A Forgotten Word in the 21st Century
Philippians 4:10-13
There are a number of words that are not forgotten in our 21st Century culture: Success – “How to achieve and maintain success” is a popular subject. “Bull” and “Bear” are topics that are debated. Power, Popularity, Poverty, Rich, Pluralism, are not forgotten words. There are many forgotten words in the 21st Century. Some of them might be, “Holiness, Integrity, Truth, Kindness, Compassion, and others.” The word that I’m thinking about this morning is a word that the Apostle Paul applied to his life and ministry. The word is contentment. Paul said: “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.” Phil. 4: 11-12
Did the Apostle Paul write about “contentment” from a comfortable living room while watching football on ESPN while eating popcorn and drinking Mediterranean Sarsaparilla? No he was writing from a dark, damp, prison! Paul had found the key to contentment that was not linked to physical or material comforts.
In America we are surrounded by discontent. Advertisers tell you that you cannot be content unless you buy a new car, a new computer, a new home and take an annual trip to Hawaii. Skillfully directed advertising causes a blur between needs, wants, necessities and luxuries. We need to be able to say with the Psalmist: “The Lord is my Shepherd, I have everything I need.” Psalm 23:1
What is the problem? We have added so much to our lives that our lives our out of balance and overloaded. What happens when you get overloaded?
Here’s a picture of what happens when a cart is overloaded. #PP When one box too many is put in a cart it cart lifts the donkey into the air. When overloaded you loose your footing. Your life becomes out of balance.
Dr. Richard Swenson, M.D. describes in his book, “Margin” restoring emotional, physical, financial and time reserves to overloaded lives”, that the “so called” progress in the world is not that much progress at all. The progress has caused added stress to everyone.
If technology has made so much advancement in peoples’ lives then why do so many drink and take drugs to forget their problems? Why are we divorcing and suing at such rates? Why are people killing themselves, and others in such numbers?
Forty years ago our nation’s school children were being disciplined for talking, chewing gum, making noise, and running in the halls. Today, the biggest problems are guns in school, rape, robbery, assault, vandalism and drug abuse.
Eighty years ago we had no national debt. Today we have a multitrillion-dollar debt. One hundred years ago we had fresh air and clean lakes. Two hundred years ago we had lush forests and thick prairies. Today our forests are being threatened by acid rain and our prairies are being flushed down the Mississippi.
All the progress down through the years seems to do nothing but bring on more stress.
Years ago the Chicago bears had a fun game (to the big guys) they played in the locker room. David Tate, a 180 pound member of the defensive secondary told about the pain of being “squashed” in 1990. The Bears huge defensive linemen would one of the smaller players and start moving to circle one of the defensive backs. Some of the defensive back that were fast could get out of the attack and escape. David Tate said that on one occasion he was trapped. He was dropped to the ground and the 320 pound William “Refrigerator” Perry collapsed on top of him. Then 270 pound Richard dent, 275 pound Dan Hampton, and 270 pound Steve McMichael jumped on top, 1,135 pounds of pain.
Tate said, ‘I don’t think the linemen know how heavy they are. Once you’ve gotten squashed, you avoid it al all costs even if it means backing down.
With all the linemen piled high on a defensive back you have a picture of a life overloaded. Overloading happen when you add one more thing to your life than you can handle. God created people and animals to carry only so heavy a load.
A camel is able to carry great loads. But if you place an article on a camel that is maximally loaded down its back will be broken. A camel’s back is not broken by the proverbial straw. It is broken by overload.
An overloaded life is a discontented life.
What is the secret to a contented life?
A life of contentment is committed to marginal living.
Philippians 4:11-12
To have margin in your life is to have reserves beyond what you need. Margin is the gap between rest and exhaustion, the space between breathing freely and suffocating. Margin is opposite of overload.
A life without margin
Without margin your life is crammed with stuff. Marginless living is a life out of balance. #We are used to margins in reading. Without margin a page is harder to read. #(PP Page without margins)
Our modern day lifestyles devour margin. If you are homeless you can find a shelter. If you are penniless you can get food stamps. If you are breathless you can connect to a tank of oxygen. But if you are marginless you get one more thing to do.
Marginless is being thirty minutes late to the doctor’s office because you were twenty minutes late getting out of the hairdresser’s because you ten minutes late dropping the children off at school because the car ran out of gas two blocks from the gas station, and you forgot your purse.
Margin is having breath left at the top of the staircase, money left at the end of the month, and sanity left at the end of adolescence.
Marginless is the baby crying and the phone ringing at the same time; margin is Grandma taking the baby for the afternoon.
Marginless is being asked to carry a load five pounds heavier than you can lift; margin is a friend to carry half the burden.
Marginless is not having time to finish the book you’re reading on stress, margin is having time to read it twice.
Marginless is fatigue - margin is energy.
Living with margin comes when you live your life in balance.
Jesus modeled a life in balance. Luke 2:52 “Jesus grew in wisdom and statue, and in favor with God and men.”
Jesus matured mentally, physically, spiritually and socially.
The early church grew by having spiritual disciplines in balance. Acts 2:42 “They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching, and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” Acts 2:47 …”and the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”
Early Christians grew through Bible study, prayer and worship, Christian fellowship, and outreach. Fanaticism happens when a person gets out of balance. To spend all your time studying the bible or in prayer is to lose touch with reality. You can become so heavenly minded that you are of no earthly good. You can withdraw from the world and become a spiritual hermit and have no way of being faithful to the commands of Jesus to go into all the world and be His witness.
God created the universe to be in balance. The human body stays healthy and maintains health when it is in balance.
#When we are living in Florida I was driving our daughter Annette home from her high school. Twenty-second Avenue is St. Petersburg is a four lane road but at the corner that turned off to our street where we lived there was not a turning lane. I stopped to turn and waited for traffic to clear. The driver in the car about a half block behind me was trying to find a station on his radio and didn’t see me stopped and rammed into the back of our Buick. The force of his car catapulted us across two lanes and we hit two cars in the process and ended up on the lawn of the house facing the road. The impact broke the individual car seats and Annette and I found ourselves lying face up in the back seat with the rear of the car pushed up inches from our heads in the back seat.
We both seemed okay. I had to have several stitches in my head and later developed a pain in my arm. Diagnosis showed that I have a bone chip in my neck. I told my doctor son Wendel about my pain and he said, “Dad your body and bones will replenish themselves in seven years. Be patient and you’ll be okay.” He was right. The pain disappeared after several years.
The human body is a universe. The body is made up of 10 to the 28th power atoms. Your body contains more atoms than there are stars in space, 10 to the 20th power as far as scientists know. Ninety percent of the atoms in your body are replaced every year and 100 percent every five years. The bible is true. From dust we have come and to dust we return continually.
Your body is a veritable factory made up of trillions upon trillions of working units, all functioning in balance. If this balance is disturbed disease is the result. When the body functions in balance you are healthy.
Contentment comes when you have balance in your life…In your use of time, your treasure, your talents and your trust in God.
In a real sense God allows you to choose your own destiny. God gives you 168 hours a week. You choose how you send each hour. The Apostle Paul said: “Be very careful, then, how you live – not as unwise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.” Eph. 5:16
God gives you health so you can work. He allows you to decide how you will spend your income. You can choose to live on less than you make or go deeper and deeper in debt living on less than you make. You can become a work-a-holic or do nothing and twiddle your life away.
The balanced life is still the best. Forty to fifty hours of work a week leaves you 118 hours of opportunity to be a blessing to your family and others. Most people need 7 or 8 hours of sleep to function at their best. By careful budgeting and buying what you need and not what you want gives you margin in finances.
What is the secret to contentment?
Living your life in balance results in a life of contentment.
Committed to a simple lifestyle gives you contentment.
“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.” Phil. 4: 11-12
Discontentment comes when you are never satisfied and always want more. Discontent is the feeling, “I will never have enough as long as I live.”
In Luke 12 Jesus rebukes a rich landowner. The landowner harvested bumper crops so much so that he had to build bigger barns to store up his treasure for years to come. Now with financial security he through his life was worry free. “God’s judgment was quick. God called the man a fool. “That night the man’s life was taken from him.”
“Watch out,” Jesus warns. “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” (Luke 12:15) Tragically for many people all they have are their possessions.
Jesus told a parable of two sons. The younger son asked his father for his inheritance. He was not content to wait for his share of his family’s estate. He took what was his share and spent it all in riotous living. He spent all his money and ended up in a pigpen shelter. His discontent led to poverty.
King Saul was not content to be the king God called him to be. God appointed David to take his place.
Solomon the riches man in the world during his day was not content and desired more and more pleasures of this world. He ended up living a life of misery and calling all he had as being meaningless.
The Apostle Paul found the secret to contentment. He was satisfied with what God provided.
Paul’s contentment did not come from a trouble free life. He suffered much for his faith. “It seems to me,” he writes, “that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like men condemned to die in the arena. We have been make a spectacle to the whole universe…we are weak…we are dishonored! To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless….We have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world.” I Cor. 4:9-13
Comparing himself to those who boast of their spirituality, Paul further points out that he had worked harder, been in prison more often, been flogged and exposed to death many times. He had received forty lashes minus one on five occasions, been beaten with rods, three times been shipwrecked, been in the open sea overnight, been hungry, thirsty, cold, and naked, and gone without sleep again and again. 2 Cor. 4:11-12
In all these situations Paul could say, “I have learned to be content.”
Contentment is not denying your true feelings. It isn’t pretending things are okay when they’re not. It is know that God is with you in every situation. God is bigger than all your problems.
Contentment isn’t complacency it is doing our part and leaving the results with God.
This past week I read a letter that describes what I’m talking about. A Vietnamese Pastor’s wife wrote the letter. The police closed their church in Vietnam and the pastor was thrown in prison. The police forced the Pastor’s wife and her children out of their home and they had no place to live but outside an apartment. She wrote:
My Dear Friends,
You know all around here we are experiencing hardships, but we thank the Lord He is comforting us and caring for us in every way. When we experience misfortune, adversity, distress and hardship, only then do we see the real blessing of the Lord poured down on us in such a way that we cannot contain it.
We have been obliged recently to leave our modest apartment and for over two months have been living on a balcony. The rain has been beating down and soaking us. Sometimes in the middle of the night we are forced to gather our blankets and run to seek refuge in the stairwell.
Do you know what I do then? I laugh and I Praise the Lord, because we can still take shelter in the stairwell. I think of how many people are experiencing much worse hardships than I am. Then I remember the words of the Lord, “To the poor, O Lord, You are a refuge from the storm, a shadow form the heat.” (Isaiah 25:4), and I am greatly comforted…
Our Father…is the One who according to the Scriptures does not break the bruised reed nor put out the flickering lamp. He is the One who looks after the orphan and the widow. He is the One who brings blessing and peace to numberless people.
I do not know what words to use in order to describe the love that the Lord has shown our family. I only can bow my knee and my heart and offer to the Lord words of deepest thanks and praise. Although we have lost our house and our possessions, we have not lost the Lord, and He is enough. With the Lord I have everything. The only thing I would fear losing is His blessing!
Could I ask you and our friends in the churches abroad to continue to pray for me that I will faithfully follow the Lord and serve Him regardless of what the circumstances may be?
As far as my husband is concerned, I was able to visit him this past summer. We had a 20 minute conversation that brought us great joy…
I greet you with my love.
Mrs. Nguyen Thi An
This pastor’s wife lived a life of contentment when she had every reason to be bitter and hateful.
You can find the secret of contentment –
• Commit to having margin in your life by living a life in balance.
• Also commit to a simple life-style. Be content with what God provides you.
