In the first century people didn’t have savings accounts or retirement accounts. There were no banks or investment groups. Today, this is where our accumulated wealth exists. But people in the first century had money in the form of currency; they had coins. But their accumulated wealth was in their possessions; their homes; their furnishings; their stuff. In Luke…
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Picture being a farmer who grows a number of crops during the course of a year. This is your livelihood. Now, as a farmer, read this verse: Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops. – Proverbs 3:9 Why would this verse be very difficult for a farmer to handle?…
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One of the reasons you may lack contentment is that you’re not giving enough away. Enough money. Enough time. Enough skill and energy. Let me explain… If I use a glass jar to pound in a nail, I’ll quickly find out two things. First, the nail won’t go into the wood. Second, the jar will…
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Here’s the final installment in this series. Much more could be said, but we’ll leave it here. Unholy discontent arises when we perceive that we lack something. I’ll list a few examples to get you thinking about where the source of your discontent lies. This last reflection is meant to get you thinking about how…
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Humility goes a long way in nurturing us to a state of contentment. It is pride that stirs the waters until the foam of discontentment is unmistakably present. Today we’ll think about one sign of each. Sign of Discontentment: complaining The malcontent is ever complaining of one’s condition. Rather than deploying the calming power of…
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Discontentment occurs when what I want and how it is are different. When there is gap between how things really are in my life and how I want them to be, discontentment often thrives. Let’s get to part of the solution to discontentment. Let’s talk about THE key ingredient that makes contentment come alive: faith….
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So far we’ve discovered contentment doesn’t come naturally, but is something that is learned. We have to work at it. We’ve also thought about the relationship between discontentment and pride. Whenever there is discontentment, there is an underlying belief that my station in life should be different than what God has ordained for me. In…
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There’s always a reason for our discontentment. Some situation we wish were different. But peel away the layers and what do you find? Lesson two: a discontented person is a proud person. How so? If you believe in a sovereign and providential God who sanctions even the minutest events (Matt. 10:29), then your situation is precisely the…
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I am prone to melancholy. I’m not sure why. It’s just one of my struggles. I guess that’s one of the reasons I so easily identify with another preacher who struggled with it as well. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones was a pastor in England from the 1930’s-1960’s. When I read his book Spiritual Depression, I was both…
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We are pondering the emotional life of the Christian. Today, let’s think about the topic of sinful emotions. And let’s take anger as a case study. How do we know if we’re justified in the anger we feel and express? Anger is not always sinful. God gets angry. “Another time Jesus went into the synagogue, and…
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