3 February 1998; transcript from www.abcnews.go.com/onair/specials/html_files/spe0203a.html.
CHAPTER 4:
...WITH AN ATTITUDE OF CONTENTMENT
1 TIMOTHY 6:6–10
SAY IT IN A SENTENCE:
A consistent attitude of contentment can bring lasting joy and lead you out of the wilderness of covetousness.
Stop for a moment and picture a place wh me. Lean your head back and close your eyes —after you read this part, of course—and imagine a place that is more peaceful than any you’ve ever known. Life is not perfect in this place, but it is peaceful. You are not in a hurry to do anything, and you are not submerged in the demands of others. There are houses near yours, but not on top of where you live, and there are no pressures to buy or do or experience anything. You don’t hear horns, mess with traffic hassles, rush to appointments, or hate the phone when it rings. Just time, lots of time to do the things you need to do and time left over to do what you like. There is room to breathe, walk, and think. You live in a modest home, and your kids may wear hand-me-downs, but your family is happy and your needs are met. No wonder your life verses are Proverbs 30:8–9: “Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is my portion, that I not be full and deny You and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ Or that I not be in want and steal, and profane the name of my God.”
SO, WHERE ARE YOU?
Your life is not perfect but you are OK with that, since you are resting in the Lord and taking each day as it comes. If hardships arise, they won’t sink your ship because you’ve left room for the inevitable. Sounds so good, doesn’t it?
To say it in a word, the place I am describing is contentment. Contentment is the atmosphere in the Promised Land where God embraces and prospers all who choose the attitudes that please Him. Contentment is a pattern of thinking that replaces wilderness attitude number two. And every move you make in replacing the covetous thinking that plagues all of us, with true, biblical contentment is a step out of dry and dead, and into happy and whole. Let’s see what God’s Word has to say about contentment.
THE BIBLICAL PATH TO CONTENTMENT
Our starting point is 1 Timothy 6:6–10. I’m including these verses in the New American Standard Bible, but you can also check them out in your own text:
But godliness actually is a means of great gain when accompanied by contentment. For we have brought nothing into the world, so we cannot take anything out of it either. If we have food and covering, with these we shall be content. But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.
DEFINING CONTENTMENT
Contentment—kind of a nice word, isn’t it? Take a deep breath and absorb the crisp, clean air atop Mount Contentment. But what does it mean, and how do we get there? Here ’s a definition: Contentment is a satisfaction with God’s sufficient provision. Satisfied. You don’t need anything else. You’re satisfied with what God has entrusted to you. Talk about going against the grain of the culture! Contentment means to rest in what one already has and seek nothing more. To say without fear of the future or resentment of others, “I have enough.” That’s contentment. I really like this line: Contentment is a settled sense of adequacy.
It’s like: “Hey, dude, what do you need?”
“Ummm, nothing!”
“Wouldn’t you like some more—”
“No.”
“What do you have?”
“Enough. I have enough.”
Contentment. It’s like a breath of fresh air to a person suffocating. Like a cup of cold water to a man in a desert. Get it? Desert means thirst. Coveting means wilderness. Contentment? It means the Promised Land!
CONTENTMENT HAS A PARTNER
Now notice that contentment has a partner. Do you see it in verse 6? Contentment has a partner, like salt and pepper, like Dallas and Fort Worth, like my wife and me—meant to be together. Contentment’s partner is godliness. “Godliness with contentment is great gain,” as the New King James Version puts it. We must never be content with who we are, only with what we have . That is why these two words are such powerful partners. Godliness deals with who I am; contentment deals with what I have. Godliness is being unsatisfied with my character formation in God, and contentment is being satisfied with what I possess in God. Together, they add up to great gain.
Please notice that Paul is not condemning the desire for gain. Deep within each of us is a hunger for improvement. Did you know that? Down in the secret places of who you are, Almighty God has given you a desire to make your life better. Isn’t that good news? My life can be better. It doesn’t have to be the way it is right now, and it doesn’t have to be perfect, but it can definitely improve a lot! That desire for your life to improve, that passion to “gain,” is not only not wrong, it is God-given!
But often that desire for gain causes many people to desire wrongly. We exercise desire in the wrong ways because our minds are depraved. Face it, we’re bent! We’re rarely satisfied with what we have. Abraham Lincoln was walking with his boys one day as they argued and cried and generally made a scene in public. A curious man approached Lincoln and asked, “What is wrong with your boys, to make them carry on like this?”
Lincoln replied, “Well, just what is wrong with the whole world. I have only three walnuts and both lads want two.” The desire for gain is not wrong, but because of our sinful hearts, it often causes us to desire wrongly.
Yes, godliness plus contentment is great gain. That is an equation as absolute and unalterable as 2 + 2 = 4. It’s a winning formula:
Godliness + contentment = great gain.
Yet in a world that increasingly rejects absolute truth, that formula is not only rejected, it is ridiculed.
I love sarcasm as a form of humor and enjoy many of the funny lines that come from Jack Handy, a sort of verbal “Far Side” type comedian. When he’
s poking fun at our society’s rejection of absolute truth, he says, “Instead of giving answers on math tests, I think we should just give impressions. That way, if I have a different impression than you have . . . well, can’t we all be brothers?” That really cracks me up because, of course, the idea is ludicrous. No one would ever agree to the idea of different emotional responses to math questions all being valid. But in the realm of God and life, our culture insists on just that kind of foolishness. Sad but true—people don’t believe there is absolute truth anymore. But let me tell you something—there is. And there are equations that absolutely work because they come from the Creator and Designer of the universe.
Let me ask you this: How many gases are absolutely essential for human life? Just one: oxygen. If I pick up any object, and then drop it, what happens? Obviously, it falls. How many laws of physics make that a reality? Just one: gravity. You say, “No, I think it’s falling because—”; or “It seems to me that—”; or “I feel—.” Forget about that! There is only one reason why an object falls: It’s called the law of gravity.
How many roads lead to God? Just one. “But I’m going to try this other way.” Don’t do that. That’s a very bad plan. A road isn’t right because you choose it; it’s right if it’s God’s road. There is only one way that leads to eternal life. Jesus said, “I am the way” (John 14:6). Just one. No more.
Now let me ask you this: How many books has God written to tell us about Himself? Just one. How many formulas lead to human happiness? There aren’t five or six or eight or ten. There is just one. You’re reading about it right now! If you want to be happy and fulfilled in this life, you’d better do the math on the only equation that leads to human happiness. Godliness + contentment = great gain.
WRONG ANSWERS
It’s not all that surprising that people who don’t believe in absolutes have a hard time believing in a God who gives absolute answers. What’s a lot sadder than that is to see those of us who claim to believe that God wrote a Book called the Bible, and ought to know better, trying to mess with God’s equation. Their lives are messed up because of a lot of “fuzzy spiritual math.” Here are a few equations Christians are trying that definitely don’t add up:
Godliness + prosperity = great gain. Not.
Buzz. You failed the test. But how many people are pursuing that? In fact, since the mid-1970s, the doctrine of “godliness plus prosperity” has been getting a lot of airtime in North America. Practically every Christian television station airs the messages by men who teach this false prosperity gospel. It’s the idea that Jesus died not only so that we can be eternally forgiven, but also so that we can be healthy and wealthy.
If you think that only a few fringe followers embrace this false formula, you are fooling yourself. One well-known health-and-wealth preacher sold more books during the early 1990s than all of those sold by Charles Swindoll and James Dobson combined. 1 People are eating it up because they want it to be true. But it is not. It’s a false equation.
Here’s an opposite equation:
Godliness + poverty = great gain. Not.
Some people overreact. “Oh! I get the picture now. It has nothing to do with having money; it has to do with not having money. I don’t have any. I’ve renounced all of that. I’ve taken a vow of poverty. I’m as poor as a church mouse, and now I’ll be happy for sure.” Buzz. Wrong answer. You’ve failed the test. Remember what we pointed out in the last chapter? Those in poverty have no immunity to covetousness! Godliness plus poverty is not the equation that leads to human happiness.
Godliness + power or influence = great gain. Not.
Some people say, “Well, I know it’s not money—it’s influence. It’s P-O-W-E-R! I have to have control of everything and everybody all around me!” That kind of thinking is what has produced a generation of control freaks. Maybe you’re trying to control your own home and your own income and your own yard and your own—. Everything has to be perfect! You demand everything be in order. “I’m going to be a godly person, and I’m going to control my own little kingdom here and make everything perfect. I’ll be perfect; my world will be perfect. I’ll have great gain.”
First of all, you will never be able to control all that is around you; God will see to that. Second, even if you could, it would not make you happy. Sorry again . . . another wrong answer.
Godliness + family harmony = great gain. Not.
Could it be? But, no. Buzz. (Sorry; I don’t want the buzzer to become annoying.) While I have great respect for ministries like Focus on the Family and others that promote biblical principles of godly, family living—you will never have a perfect family. At least one of your kids will make sure of that, or you will mess it up in some way yourself.ase don’t put all your happiness eggs in the perfect family basket. Yes! Let’s obey God’s Word. Yes! Let’s do all we can to help our families mature in the things of God. But let’s not set ourselves up for a lot of hurt and heartache in the future by thinking, “If I could just have the perfect Christian home, then that would be all I would ever need.”
No. No. No. Godliness plus family harmony does not equal great gain.
Godliness + ministry success = great gain. Not.
Here’s an emphatic buzz. Been there, done that. The above equation definitely does not lead to happiness. That’s one the Lord had to teach me many years ago. I remember early on when Harvest Bible Chapel included maybe two hundred people. I thought, Well, if we could just get to five hundred people , I would be satisfied with what I had accomplished. Then I thought a thousand or two thousand or three thousand. As the church has continued to grow and start other churches and with all that the Lord is doing, I have discovered for sure that no amount of ministry fruitfulness will satisfy my heart.
There’s only one equation for great gain. It’s an unalterable formula, and nothing else comes close to working: Godliness + contentment=great gain.
Godliness plus contentment is great gain. Notice the word great. It’s great gain. We’re not playing for small stakes here. We’re playing for all the marbles. The positive results of embracing this truth are massive. Have you been trying one or more of these false equations, and then judging God harshly because it doesn’t work? Please don’t do that. God loves you and wants very much for you to be happy in this life. You just have to commit to the new math—God’s math. Godliness plus contentment is great gain. Say it out loud. Begin to embrace it with your whole heart.
Good! Now let’s get to the “how.” 1 Timothy 6 includes three steps that break the pattern of covetous thinking and lead to contentment.
CONTENTMENT STEP ONE: LOOK TO ETERNITY
Thoughts about eternity promote earthly contentment. Paul wrote, “For we have brought nothing into the world, so we cannot take anything out of it either” (verse 7). I love simple things like that; it’s so clear. You brought nothing into the world. Right. And you’re taking nothing out. When a person dies, his/her friends will often ask, “How much did he leave?” The answer is always the same, “Everything!” How clear is that?
There’s something amazing about seeing a baby born. What a privilege! When each of my three kids was born, I was so happy. Nine months of waiting and waiting and waiting. Then it’s time to go to the hospital. Kathy and I went through all of that pain of delivery (slightly harder for Kathy than for me). Finally, the baby came! But, funny thing about each of my kids—they arrived empty-handed! They came naked. They came with nothing! Now get that picture clearly in your head, because you’re leaving with just as much in your hands. Nothing!
Think about a person who is going to leave a lot behind. I thought about Bill Gates. “Bill, you’re leaving the world with nothing! You’re not taking your reputation. You’re not taking your software. You’re not taking billions of dollars. You came in with nothing, and that’s what you’re leaving with. No special treatment and no limo ride to the throne room of God. Nothing!” In fact, Hebrews 4:13 says that we will be “naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom w
e must give account” (NKJV).
You may have heard of the seminary student who didn’t have two dimes to rub together. I remember those days! This seminary student had to do his very first funeral. He was so nervous, and he didn’t have any formal clothes. So he went down to the Goodwill store to buy a cheap suit, something dark and conservative, for his very first funeral. When he got to the store, he found rows of black suits: double-breasted, single-breasted, in every size. He asked the clerk, “Where did you get all of these black suits?”
She answered, “The funeral home down the street went out of business, so we got all these extra suits they use to bury people in.”
Ugh! he thought, a little grossed out at the thought of wearing a suit made for dead people. But then he remembered how little money he had, and this seemed like his best option, so he bought one.
As he stood before the whole congregation, in his brand-new suit, he began to talk about the brevity of life and the nearness of eternity. He put his hand in his pocket—and was shocked to find there were no pockets!
“Of course,” he thought. “It’s a suit made for some dead guy! What would he need pockets for?” No one needs pockets for eternity because we are not taking anything with us when we go.
CONTENTMENT STEP TWO: LET ENOUGH BE ENOUGH
Paul puts it so simply in 1 Timothy 6:8, “If we have food and covering, with these we shall be content.” There you have it: Bare bones. . . . Bottom line. . . . The absolute minimum. The things you have to have? Only two: food and covering. According to verse 8,
All you need for contentment is room and board.
Let’s start with our board. Notice the simple word food. There’s no caviar or champagne guarantee. There is no “Three square meals a day with dessert. More Jell-O, please.” God never promised the people with Moses a good balance of the four food groups: just manna and water. That’s what they had to have. Now there aren’t many people who believe that they could be happy on a bare-bones diet like that. So let’s let the Word of God renew our minds. We don’t have to have a fancy diet and wonderful delicacies—the food we wolf down! We don’t have to have a buffet. It’s not part of the happiness equation. When we expect to be satisfied with the basics, God will often surprise us with treats. If we demand 31 flavors, we forfeit contentment, and our heart becomes like a wilderness.
Lord, Change My Attitude: Before It's Too Late Page 9
