Where Does Contentment Come?

This episode comes from the following programs:

"Relational Longings"

"The Results of Discontentment"

"Looking for Trails of Blessings"

----------------

Dannah Gresh: What if I could hand you a pair of glasses that would make the world seem better and brighter? I’ve got ’em, and you’re going to have a chance to put them on. Here’s Sam Crabtree.

Pastor Sam Crabtree: I think of thankfulness as being a divinely given spiritual ability to see grace! It’s the corresponding desire to affirm that grace and the giver of that grace as good. 

Dannah: We’ll talk about the source of—get ready for a word that doesn’t fit us very often—contentment!

Welcome to Revive Our Hearts Weekend, I’m Dannah Gresh.

Ah, contentment . . .

So, I guess I’ll just go ahead and be honest. I want to talk about “the COVID nineteen”—as in nineteen pounds! Did you gain them? I did. It’s hard for me to admit, but most of my pants don’t fit! 

I’ve spent pretty much every waking hour of my day discontented with the fact that I might need to buy a bigger size. (Every hour but the ones I spend eating, that is!)

Well, last night I finally decided to break down and order just one pair of white jeans and maybe a pair of business khakis—even though I’d rather not. When I got online, I realized that the year 2010 wants its jeans back. Boy, have I been out of style! Once I started shopping, I couldn’t stop! A whole lot more than two pairs of pants are on the way to the Gresh house. 

I guess what I learned was that when you try to stuff your discontent over your size into an online shopping experience, you just get . . . well, more discontentment.

Whether it’s the size of your waist, the age of your jeans, a desire for new friends, or a new patio set, Janet Aucoin says we should get used to unfulfilled longings . . .  at least for now. 

Here’s Janet. 

Janet Aucoin: Adam and Eve, it says, before sin, walked with God in the cool of the garden. I mean, they walked with God. I would guess if you were to have said to Adam or Eve, “Do you ever feel lonely, though? Like, is it ever just kind of not enough? Do you feel lonely?” I don’t know what they would say. I’m guessing they would say, “What does that mean? What does that word mean? I don’t understand.”

I don’t think they understood that, so they weren’t lonely. They were living the way they were designed to live in the presence of their Maker. You’re not in the presence of your Maker. So, knowing that, why would I be surprised that I have unfulfilled longings? I’m not home.

 

Nancy Wolgemuth says this in her book Lies Women Believe. One of the chapters is, “I Should Not Have to Live with Unfulfilled Longings.” That’s a lie. That’s a lie.

A couple of things she says about that:

We have to recognize we will always have unfulfilled longings this side of heaven. We just will. The deepest longings of our heart can’t be filled by any created person or thing. 

That’s a true statement.

Sometimes then we think, So I need to look to God, and if I just look to Him, it will be gone now. It won’t be gone now, but it will be gone. It will be gone. You’re not home yet.

It’s kind of like if you’re a newlywed, and your husband is away and writes you a letter. It’s awesome. You read it every day, and it encourages your heart, but there’s still that ache of wishing he was there. Right? And you don’t just say, “Well, I must not be reading the letter enough. If I read the letter and believed what he said in the letter, I wouldn’t feel this way.”

I can read that letter and believe every word of it and still want him there. That’s where we are in our lives. I can believe everything God says, and I still want to be with Him. And I’m not yet. And that’s okay.

I have believed all of those lies. I still battle them, at least now I feel like I’m fighting the right battles. I know that they’re lies, but for many years I just believed them.

I can remember before I was married, seeing someone with a spouse and thinking, They don’t know what a blessing it is that they have someone committed to them for life. If I had someone that committed to me, I would not be that petty. (laughter)

Now, why are you all laughing? Maybe I got married, and then I wasn’t petty. But that’s not the case. But I remember thinking that. Thankfully, I didn’t say most of those things out loud—less people to repent to later. But I did think that.

I am married to a wonderful, godly man, and I’m petty. I’m not totally fulfilled, and it’s not his fault. That’s just the way . . . But it surprised me because I got married at twenty-eight, I thought when I was single and lonely, If God gives me a soulmate, that will help. I didn’t know that was my hope. I would have told you I was hoping in Jesus, but that’s really what I was hoping.

Then I got married and went through one of the loneliest times that I have been through in my life, that the Lord orchestrated. And what made it worse was realizing, “I’m in the closest relationship I will ever have this side of heaven, and it’s not enough.”

So was it Brent’s fault? Was it my fault? Or was that okay? It took me a while to get there.

I also lost three babies before I had my first son. I knew that having babies was not a right. I can remember having those conversations with the Lord to recognize you don’t just say, I think I’ll have babies now. That’s up to the Lord, and it was a grace gift. I am very thankful for the two that the Lord has allowed me to raise. So I’ll be content and satisfied with that? Not so much. 

I told my son once, “Somebody said to me, ‘Boy, it must be awesome to live in your home.’”

And he said, “Do they want the list alphabetically or in order of importance?” (laughter) I know, but let them believe it. It makes them happy. (laughter)

So God used those times to help me learn my theology was wrong. I was putting my hope in the wrong things. Brent was not supposed to meet those longings, and I wasn’t free to focus on loving him as long as I was clamoring after him and needing him. 

I used to think that I needed him so much because I loved him. That’s not true. I needed him because I needed him to be my god, and I loved me. I was not free to love him as an imperfect vessel who needs a Savior but that I could come alongside and be an encouragement to, as long as I needed him to be my savior. And what a cruel thing to do to him, but I’ve done it. I was using him to meet my needs.

Dannah: Wow! I’m feeling like I got the win d knocked out of me. Janet’s words sure packed a punch. 

Are you free to love others as imperfect vessels and find contentment in Christ alone? Maybe take a moment right now and ask the Lord to reveal areas of your life where your needs are out of order. 

In fact, can I stop and pray for you right now?

Lord Jesus, I lift my friends up to you right now. It's so natural for us to put someone physical on the throne of our hearts. But only You belong there. Unless You alone are sitting in that place, these other relationships are never going to be what You meant for them to be. Which means, they'll never be fulfilling to us.

So help us to take honest inventory right now. Help us repent where we have to come to idolatry, and give us a fresh start, a clean slate today, Lord. We invite You back to sit on the thrones of our hearts. In Jesus' name, amen.

Do you remember what the Israelites were most known for? Murmuring. Complaining. Wanting what they thought they “needed.” 

And murmuring cost them. It cost them more than they thought.

Here’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth reminding us what they lost. She also has a warning about what happens if we don’t stop our complaining. 

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: The danger is that we'd always be thinking, If I had something different, if something would change, then I could be a happier person. As we saw with the children of Israel in the last several sessions, murmuring has serious and sometimes deadly consequences.

What will murmuring do? As we look at the children of Israel, we see some of the consequences we can experience as well. Murmuring will keep us as God's children out of the Promised Land, as it did the Israelites. A whole generation never entered into the land of milk and honey that God had prepared for them because they couldn't be content with where they were. God would not let them experience what it was they thought they really wanted.

Discontentment robbed them of joy, and it robs us of joy. It causes God's presence—the consciousness of God's presence—to depart, to flee from us. One of the instances of the children of Israel murmuring that we did not look at takes place in the book of Numbers when Miriam and Aaron, Moses' brother and sister, grumbled against Moses.

 

You'd think if anyone could have the right to complain, it would be Moses' brother and sister. But the Scripture says that when they complained, the anger of the Lord burned against them and God departed. He just left the scene. He said, "I'm not going to stick around where there's grumbling." The cloud of God's Shekinah glory departed from off the tabernacle.

Do you want the presence of God in your home? Do you want the sense of God's nearness in your life? In your surroundings? God says, "I'm not going to stick around the place of grumbling." There will be a loss of the consciousness of God's presence if we are whiners.

Discontentment and murmuring lead to discouragement, to depression, to despair. I think, in many cases, chronic depression is the fruit of an ungrateful heart, and we fuel our own despair and our own discouragement by murmuring about what we do not have or what we have that we wish we didn't have.

Then, as we saw with the children of Israel, when we murmur it not only affects us, but it poisons those around us. It affects the whole environment around us. It's contagious. As a result, it makes us difficult to be around. Other people may not tell us this, but if we are whiners, the fact is people are not going to want to be around us. We make life difficult or miserable for everyone around us.

We've all known people like that, but I wonder if some of us were to look in the mirror or to have our closest friends be really honest with us, if we'd find that maybe we have become just like that person that we found we didn't want to be around because they were always whining.

We've seen that murmuring makes us vulnerable to other sins—even sins as serious as immorality, rebellion. We find ourselves when we're discontented justifying other sins—sins such as overeating, overspending. Many times it's out of a discontented heart that we get into these matters of excess.

We've seen as we looked at the children of Israel that when we murmur, we may just get what it was we demanded in our murmuring moments. The Scripture says that God gave the children of Israel what they demanded, but He sent leanness into their souls. Another translation says He sent a wasting disease among them. So watch out what you say when you murmur because God may just say, "I'll let you have what it is you insisted on having."

We saw that murmuring has serious consequences not only in our lives, but in our children, in the next generation. God said to the children of Israel, "Not only will you die in this wilderness, but your children will be forced to wander around in this wilderness for forty years because of your unfaithfulness."

Stop and think about that. If you are not contented with God's provision, you may be forming your children's future circumstances in some way. God will give them grace to respond and deal with those circumstances, but you may be creating a climate and an environment that leads to your children being guilty of those very same sins, and leads to their experiencing consequences as a result of your dissatisfaction with God.

Dannah: Thanks, Nancy. That was from part of a series Nancy taught on "The Contented Heart." Did you need to hear that? I did. If you want a deep dive into how to cultivate a contented heart, go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend and look for today’s episode. We’ll have a link in the transcript, just look for "How to Cultivate a Contented Heart."

One of the most contented women I know is my mom, Kay. She has passed a beautiful legacy on to my brother and me, and now to our children, by being satisfied in Christ. 

Isn’t that what you want to pass along to those around you? If so , it’s time to put on those rose-colored glasses I promised at the top of the program. Pastor Sam Crabtree says that thankfulness is a divinely-given superpower that gives us eyes to see  grace. 

And when we can see, really see, how gracious God has been toward us, it’s impossible to continue to grumble about all the things we don’t have. 

Here’s Pastor Sam. 

Pastor Sam: Well, first of all, I know what it feels like to be overwhelmed. I know what it’s like to feel pressure. I know what it’s like to feel disappointment. I know what it’s like to feel betrayal. I don’t want to diminish those feelings in that woman. Those are real. They are burdensome. They are a drain, and it’s hard to function, especially when they pile up.

Second, I would say that though I don’t know her husband and I don’t know her physical ailments and I don’t know the particularities of her circumstances, I do know her God. Her God is sufficient in all of these things, without exception!

There’s never a time when He’s not sufficient. As the writer of Lamentations 3:21–23 says, “These things I call to mind and therefore I have hope. Great is Your faithfulness. His mercies are new every morning.” (paraphrased)

There is a tailor made, customized, enabling grace for that woman’s circumstances, whatever they may be. There’s no exception. And so, we look away from our circumstances to the God who is working all things together for the good of those who love Him—including difficult husbands and health issues and financial pressures and rebellious children and whatever can be draining a person. 

I think we can become thankful when we haven’t been thankful. God is able to grow us in that respect, and so we can ask for it. We can ask for His help.

I think of thankfulness as being a divinely given spiritual ability to see grace! It’s the corresponding desire to affirm that grace and the Giver of that grace as good. 

So, here I have this very difficult husband, and I have these financial pressures and health issue and everything that’s going on. I can ask God to give me a thankful heart, because it’s a divinely given thing, and it’s an ability to see.

So, I can ask God to help me look at my circumstances through a different lens or from a different angle. And He wants to do it, He wants me to be thankful. That’s why He commands me to give thanks. So He will help me do what He commands.

Even the request, “Lord, help me be more thankful than I am. Right now I’m not thankful, but I want to be!” That’s a gift from Him, that grace to desire to want to become what I’ve not yet become. That desire is an evidence that God is already at work!

Dannah: Amen. I remember that time with Sam Crabtree. It was sweet and powerful all at the same time. My heart was reminded to be thankful.

Okay, now, maybe you’re trying to connect everything we’ve talked about today. Well, let me help you tie it together: Janet Aucoin helped us to admit our longings. Nancy reminded us that if we are not careful, those longings can easily roll into complaining and murmuring. We don’t want that. It’s actually a sin against God and steals our joy. So Sam Crabtree just helped us get back on track as he reminded us to work on our thankfulness.

And now, let’s hear from Janet Aucoin again. She’ll tie the finishing bow on this gift of a program nice and neat. Here’s Janet, reading from Romans 8:23.

Janet Aucoin: He says, “And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, [he’s talking to believers] we groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body” (NASB).

Have you ever felt that? Ugh—well, does that mean you’re not spiritual? No. That’s what’s supposed to happen. Our longings are a reminder that we were not designed to find our fulfillment in a fallen world separated from our Maker. But that’s where you find yourself.

I love C.S. Lewis’ quote, “If I discover within a desire which nothing in this world can satisfy, the probable explanation is I was made for another world.” Oh, yeah, so it’s okay.

What that means is those longings are not supposed to discourage me. They don’t have to cause me to doubt my faith. Instead, they are proof that the Bible is true, so that’s okay.

Having these unfulfilled longings doesn’t make me less spiritual, and it doesn’t mean I don’t trust God, necessarily. Certainly, that could be true, but the fact that you have unfulfilled longings doesn’t mean that.

All of creation is groaning under the effect of sin. One of the effects of sin is separation, and this is why Jesus did come.

So, the fact that I have these longings doesn’t mean I’m sinning, though my response to my unfulfilled longings is frequently sinful because I’ve made it my goal to not have them. And it doesn’t mean that they are sinning, that I feel this way. And it doesn’t mean: Just try harder. It doesn’t.

So if I understand that, instead of being surprised, I’m just going to rejoice in the hope that this isn’t all there is. It forces me to think eternally. It pushes me in that direction. Well, that’s probably a good thing. Maybe that’s part of what God is using them for—to push me in that direction.

Romans 8:18, a little before the last verse, Paul compares this life to pregnancy. Okay, some of you have been pregnant, some of you have not. Who gets pregnant because they will enjoy being pregnant? (laughter) Now, I have had friends say they liked that, but would you like it if you just remained forever pregnant? Even if you had great pregnancies, who gets pregnant thinking, I don’t really care about the kid in the end. I just love the pregnancy. (laughter) We would have another session for those people, because that’s a problem. Right?

No. What do we enjoy about pregnancy? Because of what’s coming. And I understand—I lost three—pregnant does not equal the baby to come, but it’s supposed to.

So comparing it to pregnancy, the hope and the joy of pregnancy is the baby to come. It’s very painful when that’s not how it ends. I know that for many that’s the reality, but we all know that’s not how it’s supposed to be. The joy of pregnancy is the baby to come.

Paul says this life is like labor pains. What brings you hope in this life? The one to come. We’re not surprised that there’s labor pains here. And we’re not like, “Oh my word, if I was doing the right things, there should not be labor pains.” When you’re in labor, you don’t think, This isn’t supposed to hurt. Who says that? I say, “Epidural in the eighth month, just in case.” (laughter) But, if only we could do that in our lives. You’re not allowed to do that with your whole life.

I asked my doctor that. I said, “Could I get it on a drip and walk around with it?” 

And he’s, like, “No, Janet. I promise I’ll give it to you when you need it.” So that was how much I enjoyed that. (laughter)

But we act like life is supposed to not have labor pains. It’s supposed to. That’s what we’re told. But what we do have different from earthly labor pains? We have a guaranteed hope of what’s coming. I will be with the Lord forever. I will not have a miscarriage with the Lord. I understand, I had them here. I will not have one with the Lord. That’s a guarantee.

And to make that I understand that it’s guaranteed, He’s told me that I have the downpayment of the Holy Spirit. There’s nothing more sure than that. I have the downpayment of the Holy Spirit while I wait.

So I’m suggesting, at least initially, we just need to change our expectations. Oh, I know, it’s easier said than done, but at least let’s start fighting the right battles. Let’s stop trying to get our longings fulfilled. Let’s stop seeing that that’s the goal. Let’s change our expectations and put them in a better place—which would be God.

Psalm 62:5, “For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence for my hope is from him” (ESV). The King James Version says, “For my expectation is from him.”

That’s where my expectations go, and the cross is a wonderful reminder that He can be trusted. When you’re in pain, and you’re thinking, I don’t know if He’s good, I literally will get on my knees and say to the Lord, “I have to hang out at the cross for a while right now because nothing in my life is communicating that You care. But when I look at the cross, I can come to no other conclusion: There’s no reason for the cross if You don’t love me. You didn’t have to do that.”

Dannah: What would it look like for you to hang out at the cross for a few minutes right now? It sure is hard to be disgruntled when we see what Jesus has done for us.

That is quite the sucker punch, isn’t it? It doesn’t seem right for us to be complaining about the weather or about my frustration with my pant size . . . not after what Jesus has done. 

I hope our time together helped you rethink your longings. Take them all to God and give Him time to work. I know it’s not always easy. He knows that too. And He has grace for us in each and every situation. As you wait for God to change your heart, keep nailing those longings and expectations to the cross.

Friend, have you signed up for the True Woman event yet? I hope you have, because time is running out to get in on our regular registration rate. And did you know that monthly partners go for free? Let me tell you, there are some perks to being a monthly partner.

Find out how to become a monthly partner by calling 1-800-569-5959. You can also go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend and click on the pink donate button on the top of the page. There’s information there on how to become a monthly partner.

And if you do that today. Thank you. I am grateful for your partnership in reaching women around the world with the love of Jesus Christ.

Next week, I want us to stand in awe of God. So we’ll sit outside under an umbrella, look at God’s creation, and just learn more about Him and His care for us. I can’t wait.

Thanks for listening today. Thanks to our team. Phil Krause,  CJ Raymond, Rebekah Krause, Justin Converse, Michelle Hill, Erin Davis, and for Revive Our Hearts Weekend, I’m Dannah Gresh

Revive Our Hearts is calling women to freedom, fullness and fruitfulness in Christ.

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.