Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. Philippians 4:11
My eyes focused this morning on the words "therewith to be content." What does it mean to be content? Are we who live in this western culture ever content? Consumerism runs rampant and for the most part is almost unnoticed because it is so common. We have all heard the statistics on how much the richest countries in the world spend compared to the poorest. There is a wide gap between those two numbers.
This discrepancy is mostly the fault of the marketing industry which has done a masterful job of promoting anything and everything to the point that we can never be content. It is ingrained in us from the time we first see an ad promoting whatever in their enticing way. Because of that we have become a nation and a society of unsatisfieds, people who are never happy with what they have.
It reminds me of Isaiah chapter 55, the second verse:
Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.
What is more concerning than the fact that people are unsatisfied is what they are unsatisfied with. It is not a life filled with physical hunger or a an abusive situation or a lack of spiritual life. It is the lack of things that do not matter, the things that are only temporary and non-essential. In Maslow's hierarchy of needs the items people are seeking today are very high. This is not the food, water, shelter things that every requires. People are seeking for that that does not satisfy.
Ultimately, what the world needs is Jesus, as the song says. "Just a glimpse of Him," a view that God has something better to offer. Something that does not pass away, something that is of eternal consequence, something to make a person content.
"I have learned in whatsoever state I am in" - "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?. . . Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:35, 39
When we know that God loves us we can have that peace that passeth understanding (Philippians 4:7) and be truly content in the Lord
God Bless!
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