Summary: <br> Are you currently content? Do you feel at peace and satisfied right now?<br> Some would say our current circumstances prohibit being content. Our world has been turned upside down. Ya’ll I haven’t had a Starbucks in 6 weeks. Schedules are all out of whack, some jobs have been lost while other jobs never seem to be finished.<br> These are crazy times! Is it possible to be content in the crazy?<br> Paul is our biblical mentor on contentment. In a thank you letter to those who had sent him a bit of financial support, he wrote the famous scripture Philippians 4: 11-13 “I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”<br> He wasn’t being dramatic. This man knew hardship. He had been whipped 5 times, beat 3 times, stoned once, lived through 3 shipwrecks, and thrown in prison a few times. In fact, he was writing this thank you letter from a prison cell.<br> AND YET HE WAS CONTENT.<br> Make a list of your current hardships. I’m pretty sure Paul’s would be longer. Life hadn’t been fair to him and it continued to be unfair sitting in prison for something he didn’t do.<br> But he hadn’t grown bitter. In fact, he is saying through it all, he has found a way to get better.<br> “I have LEARNED to be content.”<br> Is that what’s happening here my bored or overwhelmed, stressed out or worried sisters? Are we LEARNING TO BE CONTENT?<br> This is a learned emotion. We aren’t born with contentment. From infancy, we cried to get what we wanted. Then we just moved on to complaining about it. We sit and think about what we do not have and we feel unsettled and unhappy. And in it all, we are students here learning a lesson.<br> Contentment isn’t a theory that can be taught. It isn’t something we can master while getting our way and having more than enough. Contentment is only learned in the trenches of hardship and difficulty.<br> Think of contentment as a 6 pack set of abs.<br> We all want the abs. Dang, wouldn’t a set of washboard abs look good on you?!!!!! Crop tops for life if you could replace your 6 chubby belly rolls for 6 abs.<br> How does a person with abs get them? Did they buy them? Were they born with them? Did their mama give them those abs? Was it a pill that created this magical transformation?<br> No. We understand there’s one way to get rock hard abs … a ridiculous amount of situps, crunches, flutter kicks and other torcherous painful moves that leave you laying on the floor in tears. Most of us simply aren’t willing to go through that kind of torture to get that kind of stomach. But some are, and those are the ones with the abs!<br> And contentment is the same way. It is a RESULT of going through the hardship. It is a result of repeated problems and disappointment. It’s having something, then losing it, then working to get it back knowing you may not always have it.<br> Oh, we don’t like that training plan. That’s a high price to pay for contentment.<br> So what … we settle for misery?<br> Paul said I HAVE LEARNED TO BE CONTENT in all these ups and downs of life. He didn’t learn it from a book. He didn’t learn it from a movie. He learned it because he lived it. He had food, then he didn’t have food. He had money, then he didn’t have money. His plans worked, then his plans didn’t work. A continual training of learning what was important. Another lesson in where happiness does and does not come from.<br> With each crunch, the abs grow stronger. The pain brings growth.<br> The pain of your current circumstances also bring growth … IF YOU USE IT...
