How Christ teaches contentment (Ch 6)

3 more lessons (continued from chapter 5) in Christ’s school of “How to Be Content”:

7. Understand the burdens of prosperity
Although many search for contentment in money, it’s not there. Jeremiah Burroughs lays out four burdens that come with riches:
    (1) Trouble
If you think a rich life = a trouble-free life, you’re wrong. As rose bushes also have thorns, so riches also bring sorrows (1 Timothy 6:10). From a distance, we don’t notice the thorns, but as Burroughs states, “A happy man may have a very fine new shoe, but nobody knows where it pinches him except the one who has it on.”

    (2) Danger
When you’re prosperous, you engage a whole new set of temptations. “Tall trees are a great deal more broken than low shrubs.” The rich man may lie awake at night with great burdens on his shoulders that the poor man may not consider.

    (3) Duty
The more you have, the more you’re responsible for. God requires more duty from those who have been given much.

    (4) Accountability
When he was about to die, it’s reported that King Philip of Spain said, “Oh, that I had never been a king! Then I should have died a great deal more securely, I should with more confidence have gone before the throne of God to give my account. This is the fruit of my kingdom, because I had all the glory of it, it has made my account harder to give to God.”

8. Better to be poor, than hard from receiving heart’s desires
If your desires are not compatible with God’s will, pray you don’t receive them. “The greatest misery of all is for God to give you up to your heart’s lusts and desires.” (Psalm 81:11,12) Time and again, God conveyed his wrath in the Old Testament through prosperous conditions. We mistakenly equate wealth with blessedness, but there is no direct correlation in either direction.

9. Know that God’s providence is always right
Why? Because...
    (1) His providence is universal. It reaches to every detail.
    (2) His providence is all-powerful. You can’t stop it.
    (3) His providence works everything together. We look at things by pieces; he looks at things all at once.
    (4) His providence can be generally known. Seek to understand these principles of God’s ways to be at peace with them: You WILL have afflictions; God brings the greatest comforts after the greatest sorrows; and God works in opposites (greatest good comes out of the greatest evil, etc.).

This concludes Burroughs’ lessons on how Christ teaches us to be content. Tough lessons. But worthy ones to help us understand that the source of our contentment is not in anything this world offers, but rather in enjoying and trusting God.  

More from Chapter 6
Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment