How Do I Find Contentment?

I think that social media has revealed our discontentment as a nation. Laws are necessary to safeguard our highways from distracted drivers who endanger themselves and others by answering texts and calls. Some people have been injured by walking into traffic while texting. How often do you see a table of people at a restaurant...their mind engaged elsewhere: phone.

People are constantly diverting their attention to someone else, to somewhere else, to something else. Living in the ’here & now’ is...boring!

When I was a kid I would make fun of my friends when they quipped, “I’m bored.” I would snap back, “Are you dumb? You can’t think of anything to do?” Then we would jump up and go do something! (It was not as unkind as it might seem in our day. No one was offended . We weren’t trained to think that way.)

“I’m bored,” is often the voice of lazy discontentment. It comes from people who want someone else to provide the entertainment or activity, but only as they like it. Boredom is most often selfish. Constant activity on electronic devices has not made us content.

Contentment is about being at peace with who I am and where I am and who I’m with...now. Contentment is not struggling to leave ‘now’ or leave ‘here’ or leave ‘them.’ Contentment is not struggling to ‘get ahead’ or ‘get even’ or even ‘get.’ Contentment endures the current circumstances even when something else is preferred. Contentment lives in the ‘here & now’ but sees beyond knowing that this is not all there is.

My title question, How do I find contentment?, is the wrong question. Contentment is not found. It is not something a person searches for like a deep truth. It is not something a person stumbles across like a hidden treasure. 

Contentment is not ‘found.’
Contentment is a decision.

Let me show you….
After telling the Christians in Philippi of his joy for their concern for him, the Apostle Paul wrote:

I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am.
—Philippians 4:11

It is important to read his statement carefully. He did not claim that he had learned ‘how’ to be content, but that he had learned ‘to be’ content in whatever circumstances. He was expressing to his fellow Christians that there was no reason for them to worry about him. He had learned “to be content…” 

• When enjoying prosperity; and
• When suffering need.

The reason he could be content in all kinds of circumstances was because he knew the source of his strength.

I can do all things through Him [Christ] who strengthens me. 
—Philippians 4:13

It was Christ who gave him strength to resist greed when living in prosperity. And it was Christ who gave him strength to endure the difficulties associated with being in need. 

Do you find yourself always wishing for something different? To be somewhere else? To be with someone else? You are choosing to detach your mind from your current circumstances and feel sorry for yourself because of the things you desire but do not have.

The decision of contentment is the decision to change your focus from yourself to Christ.

Choose to be content.

Mark Stinnett