Be Still and Know - Have You Learnt How To Be Content In Every Situation?
(from www.premierchristianradio.com)
Luke 6:24-25
“What sorrow awaits you who are rich, for you have your only happiness now. What sorrow awaits you who are fat and prosperous now, for a time of awful hunger awaits you. What sorrow awaits you who laugh now, for your laughing will turn to mourning and sorrow."
These words would have come as a huge surprise for Jesus’ hearers. They had been taught that being wealthy and well fed now were signs of God’s blessing.
Jesus was seeking to wake his disciples up to the fact that you can’t have it both ways. If your single goal is to be wealthy now, you can’t expect to have God’s blessing. If becoming materially rich is your god, there is no space for the one true God, and disaster will inevitably result.
This teaching was entirely consistent with Jesus’ revolutionary message. He was turning everything upside down.
The key question for us is a persistent one: What is our goal in life? What are we really seeking to achieve?
It isn’t wrong to earn money and to seek success in our work. It isn’t wrong to have possessions or to seek to own more possessions. But when those things become our reason for living, we have missed the boat, and we put ourselves in a dangerous place. These are important issues for us to be clear about. Our society will continually peddle the lie that our money and possessions are the best goal in life. But they are not.
The apostle Paul got it right when he spoke about the way in which he had found contentment. He found it in Christ and, because of his relationship with the Lord, he knew how to “live on almost nothing or with everything.”
In writing to the church in Philippi, he said he had learned to be content: “I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little” (Philippians 4:12). What a wonderful secret to discover!
QUESTION
Have you learnt how to be content in every situation?
PRAYER
Lord Jesus, help me to find complete contentment in my relationship with you, and not to rush after things which can only give me temporary satisfaction. Amen