I can’t easily be in a room full of talking people, let alone children. I can’t reliably turn up to Bible study, let alone lead one ... And just thinking about the drive to beach mission, the motion of the ocean and the volume of the big marquee makes me queasy! What does it look like to serve God as someone with a chronic illness?
This world is not enough. Yes, it’s the name of a not great 1990’s Bond film with Pierce Brosnan, but it also how we are all living now. We live like this world is not enough. It’s why we all want more—more experiences, more satisfaction, more love, more sex, more success, with more purity, more abs, more glutes, more status and more. If we were content, enough would be enough. We aren’t content and, yet, despite, Christianity’s call for contentment I want to argue that this lack of contentment is right. The existence of our discontent, tells us we were...
For many years I’ve devoured books, articles and talks on singleness, trying to capture the ever-elusive prize of contentment. But the feeling never seemed to last more than a few weeks. The problem was that I was looking for quick fixes. I wanted contentment on my terms and by my timeline. Too often I desired it as a way to make my life easier—to get rid of these unpleasant feelings of loneliness and jealousy. My motivation was to feel better, rather than a yearning to know God more intimately and glorify him with my life. The ebb and flow of...
Our lives and ministries are often combinations: encouragements and discouragements, joys and frustrations, pleasures and pains, successes and failures, sanctification and sin, health and sickness, abundance and want, joys and suffering, support and opposition This may be the case in our personal or family life; in our own ministry; in the immediate context of our ministry; or in the broader context of our ministry. Negotiating all this complexity requires wisdom, patience, and hope. It requires godly contentment and godly discontentment Negotiating all this complexity requires wisdom, patience, and hope. It requires godly contentment and godly discontentment. I often think of Reinhold...
Part of a ten-part series on contentment by Jean Williams A man was walking across a cow pasture when his foot hit something. He bent over, rubbed his aching toe, and noticed the corner of a box sticking out of the ground. Curious, he grabbed a stick, dug away the dirt, and opened the lid. His heart thumped as he reached in and felt the solid weight of gold. He glanced around to see if anyone was watching, then covered the box with chunks of turf. He went home and sold everything he had, from the coat on his back...
