by Joyce Kang
Discontentment. We have all experienced it to one degree or another. When life doesn’t go according to our plans we often justify our dissatisfaction by blaming our circumstances, other people, or perhaps even God. At our recent retreat, Pastor John Kim preached a series of sermons addressing the root of discontentment and the hope believers have in cultivating true joy in Christ.
The first message challenged me to consider the seriousness of a complaining attitude and how it is rooted in a deeper heart issue. Like cancer a discontented heart is destructive in nature, a sickness that spreads quickly through the whole of your spiritual life, while infecting others and robbing God of His glory. Proverbs 3:5-6 commands us to trust in the Lord with all our heart, lean not on our own understanding and acknowledge Him in all our ways. When we complain, we do the exact opposite and reveal a lack of trust and submission to God’s will for our lives. In our arrogance we claim to know better than Him, and by doing so our actions show that we despise our Creator and reject His leading in our lives.
In the following two sessions Pastor John exhorted us to hope in Christ and have the Gospel as the driving force in cultivating true joy. Jesus Christ has already met our greatest need on the cross. We were dead in our trespasses and sins, but God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, made us alive together with Christ (Ephesians 2:1, 4-5). Once deserving of nothing but eternal condemnation, Christ’s saving work on the cross granted us forgiveness of sins and adoption into His family. Ephesians 1:3 also tells us that we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing through Christ. He has given us all that we will ever need to be truly content in this lifetime and that truth should humble us daily. While it is impossible for a sinful heart to cultivate contentment on its own, with Christ as the object of our affections we can be freed from the enslavement of discontentment. Paul understood this incredible gift of grace and, as a result, learned the secret to rejoicing in every circumstance (Philippians 4:10). Like the Apostle Paul, true contentment must be nurtured and can only begin with a proper understanding of the Gospel.
The final session focused on discovering the secret of contentment in the midst of our suffering. As we examined Paul’s response to his hardship in 2 Corinthians 12:8-10, I was reminded of my need to trust in the unchanging character of God and rely on the sufficiency of His grace to sustain me in my times of weakness. My trials, as overwhelming as they may seem to me at times, are not arbitrarily given to me by a cold and distant God. Instead each hardship has been carefully orchestrated to expose the hidden sins of my heart, wean me from the false securities of this world, and draw me into sweeter fellowship with Christ.
Overall the messages helped me to realize that in the grand scheme of things, my circumstances are really not about me but are opportunities to bring glory to God and encouragement to others. God has entrusted each of us with unique trials to use for His kingdom purposes, so the next time we are tempted to grumble we ought to remember that there are greater things at stake than our own comfort. In fact every opportunity is a chance for us to make much of Christ and to make His glory known. The providence of God will always lead us to exactly where He desires us to be, and as a believer we have the security of knowing that He will work all things for His glory and our benefit (Romans 8:28). And as we continue to submit ourselves to the loving guidance of our Father, we will learn to walk through life with a joyful, steadfast spirit.