Contentment Is a Choice

Contentment is a choice.

Oh, sure, it often feels like a natural, instinctive, emotional response to the circumstances we're experiencing, but that's just not true. People have endured some of the most orrific experiences known to mankind and still felt content, while others have been surrounded by outrageous luxuries and conveniences and still felt discontent.

So contentment can't be merely a response. It must be a choice.

It's easy to be fooled into thinking the grass is greener in someone else's situation, but that's an illusion. The idea of jumping ship, of moving on, of giving up, of changing loyalty, or even fighting back often seems like a path to greater contentment. But that assumes contentment is determined by our circumstances.

It isn't. Contement is a choice.

The challenges we face are tailor-made opportunities to practice perseverence, learn wisdom, and build character. Comparisons errode our satisfaction, but focusing on being grateful makes it SO much easier to choose contentment.

Perhaps that's why worship needs to be a way of life (as opposed to simply singing a bunch of songs or rehearsing a bunch of religious rituals on Sunday mornings). When we worship, we get our focus off ourselves and onto God. And when we focus on God, we can't help but notice how awesome he is, how generous he is, how gracious he is, how wise and wonderful and loving and kind and fun and mysterious and protective and over-the-top he is.

Pretty soon, our emotions are detached from our ever-changing circumstances and locked into his never-changing glory. From that springs gratitude, and from gratitude flows contentment.

Let's face it: All of us have days when we feel like we just can't endure it anymore and that there has to be something better out there -- some new job that will make us happy, some new relationship that will make us feel better, some new church with a better pastor where we will grow closer to God without enduring challenges, tensions, misunderstandings, or that weird guy who always sits in the row behind you and sings offkey... loudly!

But what if the circumstances we're facing are exactly what God knows we need in order to refine us and help us become all that he knows we can be? What if the dissatisfying brown grass on our side of the fence is actually the best place we can be right now? What if God was telling the truth when he said, "When troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing. And if you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking." (James 1:2-5 NLT)

We can choose to panic. We can choose to run away. We can choose to fight. We can choose to mope and grumble and complain so that everyone around us feels miserable and dissatified, too.

Or we can choose to worship and be content. Sounds like a good plan to me.