Today I want to give you some practical strategies
for practicing contentment. We know we should
be content. We know discontent is a spiritual
place and we don't want to be in it. We know
it is an emotional place we want to live. So
how do we stay content? The first tool is praise
and thanksgiving. Praise and Thanksgiving are
great tools for all spiritual problems and roadblocks.
If you are going to be content, praise and Thanksgiving
are your foundation. Start your day with praise
and Thanksgiving. Do not open your eyes first
thing in the morning. Praise the Lord. Psalms
34 -1 says, I will bless the Lord at all times.
His praise shall continually be in my mouth.
My soul shall make her boast in the Lord the
humble shall hear thereof and be glad Oh magnify
the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together
I sought the Lord and he heard me and delivered
me from all my fears Simply good morning Lord.
Thank you for today. I give you praise because
you are good Let me just digress for a minute.
Sometimes we hear praise in Thanksgiving. It's
one concept But praise is giving the Lord the
glory and honor he is due because he is God.
Great, holy, righteous, pure, all those good
things. Thanksgiving is, I give you thanks because
you have. And it's a good differentiation, but
just a sidebar. Another tool is what you say.
Philippians 2 14, do all things without murmuring
and disputing. That means complaining and arguing.
This is generally a good rule to follow for good
interpersonal relations, but this rule also applies
to self -talk. Our thoughts. What are we saying
where no one can hear us? My husband tells the
story of his first job out of college and how
he had a horrible boss. His job was miserable.
Truly, it was. He would come home and just be
so glad to be away from work. Our pastor preached
a message on changing the attitude and giving
thanks to God in every situation. My husband
took that to heart, and every day on the way
to work, he would thank God for his job, his
boss, his day. And that changed his attitude.
It changed my husband. His situation was the
same. But he had learned the lesson and shortly
thereafter he was moved on to a new job. Side
note, him and I have a theme. Learn the lesson
and get out of the trial. So don't be hard -headed
and stiff -necked. Learn the lesson. Don't wander
around in the desert like the Israelites. If
the Lord tells you what to do, do it. Get her
done. Move on. Ephesians 5 19 says speaking to
yourselves in Psalms and hymns and spiritual
songs Singing and making melody in your heart
to the Lord Giving thanks always for all things
unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord
Jesus Christ What is your self -talk? What conversations
are you having with yourself? Stop yourself a
couple of times today and review what you've
been thinking about in the last few minutes Is
it building contentment or fueling discontentment?
Hebrews 13 5 let your conversation be without
covetousness and be content with such things
as you have For he has said, I will never leave
thee nor forsake thee, so that we may boldly
say, the Lord is my helper, and I will not fear
what man shall do to me. Once we've chosen to
praise God for what we have, be thankful for
what he has, and have the correct conversation
with our words and with our thoughts, we need
to analyze our diet. What are we consuming in
our eyes and ears? I'm picking the word consume
on purpose. What are we eating in our minds?
Is it breeding discontent? Is it disguised as
improving our lives? After we bought our first
house, I was complaining about my lawn with...
I'm sorry, I was comparing my lawn with my neighbor's
lawn. We had just moved in, we had bought a foreclosure
and the lawn, and I use that word loosely, was
up to my knees when we moved in. It was full
of weeds. I love being barefoot and I remember
stepping on these cut -off weeds that were woody
and they were really painful. I pulled those
things out of the lawn for several years. Anyways,
my neighbor was a gentleman in his 80s and one
day I was watching him mow his lawn, his lovely
lawn. It was so green, it was even, it didn't
seem to have any bare spots. And I was mentioning
to him how lovely his lawn was and lamenting
my own. He said, I'm pretty sure your lawn and
my lawn are about the same. I knew the saying,
the grass is greener on the other side, but I
was incredulous that he would even make that
statement. He clearly had a much better lawn.
I knew that I was a pretty practical person,
I don't sugarcoat much, so I just downplayed
the statement as him being nice. A while later,
I had walked into his backyard and realized it
was mostly moss. He had these lovely old oak
trees that shaded out all the grass. It looked
green and lush from my yard because it was green
and lush, but it was filled with moss, not grass,
like I was assuming. Talk about literally realizing
the grass is not always greener on the other
side. This is a good illustration of what we
consume because so much of it is the angle of
the camera or the editing We don't see or hear
reality And I'm not going to say much on the
topic because we all know that we spend what
we spend our time on what we consume affects
our thought process. We just lie to ourselves,
make excuses about it, about why it's okay for
us to consume things that breed discontentment.
We call it home improvement. We call it what
we do in our downtime. We call it educational.
But if we are discontent, we need to seriously
look at our diet. Last time we talked about 2nd
Corinthians and how generosity affects us. Others
and blesses God. Let me just reiterate. Generosity
changes our focus from what we want to what we
have to give. You just start looking at your
resources and your abundance. As Americans, we
have an abundance. We have a tendency to look
toward people who have more. But when we look
at people who have a need and start looking at
how to help them, our focus is on giving instead
of accumulating. If you notice that you are discontent,
make a conscious effort to look for who around
you needs something and start giving and blessing.
Practical strategies for contentment. Praise
and thanksgiving, what you consume, what you
talk about, and giving generously. Hebrews 13
to says be not forgetful to entertain strangers
for there but some have entertained angels unaware
Remember them that are in bonds as bound with
them and then which suffer adversity as being
yourselves also in the body