Contentment Devotion: “How does discontentment affect your life?”

“When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” (James 1:13-15)

Discontentment is a form of evil desire. Do you agree with that? Our world would say that discontentment, with a little bit of shifting the verbiage, can just be called ambition or drive. Nothing wrong with those, right?

Certainly, it’s not wrong to want to be the best you can be at something, to glorify God by pursuing excellence. But we so easily cross the line from godly ambition to sinful wanting, and the warning of Scripture is that sinful wanting always leads to sinful doing.

Even when we stop ourselves short of doing something sinful to achieve our desires, discontentment can show up in sinful worry. Jesus reminds us in Matthew 6 that no one can add a single day to his or her life by worrying. Yet, when we dwell on the things we don’t have, we can worry ourselves into all kinds of emotional and relational distress.

But Jesus’ words in Matthew 6 are also intended to put our worries to rest. “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?”

God loves you more than you can ever understand or imagine. He will never leave you without something that is needed to keep you on the road to heaven. Maybe he has blessings in store for the future that you don’t have yet; but knowing that he is good, you can wait on his timing. “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32).

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