Tag: Learning Contentment

Brad Johnston on The “Learning” in Contentment

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My favorite weekly meeting is Wednesday at 6 a.m. at Perkins Restaurant.

There I recently had one of those jump-off-the-page-of-your-Bible experiences. Call me dumb, but I had never processed the fact that three times in Paul’s famous “contentment passage” in Philippians 4 – which I have quoted anecdotally dozens of times – the Apostle specifically uses the word “learned” (in Philippians 4:9 and 11, 12 ).

The men’s prayer breakfast is not a big one, as prayer breakfasts go. But it is a faithful one, an intimate one. Men from our church gather like clockwork each week for the sole purpose of lifting our hearts together before the Throne of Grace. We make 3-4 specific prayer requests for the week, and then lift one another’s burdens to the Lord in prayer before a hearty breakfast. Our prayers are far ranging, kingdom focused prayers for the advance of God’s reign in this world. It is not a place where we sit on our hands, but where we take the Kingdom by storm.

But recently  God has landed the prayer breakfast guys in the school of contentment. He has simply overwhelmed us with his presence and blessings and pressed us to “come back” to a place of joy and satisfaction — of thanksgiving! In my analysis, the Lord has been teaching us a contentment that can be described as intense pleasure in who Jesus is, and what he has done/is doing/will do for his people. We have been discovering something of the end that Paul has in mind when he calls to learn contentment. Three observations about how God leads us into biblical contentment.

First, he has called each one of us to action. Contentment is not passivity. Each of the men at prayer breakfast wear various hats: in the church, as the head their families, and in their professional labors. Men must sometimes leave early because of pressing matters on their plate. We aspire to be like the Apostle Paul, who was engaged in the work to which he was called. What he believed was visible in his lifestyle and he called those to whom he ministered to “learn by practice” what they had seen Paul practice.

Second, God has called each of us to flexibility. In a variety of ways each of us has had unexpected developments in our lives recently. It has really pushed us to understand better what Paul meant in Phil. 4:11 that “whatever situation” is a place where God will minister his grace by prompting me to trust in his wisdom and rest in his provision. The guys have discussed in recent weeks the places of apparent chaos and of disappointment. The wonder of Paul’s Calvinistic convictions is that he could never step outside of God’s personal and transformative gaze. Whether in Tarsus, Jerusalem, or the far flung wilderness of Asia Minor Paul knew that because God was God, therefore Paul could never step off his grid. His heavenly Father was intent on teaching him the positive aspects of the Tenth Commandment every day and in every — at a very personal level!

Finally, God has called us to be fixated on Christ. Paul no doubt had specific episodes from his ministry in mind when he said “I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need” (Phil. 4:12). As he pushed forward in his itinerant ministry year after year things didn’t always go as planned. Colleagues abandoned him. Logistics did not work out. Travel plans were stymied. And yet through it all the Apostle’s faith shone through: “all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

It has been such an intense pleasure to explore this theme of contentment with the guys over our waffles and eggs recently. Through different circumstances and at different times he has brought each of us to that place of peaceful contentment. We are simply overwhelmed at the blessings the Lord has poured out into our lives. It doesn’t usually mean we stay there. But we are learning, learning, learning that instead of grasping and fighting for what we desire, we can rest contentedly in God’s absolute sovereignty. Instead of fixating on something material, or urgent, or created, we can reorient our fixation upon Jesus Christ. Then we can quietly do what we can in God’s kingdom, and leave the results up to him.

Soli Deo gloria.

SOURCE” http://gentlereformation.com/?p=336235

Dr. Tim Keller on Learning Contentment

Editor’s Note: This is a cross-post from Tim Keller’s blog at Redeemer City to City.

It’s remarkable to read David, the Warrior-King of Israel, writing these words from Psalm 131.

My heart is not proud, O LORD, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.

The metaphor for spiritual maturity here is a “weaned child.” On the one hand, we are a child at the mother’s breast, an image of complete helplessness. We are completely dependent on God. Without him we can do nothing. On the other hand, we are aweaned child, an image of contentment. Unweaned children cry in mother’s arms until they get something from mother — her milk. Only then are they quiet. But a weaned child is satisfied just with mother herself, with her very presence.

Here we see depicted, vividly and compactly, what Job was taught through all his trials. We must love God for himself alone, not just for what he gives us. This is the essence of what, for Jonathan Edwards, distinguished “true grace” from “the experience of devils,” who hold sound doctrine and tremble before God (James 2:19.) Real grace on the heart leads us to see the “beauty and comeliness of divine things, as they are in themselves” (from the sermon by the same name in volume 25 of the Yale edition of Edwards’ works). We become satisfied with God himself. Even his transcendent holiness is enjoyed as a beautiful and magnificent thing, which fills the heart to contemplate, though we certainly get nothing out of it!

If grace has really changed our hearts, we don’t ultimately care if life goes the way we want it, as long as we have him. The joys of acclaim, wealth, and power are nothing compared to the eternal acclaim, wealth, and power we have in him. A “weaned child” is not just someone who knows this in principle, but who has worked gospel truths into his or her soul as spiritually sensed realities. Internally, this quiets the soul into profound contentment and poise. Externally, it means humility, a willingness to learn from others and also to trust God. The believer realizes that the reason God’s actions are often opaque is not because we are wise and he is foolish, but because he is too “great” and “wonderful” for us.

A Christian should never have the attitude toward God, “what have you done for me lately?” Spurgeon said about Psalm 131 that it was “one of the shortest psalms to read, but one of the longest to learn.”

About Dr. Tim Keller: Is the Founding Pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, N.Y. He is has written several best-selling books including: The Reason for God; The Prodigal God; The Meaning of Marriage; and Counterfeit God’s.