Contentment

2 Cor 12:9 "My Grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."

Today I would like to talk about contentment and how we can make the Lords grace sufficient for us.

Genesis 1:26…

26

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth,[2] and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

27

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

28

God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."

31

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning--the sixth day.

God made Adam and eve to be in fellowship with him, in the garden of Eden. With all our longings, thirsts and desires perfectly met. But then: Genesis 2:16

16

And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden;

17

but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

Genesis 3:4 on

4

"You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman.

5

"For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

6

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

7

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

8

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.

9

But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"

10

He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."

11

And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"

In Genesis 3:6 … fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom….

Even back in the time of Adam and Eve, we could not stop ourselves from desires. As you can see that what is pleasing to the eye and what is desirable isn’t always the right choice. As after Adam ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge God banished them from the perfect fellowship with Him in the Garden of Eden.

Genesis 3:23

23

So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.

What I would like to talk about is how we can have our desires met by finding contentment and peace today in our Lord God, even though we are not in the Garden of Eden.

You see we all have desires.

- To be wanted by someone

- … value to someone

- …accepted by someone

- …accepted by someone for who I am , not for how I perform

- …loved unconditionally

- …belong to someone, enjoy an intimate fellowship, loving companionship, ones of heart and purpose.

So we seek to have this desire, these thirsts and longings filled. So we say to ourselves, I can make myself happy, I can fill these desires by simply doing the things I want to do… that will make me happy and content.

Some of us buy things, for example, I have probably got 20 flashlights. When I purchased my first flashlight I thought that was the one, the one that would make me happy. Then shortly after I purchased it, I found another flashlight that was slightly brighter. So I got that one. And so on and so on. Well, I still have the original flashlight, in fact, that’s the one I use.

Did purchasing the second flashlight make me content? No. the third flashlight? NO.

I’ll give you another example of how we chase our desires to give us contentment.

There was an employee that was working his partner and the employee said “If only I had $1000 dollars extra, then I would be happy, perfectly content.” And just then his boss wa;ked by and heard what his employee had said, so he wrote out a cheque to the employee for $1000. And said “I have never seen anyone perfectly content, here is $1000 I hope that you are perfectly content now” and the boss walked away. When the Boss was out of earshot the employee turned to his partner and said “I should have asked for $2000!!”