Him
Contentment seems to be the theme the Lord would have me writing about this week. I rarely set out to determine the topics of the blog, although I sometimes think I will steer this dialog in one direction or another. Silly me. I thought yesterday’s article would be the last on the subject of contentment, that is… until I sat down this morning and opened the Word session.
You can read the first word typed for yourself.
There is another vital aspect of contentment we should review in relation to our faith. We have a form of contentment when God provides for us exactly what we need when we need it, another form of contentment when we recognize we are accepted by God exactly as we are right now, and a form of contentment when we learn to forgive ourselves, but each of these levels of contentment find their basis in the foundation of our faith. Our faith is the catalyst, without which contentment on any level with the Lord is impossible.
I know some very solid believers encountering a crisis of faith. These are friends I have prayed along side, praying with and for their families, and enjoying the laughter of their children playing with mine. These are close friends who ran into a wall or obstacle in their faith. I watch them and their families looking for contentment outside of their faith instead of working through their struggles in their relationship with God.
I am reminded we are responsible for our own relationship with God. There are/were no words I could provide or counsel to persuade my friends in their relationship with Jesus. I can do nothing more than pray for them and trust the Lord to bring them through their crisis of faith.
All relationships take effort, including the one we have with Jesus. There are many substitutes to our relationship with Jesus, but none are the same… ok, none are even close. There are also many substitutes to real contentment only God can provide, and in the same way, none are even close.
Real contentment – the kind we have discussed over the past few days – is rooted in our faith. As soon as we taste this contentment, we immediately know we are experiencing something only God can provide. When we step outside of our faith or encounter something contrary to our faith, our contentment begins to slip away. Like a drug addict, we immediately start to crave this contentment and look for whatever source is available to find it – but none of these distractions will ever come close to what only God provides.
My friends are not the only ones experiencing a crisis of faith. There are many examples of shipwrecked faith crashing on hard times or trials. I know this from my own experience, my own shipwrecks, and my own crisis of faith… many times over. Our rebellion against the craving for contentment in God is not in the forefront of our thinking, but instead disguised as freedom, ambition, or religious liberty… our pursuit for substitutes to this craving is not part of our daily to-do list, but instead cloaked in selfish determination and unfocused objectives.
Once our mindset gets started in this direction, faith and God only get in the way and our crisis of faith continues until we bottom out or wake up (my experience). I believe this is why it is so vital to anchor our faith in Christ to prevent it from being tossed around on the waves of crisis, trials, or hardships. I have shipwrecked too many times without the anchor, only to wake up or bottom out and realize I made a mistake.
Hebrews 6:19-20 refers to this anchoring concept with:
We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf…
There is an implied responsibility on our part to set this anchor. We cannot expect an anchor to do much unless it is applied for the purpose for which it was designed. Our hope… our faith… must be set firmly in Christ to endure the storms, hardships, trials, and obstacles with the contentment of knowing God is with us in the storm, bigger than the hardship, stronger than the trial, and better than the obstacle.
This is part of building our relationship with God… the trust aspect of the relationship. When I first met my wife, she really had no reason to trust me. We built our trust in one another through our relationship, working at our relationship, and bit-by-bit, giving a portion of our heart to one another to allow the trust to be built. When storms hit our marriage and our relationship went into crisis mode, we made the decision to work through it instead of running away.
The same is true in our relationship with Jesus: we must work at building that trust, bit-by-bit, giving a portion of our heart to Him, and allowing our anchor of hope to be set more firmly. This takes a decision on our part in advance, with foreknowledge of impending storms, to work through it instead of running away. This takes a decision on our part to recognize there is no substitute for the contentment we will have in our relationship with Jesus Christ – He is our all.
Are you ready to make this kind of a decision? Pray for the strength and grace to step into this decision and fully embrace your relationship with Jesus Christ. Contact me if you want help with this prayer.
Glenn Sasscer
www.glennsasscer.com
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