Contentment A Priceless Possession Series

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Mental Detectors — Ps 46

Everybody Is Searching For Something

What Are You Searching For?

+ 1 in a series

Contentment a Priceless Possession

+ Wisteria is the name of a lovely twisting vine with beautiful cascading blossoms. This flower of the pea family is known for its ability to climb high; yet, unless controlled, unless regularly pruned with sharp tools, wisteria will utterly destroy whatever it clings to.

It’ll tear down brick walls, crush the life from oak trees, ruin gardens, and blossom with beauty and sweetness the entire time.

>

> Wisteria Lane is the appropriate address of the five provocative, tantalizing, and bewitching women of the controversial Desperate Housewives, that darkly comedic and satirical nighttime soap opera hit. The five leading women - three of whom are mothers, one who isn’t, and the narrator, who is dead - are TV’s new and exaggerated depictions of suburban motherhood in the post-feminist age.

On Wisteria Lane the twists of manipulation, deception, tomfoolery, theft, sex, social bungles, alienation, false assumptions, adultery, addictions, jealousy, blackmail, anger, teenage alienation, suicide, dark secrets and murder all exist beneath the flowery masks of perfect people where pain and comedy grow uncontrollably out of various desperations.

On Wisteria Lane, no one is fulfilled, although every one strives and stretches for an elusive ideal of happiness. These women seek to seize, to discover, and to create contentment from their complicated lives that are built on shifting compromises, elusive dreams, and high expectations. (Homiletics On-Line Wisteria)

+ 1 Tim 6:1-12

> Philip 4:11

+ Charles Caleb Colton

- English clergyman and author speaking of:-

Diogenes (di--oje-ne-z’) Died 320 B.C.

- Greek philosopher and founder of the

Cynic school who taught self-control and the pursuit of virtue through simple living.

- He is said to have once wandered through the streets of Athens with a lantern in daylight, searching for an honest man.

> True contentment depends not upon what we have; a tub was large enough for Diogenes, but a world was too little for Alexander.

PSALM 46.

+ ❶ Taking Possession of Contentment

> Key v. 10 - Be Still & Know

> An Awareness of God

> Still means - Rest, Relax

> Know means “to experience.”

- If we become still, we will begin to

experience.

- The wisdom of God is to become still.

- Take time to look into His face

- We need to still the noise and the clamor

and the chatter of our lives and just wait.

- Then He will make us aware of His

presence.

+ ❷ Contentment a Priceless Possession

> 1. Having Security

"God is our Refuge and Strength" v.1

- The life that is " hid in God " is surely as

safe as God can make it.

- To hide in God, is to hide in His Love,

His Mercy, His Power.

- This means perfect safety

> 2. Confidence In Your Security .

" Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed," etc. (v. 2-3).

- Look at the “Though’s”

• Earth removed

• Mountains carried away

• Waters roar

• Mountains Shake

> 3. An Endless Supply of Satisfaction.

"There is a river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God " (v. 4).

1st A river - Abundance in it’s source

2nd Streams - Variety in it’s flow

3rd Delight in Coverage

- Mississippi Numerous in it’s springs

- Missouri, Arkansas, Ohio, Tennessee Illinois -Major Rivers

- Chippewa, Black, Cedar, Iowa, Rock – Minor Rivers

Yazoo, White

- Take one branch Ohio – Allegheny, Monongahela, Cheat, Tygart

- Multi-streams flow into these

- An endless variety of life, refreshment & newness

- Rivers of delight flow out for the soul that has found its refuge in God ;

- They are led by the still waters of God’s great thoughts

- Refreshed and strengthened by the living streams of eternal truth.

> 4. The Source of Comfort & Supply.

" God is in the midst .... God shall help ... He uttered His voice . . . The Lord of Hosts is with us " ... God a refuge (v. 5-7).

- Never alone

- His abiding presence

- A continual protection,

- God in the midst of thee

> 5. Removing Fear & Worry.

" Come, behold . . . what desolation He hath made ... He maketh wars to cease," etc. (w. 8-9).

Desolation – Can be ruin, waste or

– “Amazing things he has done”

- Here a backward look and a forward

look.

- He made ruin of men’s works and ways in the past,

- He will yet break, and cut to pieces, the instruments of destruction, and make wars to cease, unto the end of the earth