Many people spend their entire lives looking for, searching for, and sifting through the experiences of life for some mysterious thing that they think they want,…what they spend lots of time searching for but never really find what it is that they are seeking. I will tell you that if you really don’t know what you are looking for, then you will waste your life and God’s preplanned purpose for your life because you will walk right by what it is that you are searching for and not even know you were close to achieving it. If you cannot identify the target of your life’s search then you will never know if you hit it. Please let me explain….
Everybody says they want it, but most people run right by it without even noticing it. This mysterious thing is called Contentment. It is that lonely hitch-hiker that you can barely see way back behind you somewhere within the clouded rearview mirror because you were traveling so fast on your “big broad road-to-nowhere” that you sped right past it. This station of life called contentment is a wonderful thing. It is a state of being content, peaceful, relaxed, assured, and happy. It is what most people highly desire and rarely discover. They search and continue to search for this illusive state of being while living their own lives having no time available to slow themselves down to a more casual sustainable pace and truly investigate the various options, alternative routes, and different view points all of which are well marked on the side of the road on which they are speeding. “What was that?” they ask. “Where does that road go to?” “What do you suppose is at the end of this road?” All of these many queries remain unanswered since there is never enough time (so we say) to go find out. We’re in a hurry, aren’t we? And the traffic continues to move on….“step on it,…please,”…we might be late….for something.
Hundreds of different books have been written on or about the subject of contentment and how to achieve it and they are rapidly selling. But think about it for a moment,….Isn’t it strange that we even need a book to help us experience what ought to come to us naturally? No,…I guess,…not really. Not after our children, young adults, and seasoned citizens have all been programmed to compete, achieve, increase, and fight, as you work and worry your own way up the so-called “ladder of success” which only a chosen few can even accurately define. Not when you have worshipped at the shrine of PROMOTION since infancy. Not when you have spent all your life as a galley slave on the sea-going ship of “Public Opinion.” To you such folks, contentment is an unknown “X” in life’s equation of how to become successful. It is as strange to you as living in an igloo or raising crocodiles in your backyard.
Just face it. Most of us are afraid that if we open the door of contentment, two belligerent guests will come rushing in–loss of prestige, and laziness. Sadly, we really believe that “getting to the top” is worth any sacrifice. To proud Americans, contentment is something to be enjoyed between one’s actual birth and kindergarten,…between one’s retirement and the rest home,… or only among “those who have no ambition.”
Friends, stop and think. A young man with keen mechanical skills and little interest in academics is often counseled against being contented to settle for a trade right out of high school. A teacher who is competent, contented, and fulfilled in the classroom is frowned upon if she turns down an offer to become principal. The owner of “El Taco Loco” on the corner has a packed-out restaurant filled with hungry customers every day–and is happy in his soul, contented in his spirit. But chances are, selfish ambition won’t let him rest until he opens ten other restaurants and becomes rich–leaving contentment in the lower drawer of forgotten dreams. A man who serves as an assistant (or any support personnel in a ministry, company, or the military) frequently wrestles with feelings of discontent until he or she is promoted to the top rung of the scale–regardless of personal capabilities.
Illustrations of this real situation among people are seen everywhere…all around you. This applies to nuclear scientists, farmers, auto repair specialists, policemen, plumbers, or seminary students. It also applies to caretakers, or carpet layers, artists or waiters, truck drivers, and anyone else who is internally driven and wants to constantly improve their individual position in life. Small wonder that so many people who are seeking to further themselves are seldom happy or content even when they reach their decided goals.
The great playwright, William Shakespeare, had it right when he said, “Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.” It is a most curious fact that when people are free to do as they please, they usually wind up imitating each other. I, like many others, seriously fear that we Americans are rapidly becoming a nation of discontented, incompetent, marionettes dangling from strings manipulated by the same dictatorial puppeteer.
God’s Word tells us in Proverbs that His ways are different from our ways; that His knowledge and understanding is higher and greater than is man’s. God makes no mistakes or contradictions. Obedience to His instructions is the way to accomplish His plan and purpose for your life. To do that requires an individual to totally trust God and His Word and follow His guidance to the letter.
Listen to the words of Jesus: “…be content with your wages” ( See Luke 3: 14. Hear the Apostle Paul: “I am well content with weaknesses…if we have food and covering…be content!” (See 2 Corinthians 12 : 10; and 1 Timothy 6 : 8). And yet another apostle: …“let your life be free…being content with what you have” (See Hebrews 13 : 5).
Now I must caution you before beginning this new way of thinking and living–it is not going to be easy to adopt and implement. You will be outnumbered and outvoted. You will have to fight the urge to conform to conventional thinking and performance. It has been done before and by a lot of other people,….so you can do it too. Even the greatest of all apostles admitted, “I have learned to be content in whatever state I am” (See Philippians 4 : 11). The whole thing is a learning and growing process, often quite painful. And it isn’t very enjoyable marching out of step until you are convinced you are listening to the right drummer.
When you become fully convinced,…two things will happen to you:
- Your strings will be cut from that which has kept you bound, and
- You’ll be free indeed…free to live as you choose!
And a humorous thing will permeate you: You will discover that all of those “funny and different things” that you left a few miles back on your pathway to success will now be sitting in the passenger seat right beside you where they properly belong…and smiling every mile of the way.
Just as Christ told the world in the Book of John, Chapter 8, verse 32, NKJV:
“And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
Be a Real Man And Always Act Like One………..