6 Lessons in Contentment (Ch 5)

All Christians are scholars in Christ’s school, per Jeremiah Burroughs, and we must learn these six lessons to be content:

1. Learn to deny yourself.
Burroughs breaks this into 8 smaller sub-lessons. Know these:

1. In yourself, you are nothing.
2. You deserve nothing (but Hell).
3. Without Christ, you can do nothing.
4. Of yourself, you can receive nothing good.
5. Without God, you can do nothing even with the gifts he’s given you.
6. With sin, you are worse than nothing.
7. If you perish, nothing is lost that God couldn’t replace.
8. A selfish man is only happy when he gets his own way; a contented man is happy when God gets His way.

(Whew—that list can make a person feel pretty small, huh? Um, maybe that’s the point? “A discontented heart is troubled because he has no more comfort, but a self-denying man rather wonders that he has as much as he has.”)

2. Don’t seek contentment in things of this world.
It’s like expecting the wind to satisfy your hunger. It’s not that you don’t have enough of it, but that it’s the wrong thing altogether.

3. Understand that only one thing is necessary.
Make your peace with God. Everything else is icing on the cake.

4. Remember you’re only passing through.
You’re on your way to another country, as a traveling soldier who’s already been assured of the victory.

5. Use every situation to draw nearer to God and enjoy him more in it.
When God moves you on, go gladly instead of staying stuck in a job that’s been completed.

6. Study your own heart.
Why?

1. So you can quickly root out any source of discontent there.
2. So you’ll better know what helps you. Take the medicine that will cure you, even if it tastes bad in your mouth.
3. So you’ll know what you can manage and what you cannot manage. You wouldn’t give a knife to a child; trust God and your heart to not cry over things he doesn’t give you.

Next week: Chapter 6, How Christ Teaches Contentment – continued -

More from Chapter 5
Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment