Contentment is something a lot of people are looking for but sometimes we go looking for this most precious of commodities in all the wrong places and when that happens we get hurt – big time.

Back in the days when I was studying at Bible college, a good many years ago now, the principal of the college was a man by the name of Barry Chant and I remember quite distinctly one morning he came down to the common area where we all gathered before lectures and he announced that today was exactly fifty years since he’d started following Jesus. Fifty years! The more I came to know him as a teacher, as a colleague ultimately and as a trusted counsellor and friend, I realised how much of his life had been impacted by fifty years of walking with Jesus. The man has a maturity and a wisdom that are quite remarkable.

I say that as a preface because I’m about to share with you something today that he shared with me all those years ago. We were studying in our various streams of academia to become ministers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and I recall one lecture where he talked about the three things that generally bring ministers unstuck.

They’re really easy to remember because they all start with the letter ‘G’. Would you like to know what they are? Girls, gold and glory. Pretty simple, pretty powerful and the more I think about it those are the very same things that bring us unstuck in our search for contentment. Girls, or in the case of women guys, gold and glory.

I want to kick off with the first one of those today because unless we get this girls/guys thing under control then we’re not going to be content. The whole subject of the boy/girl, man/woman relationship and intimacy thing isn’t an easy one to talk about in this day and age without sounding a bit anachronistic because attitudes and lifestyles have changed a lot.

These days intimacy before marriage and indeed outside marriage is pretty much accepted in most societies as a fact of life. I think the current term is ‘friends with benefits’ where people engage in casual sex to meet their physical needs without the emotional entanglement of an exclusive boy/girl relationship. And most couples who get married today have slept together before they get married.

I heard a statistic the other day that fully 30% of married Australian men have visited a prostitute not to mention the office affairs, unfaithfulness and marriage breakdowns arising out of those extra marital affairs. And as the world around us becomes more and more accepting of promiscuity as purely a lifestyle choice, I start to find myself wondering ‘Hang on a minute, is it me that’s going crazy here? Am I the one who is out of touch by believing that physical and sexual intimacy belongs inside a marriage in this completely exclusive life long relationship between one man and one woman?’

Is the Biblical position on this is still tenable in this day and age? Then I pinch myself and I realise what Jesus has to say is as applicable today as it was two thousand years ago because truth, His truth is timeless. And this is what Jesus said when the religious leaders of the day came to ask Him about divorce. He said:

You’ve heard it said ‘You shall not commit adultery’ but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin tear it out and throw it away, it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.

And if your right hand causes you to sin cut it off and throw it away, it is better for you to lose one of your members than your whole body to go into hell. It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife let him give her a certificate of divorce’ but I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife except for grounds of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. (Matthew 5:27-32)

That seems pretty harsh doesn’t it? Pretty tough and rigid. If Jesus were alive today they’d probably call Him an extreme conservative, a fundamentalist but there’s a reason Jesus takes this apparently hard line and that reason is that God created us male and female in order that those of us who so choose can live in a lifelong intimate marriage as husband and wife. Plain and simple. Again here’s what He said quoting this time the first Book in the Bible, the Book of Genesis:

Some Pharisees came to him to test him and they asked him, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?’ And Jesus answered, ‘Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning made them male and female and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.’

So there is no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together let no one separate’. They said to him, ‘Why did Moses commands us to give a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her?’ And he said to them, ‘It was because you were so hard-hearted that Moses allowed you to divorce your wife but from the beginning it was not so and I say to you, whoever divorces his wife except for unchastity and marries another commits adultery.’ (Matthew 19:3-9)

The point is that we were created to be husband and wife and when we try and mess with that, when we try to break that it doesn’t work. Our physiological drive to reproduce is a very strong one, stronger in some than others to be sure but a strong one nevertheless. It’s a gift from God and it’s a gift that’s satisfied completely in the context of marriage as God has always planned.

You can’t be content chasing girls or guys as the case may be, outside marriage. It might seem fun at the time, exciting and alluring, fabulous but in the end it leads to emptiness and to loss because sex without love is always empty.

For me there is no one, there can never be anyone as beautiful as my wife. She’s mine and I’m hers, exclusively, no exceptions and in that my friend there is such great contentment. So if you find your eye or your heart wandering remember this; if you wander you will never ever be content, ever.

I know that completely flies in the face of contemporary beliefs and contemporary practice, it makes me look like a prude saying sex outside marriage, in all its different forms, is wrong well it ain’t me so please don’t shoot the messenger, it’s God. God wants you and me to be content, did you realise that? He places such a high value on contentment, on us being satisfied, fulfilled. 1 Timothy chapter 6, verse 6 the Apostle Paul writes:

Of course there is great gain in Godliness combined with contentment.

And therein lies the secret of God’s wisdom. Contentment and Godliness go hand in glove. You can’t have the one without the other. God created us, He knows us better than we know ourselves and through Jesus through His Word He’s telling us how to be content when it comes to our need to fulfil our desire for a male/female relationship.

Now a little bit later in the week I’m going to talk about singleness because not everyone gets married and singleness isn’t a disease, it’s a place where many, many people find contentment but the one thing that none of us will ever find contentment in is chasing gratification out there in a place where it will never satisfy.

God knows what He’s talking about, really He does and we step over that line to our peril. He loves us, He loves you and He loves me and as any loving father would He’s telling this to protect us from ourselves.

I’m going to tell you something today that you may not want to hear but when you do hear it you’ll know that it’s absolutely true. Are you ready? Here it is: money will never ever ,ever make you content. See I told you, it just won’t.

They say that love makes the world go round but so far as I can see it seems to be money these days that makes the world go round or at least it certainly makes our economies tick over. In fact it seems to me that economies, governments and people at large, ordinary punters like you and me are addicted to conspicuous consumption, to fuel our own personal growth and wealth and status and luxury and what other people think about us. Not to mention fuelling the Holy Grail of a prosperous nation – economic growth.

I really don’t think we even begin to realise how addicted many of us are to over consumption. The next thing, the next dress, the next car, the next house, each one bigger and better and brighter and shinier than the last one. Noam Chomsky whom I know some people consider to be a rabid, left-wing critic, says something that really resonates with me as I look dispassionately and the multi-trillion dollar advertising industry that bombards me constantly with the exhortation to spend up big. He says:

All over the place from the popular culture to the propaganda system there is a constant pressure to make people feel that they’re helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.

Pretty much true isn’t it? Advertising puts its finger on your feelings of inadequacy in order to get you to purchase the thing that they say will make you feel adequate even when that thing they’re selling us may not be all that good for us. Heart healthy margarine where in fact it’s worse for us than it is good for us. Wrinkle cream, come on you women which one of you can resist the advertising line ‘Look ten years younger in just fourteen days’?

Analyse any advertisement, television, radio, print, bill board and at its heart it points out our sense of inadequacy and promises to deal with that problem to make us content if only we’ll part with our hard-earned cash. It’s true. Now am I saying that all consumption is bad? No. Am I saying that we all should be poor and Church mice? No.

But what I am saying is that in our yearning to feel satisfied many people swallow this implicit lie that the advertising industry is telling them and they go looking for their satisfaction and their contentment in wealth and the things it can buy only to spend a fortune to discover that they’re living a shallow life and there’s simply no contentment in wealth.

Well let me save you some trouble, God’s known that for rather a long time and He’s gone to the trouble of telling us that over and over again. Here it is through the words of one of God’s servants, King Solomon, who was one of the richest and wisest men who has ever walked the planet. Ecclesiastes chapter 5, verses 10 and 11.

The lover of money will not be satisfied with money nor the lover of wealth with gain, this is also vanity. When goods increase those who eat them increase and what gain has their owner but to see them with his eyes.

As an experienced practitioner in trying to satisfy myself with wealth I can tell you that word from God’s Bible is absolutely true. Now I don’t know where you’re at but I’m aware that many of the people listening today may not have a relationship with Jesus so when I share something from the Bible you’re thinking, ‘Well yes, so what?’

Fair enough. So let me share with you something that the great British journalist Bernard Levin wrote and here’s a man who is a professed atheist:

Countries like ours are full of people who have all they desire and yet lead lives of quiet desperation, understanding nothing but the fact that there’s a hole inside and no matter how much food and drink we pour into it, however many motor cars and TV’s we stuff it with, however many well-balanced children and loyal friends we parade around the edges of it, it aches.

So many people relate to that paradox, the more we try to fill ourselves up the emptier we feel, the more we consume the less satisfied we are. So what are you consuming? What are you spending your money on and how much does this desire to have, have its dark tentacles wrapped around your heart with a vice-like grip that’s robbing you of the contentment that God wants you to have?

I talking with a man, a farmer, just before Christmas last year and he was telling me how grieved he was at the consumerism that he was surrounded with at Christmas. He and his family had decided not to give one another Christmas presents anymore because they had all they needed. They decided to give to those in need instead.

If there’s one thing that will rob us of contentment faster than just about anything else, it’s greed and if there’s one thing that will set us free from that terrible malady faster than anything else, its generosity. Letting things go, giving to those who need more than we do.

I was quite shocked actually how prevalent is the exhortation in God’s Word to give generously. It’s something that God tells us to do all the time not because He’s in desperate need of our cash to fund His work although that is how God funds His work on this earth, through His people. But because He wants our hearts and He knows that our hearts are tethered firmly to our wallets and the way He sets us free from the discontentment of putting our hope and our trust and our desire in wealth is by getting us to part with it sacrificially.

Have a listen to this, 2 Corinthians 9:6-8:

The point is this (writes Paul) the one who sows sparingly will reap sparingly and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion for God loves a cheerful giver and God is able to provide you with every blessing and abundance so that by always having enough for everything you may share abundantly in every good work.

You see God’s plan is to set us free from this addiction to wealth so that we can be content. The one thing that that farmer said to me I think is going to stick with me for the rest of my life is this, he said ‘It gives me such joy to see other people get such great benefit out of what I’m able to give. So much more joy than if I’d kept it for myself or if I gave presents to my friends and family that they didn’t really need’.

Bingo! He is right on the money, if you pardon the pun. There is a man whose heart is free from the love of money. There is a man who is set free from having to have the next thing, the next hit, the next short-term high from buying this or buying that and that’s what it’s like when you’re addicted to wealth.

I speak here from first hand experience because I very much used to be addicted to wealth, it’s like the heroin addict looking for their next trick. Do you think, do you really think that you can be content with your life if you’re always looking for the next hit? The love of money is ruining many a life, 1 Timothy 6:10.

For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from their faith and pierced themselves with many pains.

My friend, the love of money is going to tear you apart and I know that there are some people listening to this, maybe you’re one of them, who are squirming just a little at the moment because you know that this Word from God is for you today, it’s exactly where you’re at.

If you are you’ve just received God’s Word in the power of the Holy Spirit and He, He is able to do anything in you and for you to set you free from your addiction to wealth and to stuff, things that you couldn’t possibly ever do for yourself. All you have to do is ask.

I’m pretty sure that there’s not a single one of us who doesn’t want to be content. Contentment means that we feel as though we have our fill of the things we’re looking for in life and the great thing is that our contentment can overflow from us into the lives of others. But so long as we care what other people think about us we can never be content.

Have you ever seen one of those old western movies where the bad guy comes into the bar and he starts to shoot at the feet of the good guy to make him jump and dance and so the good guy is jumping and dancing to avoid being shot in the foot? Depending on the scene sometimes it’s funny like in the final movie of the Back To The Future trilogy and other times it can be really quite serious and scary. But anyhow it’s a motif that’s repeated over and over again in many a western movie.

Now just think about the guy who is being shot at, the one who is doing the jumping and the dancing, what do you imagine is going through his mind? Shock, terror, fear? The adrenaline must be pumping to stop him from being hit by the bullet. The one thing that’s not going through his mind at that moment is peace and contentment. Obviously, it’s a bit difficult to be content when someone is shooting at you, right?

And yet that, in a sense, is how many people are living their lives because they are so worried about what other people think of them. They’re so concerned about their reputation, they’re worrying about what people are saying behind their backs and all that comes from the fact that we want people to think well of us and to speak well of us and to like us. We worry about our reputations more often than we worry about whether or not we’re doing the right thing, whether or not our lives are honouring God.

I again speak with some authority on this because I used to be really concerned with what other people thought about me. Well I can tell you if that still bothered me I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing now. Some guy has put a video clip up on YouTube claiming I’m a heretic, well as well as lots and lots of encouraging phone calls, letters and emails I get the odd rude one or disparaging one too and the odd video on YouTube.

And if those things got to me I simply wouldn’t be able to keep on going. The miracle in my life is that God transformed me from someone who tried to be everything to everyone to someone who is content with who I am and probably more importantly, who I’m not, what I can do and what I can’t do.

I like you have strengths and weaknesses and I’ve come to grips with the fact that some things I’m just not good at. But it wasn’t always like that for me and so when you’re trying to be everything to everyone, when you’re running around keeping up appearances, man that is seriously hard work, that’s exhausting. And it was only when I started feeling safe in Jesus that I started caring less and less what people thought of me and said of me.

I’m me, you know what, I do my best. Often times I say things that God tells us through the Bible and that seems to be out of step with contemporary thinking. Well that’s it, I can’t be any more or less than I am. The problem comes when our reputation is more important to us than our relationship with Jesus. Let me say that again because this is important, the problem comes when our reputation is more important to us than our relationship with Jesus.

The problem comes when we go looking for glory for us and we forget that God doesn’t share His glory with any man, which is precisely the point that Jesus made in a powerful way. Have a listen to this:

I can do nothing on my own (said Jesus) as I hear I judge and my judgement is just because I seek to do not my own will but the will of him who sent me. If I testified about myself my testimony wouldn’t be true, there is another who testifies on my behalf and I know that his testimony to me is true.

You sent messengers to John and he testified to the truth, not that I accept such human testimony but I say these things so that you may be saved. He was a burning and shining lamp and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light but I have a testimony greater than John’s. The works that the Father has given me to complete, the very works that I’m now doing testify on my behalf that the Father sent me.

And the Father who has sent me has himself testified on my behalf. You have never heard his voice or seen his form and you do not have his word abiding in you because you do not believe in the one whom he sent. You go searching the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life and yet it’s they that testify on my behalf yet you refuse to come to me to have life. 

I don’t accept glory from human beings but I know that you do not have the love of God in you. I have come in my Father’s name and you do not accept me. If another comes in his own name you will accept him. How can you believe when you accept glory from one another and don’t seek the glory that comes from the one who alone is God? (John 5:30-47)

The point that Jesus is making here is that He’s not here to build an empire, He’s not here to build Himself up into an empire and be waited on hand and foot, He’s not here to get more disciples than the other Rabbi’s although in the end it’s exactly what happened. Jesus came to do His Father’s bidding and when people, those people with whom He was speaking, didn’t accept Him as the Son of God He knew precisely why it was, He put His finger right on the problem. Let me read it to you again, the last verse, verse 47, Jesus asked this question:

How can you believe when you accept glory from one another and you don’t seek the glory that comes from the one who alone is God?

Good question, right question. If people are seeking their own glory from one another, accolades and awards and pats on the backs and compliments, it’s a sure sign that they’re more interested in their own glory than God’s glory. A little later Jesus said to His disciples;

The time has come for the Son of man to be glorified.

Do you know what He was talking about? He was predicting His crucifixion. For Jesus being glorified meant sacrificing everything for you and me and now He sits at the right hand of the Father. One of the reasons that so many people aren’t content is that they’re chasing the glory of men, the glory of their own reputation and because people are fickle, you end up riding a roller coaster of public opinion and that’s no way to find contentment is it?

So long as you worry about your reputation and what other people think and what other people say you can never be content, ever. Jesus knew that, that’s why He said to them ‘I don’t accept glory from human beings’. Elsewhere John records that:

Jesus on His part would not entrust Himself to them because He knew all people and needed no one to testify about Him for He Himself knew what was in everyone. (John 2:24,25)

So who were the “them” that He didn’t entrust Himself to? The crowds that were following Him because they saw all the miracles he was doing. In other words He didn’t get suckered in by all the people who were oohing and ahhing at His miracles because He knew that they were the very same people who would one day be shouting ‘crucify Him’.

Yes we have relationships. Yes we trust those whom we love and our close friends. Yes we listen to trusted advisors who come to us and tell us some hard things sometimes about ourselves, that’s how it should be but the fickle opinions of people who are serving their own needs, the completely valueless taunts and words of flattery from people who themselves don’t have a strong and decent character, are not the yard sticks for our performance.

If we listen to them then we’re no different to the cowboy dancing to the shots of the bad guy in the western movies. The only yard stick to measure who we are and whether we’re living a good life or not is God and we find His yard stick, His measure in His Word the Bible. The beauty of that is that His Word is true and when we fail and when we fall short you and I, in Him, we have forgiveness through the grace of Jesus Christ.

That’s where you find contentment – nowhere else.

Not everybody on this planet is meant to get married. Some will stay single all their lives, others will find themselves single again through marriage breakdown or the death of their spouse. The question is can a single person be truly content?

The last time we talked about marriage and family on the program, last year I think it was, I had a number of requests from single people to talk about singleness. So today as we chat about contentment again I thought that that would be a great thing to do because there are some people who don’t want to be married, there are some people who are never meant to be married.

I was having dinner just the other night with a bunch of my class mates from the Royal Military College, Duntroon. Now we graduated from the college over thirty years ago as officers in the Australian army so it had been a while. One of the guys, a great bloke, salt of the earth, has never been married. He lives on a yacht on a mariner and works at one of the large free to air television stations.

Now this guy is a live wire, he’s always been that and he always will be. Some would call him eccentric. He is totally content being who he is, being single and I doubt he will ever get married, knowing him as I do can I tell you, I think that’s the right choice for him.

No I am not saying that everybody who is single is slightly eccentric, it’s just one example. But I think sometimes the rest of us, the ones who are married, sometimes we think that people who have never been married and are never likely to be married are a little bit odd but that’s not the case.

Some people are meant to be married and others aren’t, it’s exactly what Jesus said, Matthew chapter 19, verses 9 to 11:

And I say to you whoever divorces his wife except for unfaithfulness, and marries another commits adultery. So his disciples said to him, ‘Isn’t better not to get married?’ But he said to them, ‘Not everyone can accept that teaching but only those to whom it is given.’

So to me, when it comes to contentment and the decision to be married or single that’s the key. Some can accept the idea of being single, they like the idea of remaining single and so it’s an awesome choice for them as we’ll see in a moment it frees them up to get focused on God’s work without any restrictions or limitations. The rest of us need to see that as a perfectly valid choice. Others like me can’t accept that, I’m not one to remain single and so those people should seek out a wife or a husband as the case may be and get married.

And again it’s exactly what the Apostle Paul says, expounding a bit on what Jesus said. Let’s have a read, 1 Corinthians chapter 7, verses 1 to 9:

Now concerning the matters of which you wrote it is well for a man not to touch a woman but because of cases of sexual immorality each man should have his own wife and each woman should have her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights and likewise the wife to her husband for the wife does not have authority over her own body but her husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body but the wife does.

Do not deprive one another except perhaps by agreement for a set time to devote yourselves to prayer and to come together again so that satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self control. This I say by way of concession not of a command. I wish that all were as I myself am but each has a particular gift from God, one having one kind, another having a different kind.

To the unmarried and to the widows I say that it is well for them to remain unmarried as I am but if they’re not practising self-control then they should marry for it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion.

Some people might be surprised about the fact that the Bible is so direct about sexuality but hey, our sexuality is a big part of who we are. And as we chatted about this the other day we saw that God’s plan is not for us to fulfil our sexual needs in a casual relationship, sex is an amazing gift from God, it was after all His idea. So He knows we are designed for physical intimacy to occur in an exclusive bond that we call marriage.

Not everyone has that need. Paul makes the point that he himself was single, “I wish you all were as I am”. Why? Because as a single person you can very easily go and serve the Lord wherever He may call and that’s the key, I come back to it, God made me, God made you. He chose one life for me, He chose another life for you. We’re all perfectly made to live the life that God’s chosen for us and that’s the life we should be living.

Again the Apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians chapter 7, verse 17:

However that may be that each of you lead the life that the Lord has assigned to which God has called you. This is my rule in all the Churches.

I’ve been in Churches where single people aren’t included in family barbeques, somehow they’re shunned. I’ve seen it, perhaps you’ve seen it too and those of you who are single have no doubt experienced it. I’ve experienced it from the receiving end, I was single and thirty-six years old and often after Church on Sunday a few families would head off and go and have a barbecue together and they wouldn’t think to invite me along because I was single, I didn’t have a family at the time. That really hurts.

Some Churches have singles ministry, well fair enough but it’s almost as though we put singles over there in one corner and segregate them from families. When you think about it, it’s pretty crazy because if there’s one thing a single person needs is other people around them.

So I say to those who are single, if you’re content being single for goodness sake stay single. Singleness is not a disease, it’s something that God chooses for some people and it’s a high calling indeed as it was for the Apostle Paul. It can be an absolute wonderful way to live your life. It can be a completely satisfying way to live your life.

In fact the worst thing that a person can do who feels called to be single is to get married, I think that that life would just be a nightmare. But if you’re not content being single then as Jesus says, the Apostle Paul says, for goodness sake get married so that you can be completely fulfilled. Do what God made you to do, be who God made you to be, live the life that the Lord has assigned to which He has called you.

One of the most difficult things is the situation though where someone finds themselves single again either through the death of a loved one or through marriage breakdown and divorce. We don’t have time to go into the ‘single again’ situation fully today but I promise that one day, in the not too distant future, we’ll do that.

For the rest of us we need to understand that those who were once married and now find themselves single again, they need our special love and care and understanding and support. People who have been divorced have typically been through a painful and bloody separation. It hurts terribly when this special, God anointed relationship between husband and wife which was meant to last a lifetime, is torn apart.

Is divorce a sin? Sure it is but so are a lot of other things and sin always hurts and special compassion is required to love someone through that. Those who have lost their husband or wife too, they need our love and attention particularly, let me say, the widows for whom God has a very special heart, Psalm 68, verse 5:

The father of the fatherless and the protector of the widows is God in his holy habitation.

So if you know someone who is single again for whatever reason, there is an opportunity, a great opportunity to show the love and the mercy and the compassion of God because the transition from being married to being single is a tough one as anyone who has ever been through it will tell you.

And to all you singles out there be content as you have so much time to spend with the Lord, to draw close to the Lord, to experience His presence in a unique and beautiful way. Let Him be your all in all and cherish greatly your time with the Lord.

Sometimes we feel the waves of discontent sweep in over our hearts. There’s something going on, that one thing, whatever it is in your life and it’s robbing you of contentment. How do you get over that? How do you rediscover the contentment you once had?

You’ve had that experience right? Things are going along okay but then something happens at home or at work or maybe it’s just something going on in your heart and the contentment you once had bingo it’s gone.

Have you ever stubbed your toe? You know, whack, you hit your big toe on a brick or something, ouch it hurts. The rest of your body is fine, your head’s good, your eyes, your ears, your mouth, tick. Arms and legs, fine, torso, nothing damaged, nothing hurting there, it’s just this one little part of your body, your big toe that is throbbing.

And so despite the fact that every other part of you is fine all your attention goes to your throbbing toe and your sense of well-being has just evaporated in an instant. All the other good things that were going on around you are completely forgotten as you focus on your aching toe.

Well that’s how it often is with our sense of contentment. You look around, the hilltops and the valleys, the nice sunny happy bits and the not so sunny unhappy bits and your attention has this habit of focusing, fixating if you will on the one thing that’s not going well in your life. You’ve done it, I’ve done it; it’s a really common thing that happens to us.

If we weighed our whole life, all the blessings that God’s given us in the overall scheme of things we should be content but you know, it’s like that throbbing toe, it’s just we can’t get our minds off that one thing and that one thing is robbing us of our contentment.

It might be a bit of tension at work, maybe you have a difficult boss or a peer who’s been undermining you. Perhaps one of your children is going through a really difficult phase in their lives or your wife or your husband isn’t turning out to be all that you’d hoped for. Or maybe it’s something really big and you feel like it’s closing in on you like you’re in a dungeon.

So what’s the answer? How can you move from discontent to contentment? Well I’d like to take you into a dungeon to show you how Paul and Silas did it. They’d healed a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and as a result people weren’t too happy because the owners used to make money out of her:

The crowd joined in in attacking them and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods. After they had given them a severe flogging they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely. Following these instructions he put them in the inner most cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.

About midnight Paul and Silas are praying and singing hymns to God and all the other prisoners were listening to them but suddenly there’s an earthquake so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains fell off.

When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open he drew his sword, he was about to kill himself because he thought that all the prisoners had escaped but Paul shouted in a loud voice, ‘Don’t hurt yourself, we’re all here’. The jailer called for lights and rushing in he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas.

Then he brought them outside saying, ‘Sirs, what must I do to be saved?’ They answered, ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your whole household’. They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house and at the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds and he and his entire family were baptised without delay.

He brought them up into the house and set food before them and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God. (Acts 16:22-34)

So Paul and Silas had done the right thing but a crowd had attacked them because no good deed ever goes unpunished, right? They’re arrested, they’re severely flogged, they’re thrown into prison, in the inner most cell with their feet in stocks. There you go. That would be enough to rob you and me of our peace and contentment for the day wouldn’t it?

I suspect if we were in that prison cell, with our wounds aching, we’d be angry or hurt or afraid, asking God ‘What the blazes was going on?’ Even sometimes shaking our fists at the Lord. That might be a natural reaction but Paul and Silas, around midnight we’re told, were praying and singing hymns.

Praying and singing hymns? Can you believe that? They were worshipping God, they were living through this misery with thankful hearts and the rest is history. God came and busted them out of prison. There was such power in praise and thankfulness.

When we rise above our circumstances, when we lift up our hearts and worship our Lord He has the power to break us out of our prison of despair. The rest was history, the jailer was saved, he cares for them, he feeds them, he washes their wounds, his whole household is saved and the next morning they’re released.

The single most unnatural act when we’re in that dungeon with our feet in stocks is to praise God, to pray, to sing songs, to lift our hearts, to lift our eyes, lift our hands heavenward and worship God. But that’s exactly what we need to do because that act of worship is music to God’s ears, that act of worship from the heart is how we connect with the Lord amidst our desperate circumstances. That act of worship is what so often triggers a powerful intervention from God to change everything.

The number of times in my life where I’ve been sitting in my usual chair in my study early in the morning facing this issue or that issue and I’ve just taken Him at His Word and started to worship Him and started to give thanks and started to praise Him even though that’s the last thing I felt like doing. The number of times He has come and broken me out of my prison cell of despair, well I’ve just simply lost count.

God shows up every time. I get up and I walk away from those encounters with a sense of joy and peace and contentment despite the circumstances. To me it’s like a miracle. How does God do that? I’m really not sure but He does, He does it again and again and again. The way we move on from our discontentment is to worship God. It’s that simple, and if you don’t believe me try it, it works.

It happened to Paul a second time some years later. He was in a Roman prison, chained to his guard, waiting his death sentence. Now this short passage from Philippians chapter 4, verses 6 and 7 is going to be familiar to many but there are two words that I bet you’ve glossed over as I did for many years, two words that change everything. Paul says:

Do not worry about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be made known to God and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Did you pick which two words I was talking about? With thanksgiving is the key. How often do we go to the Lord with a problem and we grumble and we complain as though He’s some call centre operator who can fix a problem in our bank accounts. I don’t know but I imagine He must get sick of the stinking attitudes from us over and over again as we grumble and complain, ‘Oh God what are you doing?’

His call is to go to Him with thanksgiving in our hearts, with thanksgiving on our lips, with a sense of wonder and anticipation what He’s going to do, with a sense of expectation over the good things He’s going to do and like any good dad when He sees one of His kids coming to Him with the right heart, with the right attitude, with an attitude of faith, He can’t help Himself.

In His great and mighty heart filled with boundless love for us God can’t help Himself, He has to act because He loves us and just at the right time He’ll bust you out of your prison of despair and discontentment. He’ll break the shackles that hold you. He’ll set you free with joy and with peace and with contentment in your heart. He is such a wonderful God, He loves you so much, go to Him with thanksgiving in your heart.