Tag: Contentment

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Lord's Day Liturgy

Defeated Devil December

Four years ago (2018) I shared a strategy for our family called No Discontent December. It wasn’t only about not being fussy about what you did or didn’t get for advent/Christmas gifts, but about attitude in all the extra pulls and pushes on our days and schedule and budgets.

I thought about running a second No Discontent December, and while that would be fine, in light of the passage that starts our advent series of sermons (Genesis 3:15), I’ve got a related, but similar idea.

Defeated Devil December – 3D

In no way do I mean to take Satan lightly. Jude said that the archangel Michael, when contending with the devil, didn’t presume to smack talk but called for the Lord’s rebuke (Jude 9). So the goal here is to take God’s promise of a seed that would crush the serpent’s head seriously (again Genesis 3:15). We know that seed was Jesus, and He has defeated and will finally defeat that ancient serpent (Colossians 2:15, 1 John 3:8; Hebrews 2:14).

So what attitude and behavior would demonstrate this December that Christ has conquered?

Interestingly enough, I think contentment really throws a wrench into the devil’s works. He is insatiable for more than he was given, and unraveled Eve’s confidence that the Lord had given her fulness of blessing. Discontentment double-dates with doubt, fussiness comes from a lack of faith in God’s Word and God’s goodness. The serpent wanted Eve to want more, to covet beyond her privileges and gifts.

This Advent/Christmas season, don’t listen to the father of lies. Resist him. Be grateful, content, and in so doing let the devil be frustrated, not you.

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Lord's Day Liturgy

When We Have Problems

The Lord’s response to Paul’s request to have his thorn removed is archetypal.

He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9a)

That is a fantastic truth. We should share that on the Internet. Someone should print it in a sympathy card, probably using a gentle, italic font, and adorn it with a soft colored flower. It’s perfect, especially for Paul, and other people.

Paul continues:

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:9b-10)

How many of us don’t really want to be content, we want to be content in a Thomas Kinkade Christmas painting hanging on the wall of a set in a Hallmark Channel movie? It looks so calm, cozy, and probably chocolaty. The fire is delightful, and, if the kids are awake, they’re not stirring one another up to irritation.

But of course the first Christmas was God’s own experience of traveling away from home, of family being displaced, being uncomfortable. God was born in obscurity and weakness, to poor and tired parents.

Us, though, we’ve got big plans to be joyfully adoring Him, until you can’t find the wrapping paper where it was supposed to be, and the house is more messy than Walmart shelves two hours after Black Friday sales started. You wanted to host the extended family, but, not like this.

Christmas, and contentment, is harder than it looks. But God’s grace is sufficient, and He wants His power to be seen as the power of Christ rests upon us when we have problems.

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The End of Many Books

The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment

by Jeremiah Burroughs

I started reading this with my 5th-6th grade Bible class last school year, but we didn’t finish it. I started over when summer break began, then got sidetracked a couple times. Then I committed to plodding at two pages per day and it was a fantastic kick in the contentment pants every day. Though brief, it’s not really a book to read in a week, any more than one wants to take a month’s worth of antibiotic pills in one gulp. Highly recommended, especially if you’re ready to be reminded how foul a discontented heart really is.

5 of 5 stars

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Lord's Day Liturgy

Bow Down

Although I probably could get an exhortation to confession from every page in Jeremiah Burroughs’ The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, I promise I won’t. That said, contentment and thankfulness and emotional self-control requires constant vigilance, and it often requires repentance of fear and anxiety as well.

The confession of every Christian is, Jesus is Lord. At conversion we repent from self-will and self-serving. We turn away from sin and are delivered from our slavery to unrighteousness. Jesus is Lord, we submit to Him.

Sanctification is the process in which our wants and wills are transformed by the Spirit, from the inside out. We are free from sinful wants. We are also becoming more and more free from sinful reactions.

This Genesis 3 world is tough. Even in the 21st century West not everything is easy, and much of our days is spent carrying some sort of burden. The burden carrying is right in so far as we receive it as from the Lord. Where we go wrong is when we add to our suffering an attitude of slavery to the suffering. Burroughs wrote,

“How unseemly it is that you should be a slave to every cross, that every affliction should be able to say to your soul, ‘Bow down to us.’ …Truly it is so, when your heart is overcome with murmuring and discontent; know that those afflictions which have caused you to murmur have said to you, ‘Bow down that we may tread upon you,'” (147)

How easy it is to elevate our troubles into masters, when we answer questions from friends, rant on social media, or just in our emotional reactivity. Our souls are free, not from suffering, but from being slaves to suffering. We confess, Jesus is Lord, and no man can serve two masters.

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Lord's Day Liturgy

Appears to Meet the Specs

God frequently reveals the priorities He has for us, and it is very common for us to make alterations. He says what He wants, we give Him something else that we think He might be happy with instead.

The Lord regularly told the Israelites that He desired their obedience rather than their offerings (Hosea 6:6); Psalm 50:8, 14-15, 23; Proverbs 21:3). Those sacrifices were, of course, sacrifices that He Himself had commanded them to make. But the sacrifices were to be an act of obedience, not a substitute for obedience.

It is just as likely for us to offer up something to the Lord that appears to meet the specs. It is not just possible, it is likely that Christians often consider their attendance and participation in corporate worship as something that pleases God, which it is, but only as we are worshipping Him in all the ways He wants.

Jeremiah Burroughs wrote,

You worship God more by [contentment] than when you come to hear a sermon, or spend half an hour, or an hour, in prayer, or when you come to receive a sacrament. These are the acts of God’s worship, but they are only external acts of worship, to hear and pray and receive sacraments. But this is the soul’s worship, to subject itself thus to God.

The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, 120

He continued by pointing out the power of our being pleased with what God does.

in active obedience we worship God by doing what pleases God, but by passive obedience we do as well worship God by being pleased with what God does.

.ibid

Maybe you have done all the things you think you needed to do this week. But have you been pleased with all the things that God has done in your week? Pleasure in His work is worship.

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A Shot of Encouragement

What God Does

Two kinds of pleasing worship to God:

“in active obedience we worship God by doing what pleases God, but by passive obedience we do as well worship God by being pleased with what God does.”

—Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, 120

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A Shot of Encouragement

A Scholar in Self-Denial

“Just as no one can be a scholar unless he learn his ABC, so you must learn the lesson of self-denial or you can never become a scholar in Christ’s school, and be learned in this mystery of contentment.”

—Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment

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A Shot of Encouragement

Do Your Duties

“And the truth is, I know nothing more effective for quieting a Christian soul and getting contentment than this, setting your heart to work in the duties of the immediate circumstances that you are now in, and taking heed of your thoughts about other conditions as a mere temptation.”

—Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, 52
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A Shot of Encouragement

How to Order

“The Lord knows how to order things better than I. The Lord sees further than I do; I only see things at present but the Lord sees a great while from now. And how do I know but that had it not been for this affliction, I should have been undone.”

—Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, 36
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A Shot of Encouragement

The Art of a Calm Heart

My Bible class started to read through The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment the last Quarter of the year. We didn’t quite make it halfway, but I wanted to start rereading it again for myself this summer anyway. Though a repetitive Puritan (is that redundant?), Burroughs convicted me many days in class. If I can keep up the reading I’m sure I’ll have more quotes to share.

The following one made me think about a few things: social media and Matthew 15:10-20 and emotional control. It’s easy to blame our negativity and fear and irritation on external things, when in fact the problem is in our own hearts. We can, and should, learn the art of a calm heart even when the outside is neither smooth or still. (Also, we can unfollow as necessary.)

“A great man will permit common people to stand outside his doors, but he will not let them come in and make noise in his closet or bedroom while he deliberately retires from all worldly business. So a well-tempered spirit may enquire after things outside in the world, and suffer some ordinary cares and fears to break into the suburbs of the soul, so as to touch lightly upon the thoughts. Yet it will not on any account allow an intrusion into the private room, which should be wholly reserved for Jesus Christ as his inward temple.” (23)