Contentment is not a matter of putting on a happy face in the midst of something that you are suffering or trying to deny real pain and sadness. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg explains how it's possible to train our minds to be truly content in every circumstance.
We're studying Philippians chapter 4 verse 12 along with the first verse in Psalm 131. Now, I have three words for you, and they're these—perspective, preoccupation, and peace. The key, I think—I hope, I'm learning—is in distinguishing between external circumstances which come and go and an internal relationship with the living God that is unchanging in its stabilizing import.
In Philippians chapter 4—you may want just to look at it again—but in Philippians 4 you will notice that Paul distinguishes between being content with something and being content in something. He is learning not to be content with the world. He's learning to be content in the world. I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.
I know what it is to be in need. I know I've learned the secret of being content not with any and every situation, but in any and every situation. There will always be circumstances that are less than perfect. But what is the point?
It is this. The circumstances of each of our lives are always changing. And so, if we seek to find contentment in changing circumstances, then it will constantly be a rollercoaster ride. Instead, we learn from Paul that he finds contentment not in the external circumstances which ebb and flow, but in an internal relationship with the living God who himself does not change.
See? So that at the core of his being, he is constantly, as it were, recalibrating his thinking. He's saying things to himself. He's schooling himself. He's reminding himself.
He's teaching himself. He's presumably taking the Samos words, and he's saying, Now let me just remind myself of what is true here. Whatever those circumstances may be—and we could go through a whole variety of them now—those circumstances which are inevitably changing are to be viewed in light of what is true of God. What is true of God? He made me.
Psalm 139. He knows me. He hems me in behind and before. My times are in his hands.
He is always with me. And he is favorably disposed to those who are his children. I think that just as with childhood, so as spiritual children, it's important for us to recognize that we don't know what's best for us. That we don't know what's best for us.
Isn't that part of the journey of our physical experience as children, raging against our parents? Oh, give me the keys. Give me the keys. This is the best thing.
No, you're not having the keys. Why not? Because of this. And the parent always says, Listen, you may not understand now, but one day when you're a parent, you'll say the exact same thing and you'll understand.
Honey, you don't know what's best for you. Trust me. And it's a hard journey to maturity. And some of us get ourselves in deep pain and in dark alleys and in dreadful uncertainties and manifold chaos because we are too proud to admit that we don't know what's best. Now, turn back to Psalm 131 for a minute, and let me just point this out to you. Verse 2—we'll leave verse 1 for a moment. Verse 2, I have stilled and quietened my soul like a weaned child with its mother. Like a weaned child is my soul within me. Now, the weaning of children is almost out of common parlance, isn't it, in the English language? There are a number of reasons for that, and not all of them good.
We'll set that aside as a dreadful tangent, an alley up which we shouldn't go. But what the psalmist is referring to here is the transition in childhood which in Hebrew children could take place as late as the age of four or five. Weaning takes place a lot earlier in Western culture today. Mercifully so say the mothers, and understandably so say the fathers. But if you can imagine weaning your child from your breast, mothers, at the age of four or five, after this little guy, this little girl, has developed their own personality, is able to run around, is able to defy you, and has already, at the age of four and a half, determined that they know everything that they need to know about everything, and that they know best. And particularly when it comes to the issue of food.
This is what I want, this is what I like, this is what makes me feel good, this is what makes me feel cozy, and so on. And in the weaning process, the mother says, I understand all of that, but let me tell you, you're going to have to lose the milk you so desperately want so that you might receive the solid food you so desperately require. In other words, there is, preceding the declaration of verse two, a painful process involved. And part of that painful process is being weaned away from that which has been a necessary sustaining factor to that which now is our vital future.
How do you see how that works? The child, if he or she were to remain in that position, would be one of the weirdest kids in the neighborhood. I mean, really weird. You've got this nine-year-old coming down, hanging on his mother like this, and what's wrong with that child? He should have been weaned long ago. He's a big baby. Yes, he is. What's wrong with this Christian?
He's a big baby. He thinks he knows best. He refuses to be weaned away from X in order that he might live on Y, and his father knows what's best. You see what I'm telling you? Contentment is found in reaching the place that says, even when I cannot understand, still I can trust. Stay in Psalm 131, and let me just give you the second word, because our time is hastening to a conclusion.
The second word was preoccupation. Contentment—and this is the sketchiest outline of a journey that we'll pursue for some time, at least as individuals, if not from the pulpit—but notice how the psalm begins in Psalm 131. My heart is not proud. My eyes are not haughty. Stop there for a moment. We want to get to verse 2a, don't we? I have stilled and quietened my soul.
But we can't get to 2a without going through 1a and b. Number one, my heart is not proud. What is the problem that most of us face? We have proud hearts.
We think we know best. Why am I experiencing this? Why has this taken place? Why did that happen in my life? I need an explanation for this. God is in the dark.
We now become the prosecuting counsel. That is an expression of arrogance. Our eyes are haughty.
They're scanning things that they have no real need to scan. The will of God, the ways of God, are mysterious. But the mystery of what God is doing has to be set beside the fact that God is doing all things for the good of those who love him. What he's saying is, in verse 1, the second half, I do not concern myself with great matters, is I'm not concerning myself with questions that I know I will not get an answer to. Now, think about this for a minute in relationship to contentment and the nature of discontentment.
That is not to say that we don't wrestle with questions that are difficult. But we have to finally fall on Deuteronomy 29, 29 sooner or later. The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that he has revealed are for us and for our children.
In other words, that God has his secrets. And it is an expression of ultimate arrogance on the part of man when in our pride and in the haughtiness of our eyes, we the clay, demand of the potter an explanation as to why he made the pot in this way. Why did you make me like this? Why am I in this circumstance? Why am I not as bright as my sister? Why is this?
Why is that? Why is the next thing? They're all inevitable questions. They're part and parcel of our journey. But I think contentment is in learning how to harness that. Learning to be able to understand, as Jesus says to his disciples, you do not realize what I'm doing, but later you will understand. Facing the fact in 1 Corinthians 13 that now we see through a glass darkly.
We don't get the whole picture. Now, listen, loved ones, let me tell you what's so crucial here. This is back to the school thing again. This is back to training. This is circuit training, if you like, to mix the metaphors. In order to get here, it seems, it calls for a commitment of my mind. It calls for building tracks, as it were, in my mind—which is what Paul is asking for in Romans 12.2, isn't it? He says, Don't be conformed to this world—that is, a discontented world, incidentally—but be transformed by the renewing of your minds. And the way we're going to transform our minds is, instead of allowing my mind to dwell upon my disappointment, to dwell upon my pain, on my loss, on my circumstances, I have to train my mind to remember that all of these things have not come haphazardly across my path but have come as a result of my Father's wise bestowment, that he sweeps even our evils and our badnesses into the unfolding drama of his will. And when I begin to focus on that and remind myself that these circumstances are temporary and they're passing, and that they cannot rob me of the joy and glory that is ultimately mine in Christ, then with that perspective and setting aside a wrong kind of preoccupation, I have the opportunity of discovering the peace that is mentioned back in verse 2, but I have stilled and quietened my soul. I have stilled and quietened my soul. You know, when children have been crying desperately, and if you haven't been there to see all that is led up to it, if you come in a room and you find a little one in a chair, you've perhaps come in the room and she's so small or he's so small that you don't even know they're in the chair. And it's quiet in the room. You get this, don't you?
You go over and you look, and if you look over their heads, there they are, faces all bulbous and their eyes all bloodshot, getting it under control. What's wrong? Are you okay? Yes? Do you want to talk about it?
No? And here in this little moment, through all the storm and the tide that has gone before, somehow or another this little creature is getting to the place where they're able to say, I have stilled and I have quieted my soul. But it hasn't come about as a result of, I have stilled and quieted my soul. Oh, what a… No, it's been through pain, it's been through sadness, it's been through all of these things, and this is the journey of the Christian life. We're silly if we don't face this.
We're not even true to human experience, let alone true to our Bibles. And we want to learn contentment. Yes, we'll learn it, we may.
But receive it on a CD, we won't. In a package with five easy steps can't be gained. Who are the people that teach us contentment? Well, you say, there are many that I can think of, and I can think of many too.
And I'll tell you three, and then I'm done. Number one, William Cowper. Despite the fact that in one of my friend's books, he says parenthetically, pronounced Cooper, C-O-O-P-R, wrong, pronounced Cowper in England, we understand that C-O-W makes the sound cow. It's not pronounced Cooper at all. So, if you want to be accurate, it's William Cowper. Some of you have to call him Cooper, so you can look for him because you don't understand.
But anyway, that's by the way. William Cowper, friend of Newton, experienced black depression that was a steady companion all of his life. It inhibited him, it debilitated him, and it made him suicidal.
And he was put in places routinely because of what he faced. And out of that, he writes, deep in unfathomable minds of never-failing skill, he treasures up his bright design and works his sovereign will. Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust him for his grace. Behind a frowning providence he hides a smiling face. His purposes will ripen fast, unfolding every hour.
The bud may have a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flower. Blind unbelief is sure to err and try God's works in vain. God is his own interpreter, and he will make things plain. And somehow or another, the learning process of contentment is there in Cowper's story. It's there in the story of David Brainerd, somebody that we wouldn't even know about were it not for the fact that he stayed for a wee while in the home of Jonathan Edwards. And Jonathan Edwards took his diary and turned it into the diary of David Brainerd, and it's been out in print ever since.
On Sunday, March the 10th, in 1744, after a time where he was buffeted by tuberculosis, by loneliness, by danger and deprivation, he wrote in his diary, My soul was sweetly resigned to God's disposal of me in every regard, and I saw there had nothing happened to me but what was best for me. Now, this is spiritual geography that I need to learn about. Maybe you do too. And it's not so much that I don't know this information.
I don't think it is with you either. It's whether this information has captivated our minds sufficiently to embrace the totality of the decision-making processes of our lives—relationships and finances and our future and our retirement and all of those things. I received a letter this week from a lady who teaches fourth-grade children, and she gave me a quote from a book by E. L. Konisberg—a lady with whom I'm not familiar—entitled From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.
When I saw that, I was hooked immediately. I just love the title. And it was the story of two children who live in Greenwich, Connecticut, choose to run away and live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And as a result of these adventures, they have the opportunity to interact with a rich elderly lady who's called Mrs.
Basil E. Frankweiler. And the exchange between Claudia, one of the runaways, and Mrs. Frankweiler is as follows. Claudia said, But Mrs. Frankweiler, you should want to learn one new thing every day.
We did, even at the museum. No, Mrs. Frankweiler answered, I don't agree with that. I think you should learn, of course, and some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up inside of you until it touches everything, and you can feel it inside you. If you never take time out to let that happen, then you just accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle around inside of you.
You can make noise with them, but never really feel anything with them. It's hollow. Isn't that the great danger in a Bible teaching church? The accumulation of facts that rattle inside, that we can make noise with, but we've never allowed them to swell up inside of us until they touch everything. Final quote from Amy Carmichael. And shall I pray you, change your will, my Father, until it be according unto mine? But no, Lord, no, that never shall be. Rather, I ask you, blend my human will with thine. I pray you, hush the hurrying, eager longing. I pray you, soothe the pangs of keen desire. See in my quiet places wishes thronging. Forbid them, Lord.
Purge, though it be with fire. And work in me to will undo your pleasure. Let all within me, peaceful, reconciled, rest all content in my beloved's leisure. At last, at last, even as a weaned child. Father, forgive us for our discontentedness. Forgive us for thinking that if only this were to be changed and that were to be a little higher or a little lower or a little longer or a little fuller, then therein would we find contentment.
When we do this, Lord, we're just like the pagans because they run after all these things. Enroll as if not before then, certainly today, in the school of contentment, we pray. Help us to realize that our circumstances which ebb and flow do not come to us in isolation but are part of your all-embracing plan and purpose for your children. Remind us that eventually we will be gathered to you, and that which now is so dark and so difficult will be a thing of the past, and even that which offends against our conscience and calls us to rummage in the garbage of sin that's forgiven will be seen to have been part of the unfolding drama of your design. Forgive us for thinking that we know best, for wanting milk, milk, milk, because it's cozy, and it's easy, and we like how we get it. Instead of sitting down at the table and taking our place and learning to use our knife and fork and our spoon and eating that which contains balance and vegetables and—forgive us, Lord, for chocolate sundae Christianity, for ice cream sundae specials, for view of Christian contentment which is nothing other than a thinly disguised form of secular hedonism. And as we walk out into the remainder of this day and into the balance of this year, we pray that that which we know, that which is of yourself, that it may swell up inside of us, as it were, and touch everything that is within us. And may the grace of the Lord Jesus and the love of God our Father and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be the abiding portion of all who believe today and forevermore.
Amen. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. If you're benefiting from this study on thankfulness, you can download the accompanying study guide.
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