Godliness with Contentment 08MAR2014

No Goal But Godliness: “Godliness with Contentment”

I Timothy 6:6-10

©Good News Community Fellowship; Marikina City, Philippines

Proposition

The secret of contentment is to focus on Christ and to seek first the kingdom of God and all else God will take of them.


The song by U2 “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for” Bono the lead singer of U2 is singing the words, “I have climbed the highest mountains. I have run through the fields. I run, I have crawled. I have scaled the cities walls. But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”


I think that song more than almost any other, describes our culture today. How many people are searching, running, scaling, looking for something but not finding it.


I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. And, unfortunately, many people think they are going to find it in the accumulation of things.


It is the love of money, devotion to getting more and more money that is the root of all kinds of evil. Paul is saying that the drive to get rich is a source of all kinds of evil behavior and it leads to many griefs.


Half of Jesus teachings deal with our attitude towards money and possessions. Jesus knows that God’s greatest rival for our hearts would not be Satan, but it would be money.


That’s why Luke 16: 13 says, “No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”


With this in mind, let’s look at how we can keep money in its right perspective, and it doesn’t matter if we are rich or poor, we all need to hear God’s teaching on this.


We need to learn to be content with what we have right now.


v.6-8 “But godliness with contentment is a great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that.”


The word “contentment” refers to feeling satisfied with what you have in life. Contentment is not simply giving up and saying, “well, I guess this is my lot in life.” Contentment goes much deeper, and it’s more positive than mere surrender to fate.


Contentment is not an obsession about having more, but being secured in what you have today, even if not everything is yours.


I think, that’s important for us to learn because we have this epidemic of discontent today. We are satisfied with our salary, until a friend tells us they got a raise, and all of a sudden what once was enough is not enough.


Everywhere you turn, people are discontent with something in their lives. And, it’s an idea that is perpetrated by media: Television, magazines through commercial advertisements.


Women are satisfied with their looks and figures until they see a fitness model saying only 20 minutes a day and you will look like me. We are satisfied with our gadgets until we see a new advertisement telling us all the features and the technology.

©Good News Community Fellowship;

Marikina City, Philippines

But the problem is, we are always being told that if we can just get a little more, then, we would be satisfied. Then we will be content. But that line of contentment is always rolling so we are never content, we are never satisfied, we are never happy.



In fact, money does not solve our problem of contentment. Eccl. 5:10 says, “Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. This too is meaningless.”


A billionaire made a remark how depressed he was with his income, “I have billion dollars, bur Bill Gates has 10 billion dollars.” And that is the trap of the love of money has, you can never have enough of it, you can never be truly content.



So, how can we learn to be content? Paul gives us some reasons why we should be content and how to bring it about? Remember, Paul was the man who wrote that he knew what it meant to be content, whether he had riches or poverty. So what are the reasons:



1. Godliness with contentment brings great gain

There were false teachers who were teaching that faith was a means of prosperity. The so called “prosperity gospel” is the same today. People who view Christianity in that way miss the whole point and they end up in discontentment with what they have.


But if you have godliness (to be like God and be like Christ) with contentment you are at peace. You are no longer running the rat race and being enslaved to the ways of this world. So, it is a great gain.


2. We brought nothing into this world.

We didn’t come into this world as the owner of anything, we came into this world poor and naked, and whatever we have received, we had received it from someone else.


And that someone else came into this world the same way we did. So, eventually we realize that everything in this world belongs to its original owner, and, that is God.


Everything we have, we have because of God’s generosity. However, it is by no means diminishes our efforts and hard work, but it means that God is the owner of all things and we are simply managers of His property. What we have are gifts from God and therefore we should be content.


Remember, we came into this world owning nothing, it all belongs to God who gives us all these things for our enjoyment.


3. We will leave this world empty-handed.

Many of us today are so engrossed with obtaining, accumulating treasures, money in this world to the point of neglecting the things that really matter.


We sacrifice our family, we sacrifice our time for our faith to grow all to get more money to buy more things, and for what? Knowing that one day, they may be taken away from us or we will leave them behind.



How empty we will feel if we stand before God someday if our preoccupation throughout our lifetime has been on material things. Suddenly, all the wealth we have accumulated would not matter in eternity. We have to leave them behind.



What will matter will be whether or not we were honest, compassionate, and generous with what God has given us.


Matthew 6:19-21 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”


So, how can we ensure that our hearts are in the right place?


A) Examine your life to see what is important to you. Where is most of your time spent trying to accomplish? Do you place other things before your time with God and His people?


J.C. Penny, a very successful businessman once said, “If any man is so busy that he can’t attend church on Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday evening, then perhaps that person has more work that God intended them to have.” What’s important to you?


B) Learn to control your money instead of having it control you.


This means that we will have to live within our means. We should not be a one day millionaire. We should live within what we have and learn to discriminate between our wants and our needs. We need to have a plan for our money.



C.) Invest in your faith first and foremost.


There is a story of a preacher who went to visit a wealthy farmer who was a non-Christian. The farmer drove and they were out of the middle of his property.


As they stood there the farmer declared, “as far as you can see in that direction to the west, I own it, and as far as you can see to the east, that too, is mine. He pointed to the other directions and arrogantly said, “as far as you can see to the north and south, they all belong to me.


Now, the preacher pointed up towards heaven and asked, “How much do you own in that direction?”


Conclusion

Everything around us teaches us to believe in accumulating material things because we have an obsessive compulsion to possess more and more things, thinking they will bring satisfaction in our lives.


We have the unquenchable craving for more, or to grasp for more and more (tukolike) that brings about a lack of contentment.


The drive to accumulate more and more damages our priorities and relationships. Our priorities are twisted and we will fall into many traps. We run after the wrong things and stop on pursuing matters of God.


Depression is so much more common today and people are so focused on getting what they want that it leads to unhappiness and un-fulfillment. The more we have the more we want and the more unhappy we become. The pursuit of things at all costs, causes much grief.


Do we want contentment in our life? Do we want peace? There is ultimately only one way to true contentment and peace, and that is to walk daily with the prince of peace, Christ Jesus. And I invite you to take that walk today.



Spiritual

Godliness with Contentment 08MAR2014