How to Be Content in Life

by Fran Mack

ohn 10:10 is probably on every believer’s list of scripture favorites. It’s the words of our Master Jesus, and he teaches us, “The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” In this verse, Jesus Christ tells us exactly why he came to the earth. He came to rescue us and to give us a more than abundant life. Most of us would be fine with just an abundant life, but our Heavenly Father deals in the exceedingly abundantly above anything we can ask or think. So, there you have it. More abundant it is! And this is good news indeed! Our problem is that our world has become bombarded with hate, disappointment, mistrust, lies, cruelty, and cynicism. Sadly, it’s rubbed off on many of us, and we no longer believe or stand on the Words of our beloved Savior. We have to change this and turn it around as quickly as we possibly can. Very simply put, a worldly mindset is one that is shaped and molded by the world. By this, we know that when the Bible refers to the ‘world’, it is defining an anti-Christ consciousness that refuses to honor God. When a mind is blinded in this way, faith eludes it. A worldly mindset can only accept and believe what it perceives through sight and other senses, so it only believes what the systems of the world feed it. This kind of mind is dangerous for the believer, because it is a mind that is disobedient to God’s commandment to walk by faith and not by sight.

►The Struggle

As believers, many of us are struggling with John 10:10 because we won’t come to grips with the degree to which we have allowed the world to influence us. We’re not following God’s blueprint, and we want everything on the double. We have refused to put on the Spirit’s fruit of patience, which is God’s requirement. We’re discontent with life because our Heavenly Father doesn’t coddle our refusal to get our heads in the game. He’s committed to our spiritual maturity in Christ, and our excuses will not work. The discontentment really sets in, and in some cases turns to extreme sadness, when we simply won’t take the initiative to turn things around through our faith in God. In 1Corinthians 3:10 (NKJV), the Apostle Paul said, “According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it.” In this verse, God is teaching us through Paul about His amazing grace. He’s teaching us what we are able to accomplish through His grace and love. Just like Paul, we are master builders who are empowered by God to build on the foundation that our Master Jesus laid for us. We accomplish this by using our entire lives. In other words, our very lives should be the strong, solid layers that we are laying on the foundation of Christ. Jesus laid the initial foundation with his finished work, and our lives should be built on it by following God’s Word.

►Build a life

A foundation is the loadbearing part of a structure or building. This means that it can withstand pressure, and it can support the weight of other hefty material, structures, fixtures or furniture that may be placed on it. A foundation will not collapse when storms come, and strong winds blow. It will continue standing because it is made well. Our lives must be this kind of foundation or else we will not be able to steward God’s blessings in the way He expects, and most importantly, our house will not be in order when our Lord and Savior returns. We cannot receive spiritual strength from the world. It’s impossible. We must build our lives from God’s Word, and this requires us to use the building material of the present. We can’t try to build a life from our pasts or from the future. Jesus Christ teaches us in Matthew 6:25-27(NLT), “25That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life—whether you have enough food and drink, or enough clothes to wear. Isn’t life more than food, and your body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are? 27 Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?”

How to Be Content in Life Conclusion

We cannot be so dependent on the world’s customs that we’re lost when it comes to living by the light of Christ. But the truth is that some of us don’t have a clue how to build a life. We can change this by doing as Jesus Christ instructs in Matthew 6:31-33 (NLT), “So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ 32 These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. 33 Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.” To lay a foundation of contentment in life, our faith must grow and continually increase in our Heavenly Father. This must come before any other person or thing.

►Work with what you have

All we have is right now. If gratitude and thankfulness for this very present moment escapes us, we are in trouble. Sadness, disappointment, insecurity, doubt, and all the other defeating emotions, have their root in fear. They increase because we are not living in the moment as Christ instructs us to do in Matthew 6:31-33. Instead, we’re worried about what happened in the past or in many cases, we’re worried about not having a need fulfilled in the future. We must wake up and recognize that the worry, angst, fear, and doubt that we indulge in this moment is laying the kind of foundation we don’t want for the future. It’s a shaky foundation, and it is not sturdy enough to hold all that God has in store. Contentment is the choice to clothe ourselves in gratitude to God for the blessings we have right now. He is a faithful God, and He deserves every good thing from us. Paul said in Philippians 4:11 (NLT), “Not that I was ever in need, for I have learned how to be content with whatever I have.” We must be committed to learn this golden lesson as well. He said in 1Timothy 6:8(NLT), “So if we have enough food and clothing, let us be content.” Heavenly Father doesn’t mean that we should stop wanting greater blessings. He expects us to understand that this moment is all we have, and we should make the most of it with gratitude and contentment before Him; He deserves this. He’s blessed us wonderfully through Christ, and if we’re not as thankful as we should be, we need to pray that He will open our eyes to His goodness. Contentment isn’t having everything we want, it’s the confidence that we have all we need in Christ, and when we need more, we’ll have that too. ■ Our Lord is soon to return. We cannot afford to assume we are spiritually prepared in the way God requires. We must be absolutely diligent in praying that He will show us the things that must be released. If we pray this without ceasing, we will show ourselves to be humble before Him, and willing to learn what He desires to teach us.

Surrender Victimhood

The thing we must understand is that we all come to God as we are, but He will not leave us the way we came. We must be transformed, and He has made it abundantly clear that renewing our minds to the mind of Christ is necessary for His process. To embrace the newness that Christ offers, we must recognize that there are lessons we need to learn, and our Heavenly Father is very willing to teach them to us. Often these lessons are about habit patterns, routines, addictions, fears, and insecurities that must be released in order for us to go higher in Him. The reason it is so important to learn these spiritual lessons is because they will be on repeat continually in our lives if we fail to learn them. Another very important reason we must learn spiritual lessons about God’s Word and about His love is because we can’t spiritually grow in certain areas if we allow the weight of sin and wrong believing to continue weighing us down. They keep us from enjoying the blessings and the life we were meant to have. Many of us have had our hearts broken through very traumatic situations, and our lives haven’t been the same since. We want those responsible for our pain to pay the price, but how, when, and what they pay will do nothing for the condition of our own souls. We do not have the luxury of wasting time by looking outside ourselves for solutions. The answers we all need are housed in us through the Spirit of Jesus Christ. His love for us is the most beautiful and intense love in all of eternity. So, we may think we need to see a person pay for how they’ve hurt us, but that isn’t what we need. We need to focus all our attention and intention on loving God through Jesus Christ. For many of us, pain keeps us from embracing newness. To release this pain is to forgive, let go, and grow higher. Your pain, heartache, or disappointment is real. You’ve gone through something that left you wounded, or maybe you just don’t trust that life will be kind to you. Whatever the case, feeling bad, insecure, and doubtful is not a normal state. It isn’t our new nature. When we feel down about ourselves and our situations, we must draw a line in the sand that separates those feelings from the reality of what God says we are and what God says we can do. He is the authority, not us. Our lessons will almost always be about acknowledging our pain but surrendering our victimhood for victory. We can do this through Jesus Christ, and we will be transformed by every step we make to embrace the newness he offers.■