Contentment

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Thanks for tuning in to the Met Church podcast. Here at the Met, we are all about connecting people to God and one another. If you have any questions or want more information about what's happening here at the church, then head to our [email protected] we would love to stay connected with you throughout the week through social media, so be sure to connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter now. Enjoy the message. [00:00:25] Speaker B: Good morning, Met Church. How are we doing this morning? We always pray that there's nobody going into labor on this stage. And so we got through another one. We have one more. It makes me kind of nervous to be up here because I'm like, I already look pregnant. I don't want anything. We're so glad you are here this morning. It has been a great weekend. You guys just saw five baptisms. How awesome is that? Come on. We have five more in the next service, which is awesome. And we also have had a pretty big weekend for our students. Met Youth had my weekend this weekend. It was all night Friday, all day Saturday. And So we had 134 students here on campus being encouraged in their faith, growing in their faith, and having a lot of fun. And so I just want to give it up to our YouTube. Our youth team, Scott, Seth and Molly. Give them a hand. If you see them walking around, falling asleep, just kind of help them up. They may be a little tired this weekend. But we have been in our series called Healthy. And we started out in talking about a healthy heart. And Pastor Bill talked about different things like emotions, anger, your mind, your will. And then two weeks ago, we transitioned into what does a healthy family look like? And Pastor Bill spoke on marriages. What does a healthy marriage look like? And then last week, and we found an interesting number and Bill talked about it, how 47% of the world is actually single. And so last week he talked about what does it look like to be a healthy follower of Christ and to be single. And this week I want to talk about something that comes from a healthy spiritual heart, but it's actually something that we should want and should have in our lives no matter what stage we are in. So whether you are married, whether you are single, whether you are here and you're a parent or a grandparent, or you're here and you're a student, I want you to know that today is, for you, something that we all should want more in our life, and we should want it more consistently. Contentment, being content with whatever God is doing in your life at the current time. First Timothy 6:6 says this. But godliness with contentment is great gain. Now think about that for a second. If somebody were to approach you and say, hey, I have something that could be great gain in your life, most of us would be like, I wanna hear what you're selling. I wanna know what you're talking about. Cause I want great gain in my life. So this morning, after that scripture, I pray that our hearts are in a place where we wanna hear what God has for us so that we can have that great gain. When it comes to gains, not just gaining weight. Cause that's pretty easy. But when it comes to gains, stay in a gym. Like, most of us want to be healthy. Most of us would love to have muscles and, you know, all those kind of things. But the thing is about gains in the gym. You can't just think about it and talk about it. You can't sit on the couch, watch an exercise video and be like, yep, that's where I'm headed, and not do anything. Have you ever done that? Yeah, you actually have to go into the gym, lift weights and eat healthy. It requires work. Complacency is being satisfied with the situation, circumstance you're in while not working to improve it. It's kind of the oh well attitude. That is something that is passive and waiting for things to happen and it's gonna be very unfulfilling. But contentment, it is the attitude of working hard and being able to be happy with the outcome no matter the results. It's growing, it's developing. And when you think about the words in the Bible spoken to believers, it is words of action. It is words that go like, go, be, work, do, listen, go and make disciples, be on guard, be still, work as unto the Lord, do unto others. These are all movement words. They're action, they're active, and they're living, not just sitting around. These are words that encourage us to work, to be like Christ, to work to serve God and to work to serve others. It reminds me of the life of Paul. If you don't know about Paul, he wrote most of the New Testament. He was one that traveled around and told people about Jesus no matter what. And what we know about Paul is he experienced some great, great things for Jesus. He got to go see life change. He got to see people come to a following relationship with Christ. He got to see their lives turned upside down because of their relationship with Jesus. He got to see churches started. Not only started, but he would come back around and help them in their needs. He got to experience miracles. Miracles in his own life and miracles and the lives of. Of others. He got to experience great things for Jesus. He also got to experience some pretty bad things for Jesus. Christianity was illegal. So Paul was. Or so he was persecuted, right? He was beaten, he was arrested. And yet we see in Philippians 4, verses 11 through 12, this is what he said about life. Not that I was ever in need. For I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. I know now how to live in almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or with little. See, he wasn't just content when his belly and his bank account were full. He wasn't just content when things in his life were going well. He had learned to be content in every situation. And I know you're here this morning, and some of you, you're like, but, Corey, you don't even know what I'm going through. You don't know how hard my life is right now. You don't know the trials that I am dealing with. And honestly, I don't. But I do know what God says about what's going on in your life. In the book of James, it says, consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kind, because the testing of your faith produces perseverance, even in the struggles and the trials and the things that don't seem good in your life. God. God is still working, if you will just open your eyes and see what he is doing. But how do we have this contentment? Where does it start? How do we have this peace where we're okay with whatever God is doing in our lives? And it starts with having inner peace. So if you're taking notes, that's the first thing, inner peace. For us as followers of Christ, it's the peace that passes all understanding. Because we have faith in what God did through Jesus in his life, his death, and his resurrection. That's the peace that we have. But it wasn't always like that. Think about in the Old Testament, before Jesus. Even though the Bible, the whole Bible points to Jesus, they weren't always aware of Jesus. And so in the Old Testament, God's people, the Israelites, they knew that they needed to have faith in God and what God was gonna do in their lives, even when times were bad. And we see this in the beginning, when they were overtaken, they were slaves to the Egyptians. Pharaoh was the ruler. And this is the life that they had until God sent Moses to free his people. Most of us Know the story. So Moses goes and he pleads with Pharaoh. This is what God. This is what God wants. And he's like, nope. So what does God do? God gives him a little umph. He sends some plagues to Pharaoh. And eventually Pharaoh's like, okay, stop. Take your people. Let's go. So God's people are freed, and they are now in the desert going to the promised land. And as they go to the promised land, we see God's people have this inner peace, have this contentment. And then often we see them lose this inner peace and lose this contentment because they take their eyes off of God. And it happens over and over. And what happens? Every time this happens, God does something. He sends something to kind of stir them back to him. He reminds them. We see it. There's a time where he sends a plague to his people so they can kind of. Okay, because when things are hard, who do we turn to? God. So we see this happen, and then we see them go. And they go. And they actually end up staying in the desert longer than they need to be because they doubt what God is doing and where God is taking them. Remember, they send in the spies. 10 out of the 12 come back and say, no way can we overtake this city. I know God said we could, but these guys are too big. There's no way. We have doubt. So God says, okay, you need to be reminded who I am. Spend some more time in the desert. Some of you won't even make it to the promised land. But this is what I need you to do so you can turn your eyes back to me. So we see it in the Book of Numbers. And the cool thing about this story is it appears throughout the Bible. And I'm gonna show you those parts today. We see that God's people, they begin to talk poorly on the living situation that they are in in the desert. You can imagine they begin to speak poorly. And so remember, God sent the plague before. What God does this time is a little different. He sends a bunch of snakes. Anybody else okay with snakes not being around? Yes. Me, too. So he sends these snakes, and these snakes start to bite the Israelites, and they begin to die. Who do you think they're turning to? God pretty quickly. So they go to Moses. Moses go to God. Please help us. We need God. We know. We turn from him. We need him. And so God goes to Moses. And we see in Numbers, chapter 21, God's response to Moses. It says, the Lord said to Moses, make a snake and put it up on A pole. Anyone who is bitten can look at it and live. So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then anyone who was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived. So God gave them a good situation. They decided to take their eyes off God. God wanted to turn their eyes back to him, and he gives them a solution. He gives them a thing that they can actually look at. Now the thing is, where did the power come from? Was it in the bronze? Was it in the figure of the snake? No, the power was always from God. So he turned their eyes back to God. But it's important for us to look at what made them turn their eyes away from God. And it's things that we deal with even today. And those two things that we saw that the Israelites did that turned their eyes away from God were comparison and complaining. Comparison and complaint. Now's not the time to hit the person next to you, okay? Just doesn't go well. They began to compare their living situation in the present to what they used to have. Think about that for just a second. What God was doing now in slavery under Pharaoh. They began to compare, and they began to find things that they like better about being in slavery. Have you ever had a friend who was in a horrible relationship, miserable the whole time, got out of it, seemed happy, and then all of a sudden, they started thinking back, well, I kind of did like. And you're like, what? You didn't like anything about that situation? We do that sometimes. Even though we have it better now, we begin to look back at something in the past or something that we thought was better in the moment. Theodore Roosevelt says this comparison is the thief of joy. You can have the joy of the Lord in your life, but when you begin to look around and compare what you have to other people, that joy will be taken away. God has given us so much, but yet we look to other places for what they have. When the Israelites began to compare their old life with their current life, they literally took their eyes off of the Lord. And I'll explain that in just a minute. But think about this. They were not just released out of Egypt, out of this slavery. Pastor Scott and I were talking about this yesterday. Actually, when they left, they had their hands full. Because in the story, it talks about how God sent Pharaoh or sent Moses to Pharaoh not only to get them released, but but to ask for clothing and all of their gold and silver. And guess what? Pharaoh did, okay? And so they didn't leave this slavery. They didn't leave Egypt empty handed. They left carrying all the clothes, all of the gold, and all of the silver. Everything that the world says is worth something, they had with them. Not only that, while they were in the desert. It talks about how quail would fall from the sky so that they could have protein. It said that the manna, the bread from heaven was on the ground like dew. It was everywhere. And in the desert, the one thing you think of that you need more than anything is what? Water. They had plenty. All they had to do was take the staff, hit a rock, and more water came out of a rock. That was to supply over 600,000 Israelites, not only the people, but all of their livestock. They had everything they could need. They had everything that the world said was worth anything because they took it all from Egypt and then physically had everything God had provided. Philippians 4 says, God will provide all of your needs. And he was proving it. And what did they do? They began to compare. And what did comparing do? It led to complaining. Does anybody like a complainer in here? You're like, you're tight on this one. You're tight. Nobody likes a complainer. I know I've complained in my life. I don't even like myself when I do it. But complaining does not. It does so many things. It's not healthy. It's not healthy for anybody, especially people around you. It's not healthy for you physically. And I found a study by Stanford that actually proves this. And what they came up with is they said repeated complaining actually rewires your brain to only look for negative things. Not only is that in your life, if you are around people that complain a lot, you begin to take on that as well. Another thing that it does is it releases cortisol. And cortisol is a stress hormone. It causes stress. And the more and more of that that you put in your body, guess what? You become sick, you become unhealthy, all these things start happening to your body. But lastly, and this was the most interesting to me, it can physically shrink your brain. There's a part of your brain called the hippocampus, and it actually shrinks it. This part of your brain is what you need for memory, and it's also what you need for problem solving. Let's not shrink that part, guys. Come on. But it's not a healthy thing when you're around complaining. When you're around comparing, it takes away that joy. And what I meant by it, it literally took the joy of the Lord from them. Think about this. When God took His people out. He was leading them to the promised land. It says in the Bible that he led his people by cloud, by day, by fire, by night. Meaning at any time, all they had to do is look up and they could see that God was with them. But they kept looking back. And I'm here to tell you this morning, when you keep looking back, you don't see what God's doing in front of you. I think the past is not something to live in, it's something to learn from. Look at the road ahead and what God is doing. Isaiah says God is doing a new thing. You will never see the new thing God is doing in your life if you're constantly looking behind. Something we can learn about contentment is when you take your eyes off God, you start to fill it with other things. Cause we all want contentment. And if it's not coming from Jesus, we begin to fill it with other things. And one of the ways that we do that is we take the things of this world and we turn them into the second thing this morning, idol worship. Now, these things are not all bad things, at least intended that way. But when they become worship, when they become our idols, when we begin to fill our lives with these things and try to find contentment in them, it does become something that is not healthy. And we see the same thing with the Israelites. Remember what Moses built, The snake, bronze snake on the pole, lifted up, they were healed. Well, they kept that. And we see it again in 2nd Kings 18:4. It's not up there, but I want to read it to you. It says, he, speaking of the king of the time, he broke into pieces the bronze snake Moses has made for up to that time, the Israelites had been burning incense to it. The thing that God gave them to heal them in the time turned into something that they worshiped. This was made for good, but yet God's people turned it into something that was bad. We do that today. Think about it for just a second. We begin to take things that God intended for good and turn them into idol worship, jobs stuff. Y'all remember the 90s? No fear. I used to have no fear. I thought it was so cool. And I remember my favorite shirt said, the man who dies with the most stuff still dies. That was for free. That was just for me, really, to be honest stuff. What about relationships? We try to find contentment in relationships instead of God. We will take anything that we can see that may bring some happiness, some joy, even for just a little bit. And we may try to put that in the place of God, when. When we take our eyes off of him, another big thing that we have to be careful of today, it's something that was made to help us and for good, but it can become something bad very quickly, and that is money. Dave Ramsey, he says that finances is the number one reason for divorce in our country today. I like to listen to the Guru, probably the biggest financial advisor in my life in the 90s, the Notorious B.I.G. when he said, mo money, mo problems, it reminds me of the older couple that went to the state fair, and when they get there, they're walking around, and the husband notices a new attraction. It is a helicopter, a real helicopter. Helicopter pilot. And you can pay $50 to get on this helicopter. And the thing is, is if you can last all three minutes on this helicopter ride without making a noise, you get your $50 back. So of course, he's like, come on. He's trying to pump his wife up. Let's do this. This would be awesome. I know we can do it without making a noise. And she's like, no, we don't need to do it. He's like, come on. It's gonna be so much fun. And she goes, no. He goes, why not? And she says, because $50 is still $50. So he goes home defeated. The next year, they come back, it's still there. So he gets excited like a little kid again. He's like, come on, we can do this. Come on. I know we can do it. We can ride it. It's gonna be awesome. We won't make a noise. We'll get the $50 back. It's gonna be great. And she says, no. And he goes, why not? Because $50 is still $50. So he goes home. But this time, he's coming up with a plan. He's like, I'm gonna do this next time. It's gonna be awesome. So they come back to state fair. It's still there. He goes up. He's like, hey, I know you said no in the past, but I think we can really do this, and we'll get our money back. Plus, I picked up some extra shifts. I have some extra money. Come on, let's do this. She finally gives in. She's like, okay, let's do it. They get into the helicopter. The helicopter pilot turns around, takes her $50. He says, okay, let's buckle up. Let's get ready. He goes, I'm gonna go pretty crazy. And we're gonna go for three minutes. Remember the rule. If you make a noise, then I get to keep your $50. If you don't make a noise, I'll give you your money back. Awesome. You guys ready? They weren't gonna say anything. Cause they didn't wanna lose their money. So they gave him the thumbs up. So he takes off. I mean, he is first one. He curves around, he's taking. He's doing things that you didn't even know a helicopter could do. And he's going nuts. And he's doing all this stuff for three minutes. And he lands. They didn't make a noise. So he starts to get his money out to give it back to him, tell him how much he's impressed. He turns around and he sees that the wife is no longer there. And he goes, sir, what happened to your wife? He goes, oh, she flew out on that first turn. When you took it, her seatbelt came undone and she flew out. He said, why didn't you tell me? And he goes, because $50 is still $50. Money is mentioned in around 2,350 verses in the Bible. This is more than faith and prayer combined. See, God knew that money could be used for good. But it also could be something that we turn to worship. I know most of you are saying, prove it. Give me millions of dollars and let me try this out. And I get it. With my kids, when they were younger, we would drive up and down the highways and we would see the lottery signs. And it would be ridiculous. Like $900 million. It keeps going up and up. And so I'd always play a game with them. I'm like, all right, guys, what are you doing with that money? When they were little, I'd be like, let's take out this much for taxes. You know how you do that? So you probably got about this lump sum. And so what are you doing with it? And of course, they start. They were little, oh, we would buy this and we would buy that. And I'd be like, stop it. That is wrong. And they're looking at me like, what? I said, guys, first thing you do if you win the lottery is you don't claim it right away. You put a team together. You need a lawyer, you need an accountant. You need a financial advisor. I mean, they're like, tiny. They're looking at me like, whoa. I'm like, you gotta be. You gotta make the right decisions. And you don't tell anybody you won the lottery. Cause they're all gonna want your money. And they're just looking at me like, here's the crazy thing. We don't Even play the lottery. But we're coming up with these schemes of what we would do if we actually won. But that's the mindset of a lot of us. I would do if I had. If I had a lot of money, I'd give it away. I'd be so generous. I would do so much with it. Can I tell you this morning? No, you won't. God calls us to be faithful with what he's given us. You got $10? Be faithful with $10. You got $100? Be faithful with. You got millions. Be faithful with millions that bring honor to God for his glory. Here's what Ecclesiastes 6. 9 says. And after I read it, I kind of laughed. Cause I was like, dang, I can't play my game anymore. It says, enjoy what you have rather than desiring what you don't have. Just dreaming about nice things is meaningless, like chasing the wind. Can I give you two practical things when it comes to money? I think maybe this could be helpful to someone. The first thing is this. Establish a reasonable standard of living. Dave Ramsey calls it act your wage. Live in a way where you have some excess at the end of your month. I know that may be tough sometimes, but live in a way that you have money to do things with. Okay. Do things with that. Honor God. The second thing is this. Establish a habit of giving. Establish a habit of giving. When I was little, I remember watching a movie called Brewster's Millions. Anybody seen that movie? I'm the only one. Okay, two people. Great. I probably shouldn't have been. I don't know if I should have been. Richard Pryor was in it. So I'm like. I don't remember being. Yeah. Anyway, Richard Pryor, John Candy. Richard Pryor was like a minor league kind of baseball pitcher struggling, and then somebody leaves him $300 million. But in order to get all of the money, he has to spend $30 million in 30 days. And there's all these stipulations. You can't just give it away. You can't buy certain things. It's very specific. And it was like, really, it was a struggle for him. I mean, you would thank gosh. But it was hard. Cause of all the stipulations. And I used to think when I was little, how awesome would it be to give away somebody else's money? Give me 30 million. This is my mindset as a little kid. And as I got older and I grew in my faith, guys, you know what I realized? That's exactly what we're doing. Everything that I have is given to me from God. My house, my stuff, the money that we have in our bank account, it's all given to me by God. It's God saying, here, be a good steward of what I give you. And so I began to. When I had that mindset, I began to think about, what do I do with my money? When I would begin to spend on a purchase, I would say, God, what do you. Is this what you want me to, you know, God, should I do I need a new vehicle right now? God, is this new house? Is this what you want us to do with your money? God, where do you want us to give? We try to teach our kids, hey, you need to bless the church because the church blesses us. And I'm on staff and I still feel that same way. But when you have the mindset that what you have is not really yours, but it's God's, the decisions you make on how you spend your money changes. So, God, what do you want me to do with what you have given me? The Bible says God loves a cheerful giver. And when you begin to hold tight to these things, like money, even though they were not intended to be bad, it can be something that becomes an idol in our life. So what's the object of your affection? Is it the things that God gives you in your life, or is it God himself? Because how you have contentment in your life when you turn away from God is you begin to have intentional focus. Intentional focus. Wherever your focus goes, energy flows. What energy do you want coming from you? Do you want it to be that of the world and the things of the world, or do you want it to be that of the Lord Jesus Christ? Instead of focusing on provisions, focus on the provider. This is the key to having a content heart, because greed and contentment are both heart issues. Colossians 3 says this. Since then, you have been raised with Christ. Set your hearts on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above things, not on earthly things. See, the thing about the bronze snake is it appeared so they would turn their eyes back to God. Well, it actually appears one more time in the Bible, and it appears before the most famous verse that most of us have heard before in the whole Bible. And it's interesting what it says because it begins to show you not only was it a refocus to God, but it was also a foreshadowing of what was to come. And it starts in John 3, verse 14 and 15. It says, this Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up. That everyone who believes may have eternal life in him. The refocus of on what's important, not the things that God gives us. But in the end, even the thing that God gave us was turning our eyes to Jesus. What he did for a small group of people back then in the Old Testament, he did for the world through Jesus in the New Testament, because it continues on to say, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. It's all about focusing our hearts and our lives on the one who matters the most. And in the end, that's what changes everything. Healthy marriages, healthy being single, healthy mind, healthy with your finances, healthy in every aspect of your life revolves around, where is your focus? Paul, who I read earlier, who seemed to figure it out, he had contentment down no matter what was happening in his life. I did find a part where Paul didn't seem to have contentment. In the Bible, it talks about Paul had a thorn in his side. And we don't know if this was an actual physical thorn, if it was a physical ailment. Have you ever had somebody in your life that was a pain in your side? Okay, some people believe that maybe he had somebody in his life that was giving him a lot of pain. And so what did he do? Apparently, he wasn't as content with it. He went to the Lord. And I want you to hear this. And I'm close. Closing Second Corinthians 12, he says, Three different times, I beg the Lord to take it away. Doesn't sound like contentment to me. And what does God say? He says each time he said, my grace is all you need. This morning, when we begin to look for contentment in other things, our jobs, our relationships, our stuff, our finances, when we begin to feel that, try to feel that contentment in our lives. My prayer is that you hear these words every time you try. My grace is all you need. Because until God is enough, nothing else will be. Let's pray. God, thank you this morning for your word. Thank you for the reminder that we need this morning to keep our eyes focused on you. Just like the Israelites, we have your presence with us even here this morning. And in our lives when we leave God, may we never take our focus off you. May we never turn to the world to fill our lives. And God, when we have these moments, when we start to turn to other things for contentment. God, I pray that you remind us. God, send us things in our lives, as painful as they may be sometimes, to return our focus to you. And may we always have the heart to that. Your grace is all that we need. We love you and we thank you. It's in your name that we pray. Amen. [00:36:02] Speaker A: Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you have any questions or prayer requests, please contact us by visiting metchurch.com so that we can follow up with you this week. We look forward to seeing you next week.