My first blog entry on contentment was a while back and my thoughts have evolved a little bit since that. I decided to do a part two just to add some thoughts on what I’ve been processing lately in my devotional times.
So in my last entry I said, “Once we discover that He is what our hearts truly desire and long after, we will be content.” While I still think that’s true, I now think this inward struggle to maintain contentment is going to be a lifelong commitment. I don’t think we arrive at contentment and we have it set. I think there will be temptations until we are in heaven with Jesus by our side!
Recently a speaker, Micca Campbell, came to our church to speak on this subject. I began processing some things she's shared and it gave me a little more courage to write some things down on how being discontent manifests itself as jealousy and envy in us women a lot of times which in turn allows us to wound other women.
Envy is defined as wanting something that you don’t have. Jealousy is the fear that something we have will be taken away.
When we lose our thankfulness for who we are and our place in life or what we’ve been given, we open the door for Satan to tempt us again as he has from the beginning, since the garden of Eden, when he showed Eve what was off limits to her. Eve allowed this discontent to creep into her thoughts and her heart which turned into actions which in turn have affected mankind forever.
Like all of us, I’ve been the object of others discontentment in life at times which has manifested itself as jealousy towards me on occasion in my life. And it’s not pretty. In fact, the Bible says in Prov. 27:4, "Anger is cruel and fury overwhelming, but who can stand before jealousy?"
I cringe saying that a bit because I have a fear that the reader might think that I think a little too highly of myself. But I know I’m not that smart, that talented, or that pretty. And I don’t have as many nice things as many of my close friends. Although I am happy with myself in these areas most of the time.
But, I have at certain times struggled to be content with what I’ve been given in each of these departments of my life.
Probably my biggest lifelong insecurity has been my looks. I was raised in a country where blue eyes and blonde hair were considered much more beautiful than my brown hair and brown eyes. And I have a very beautiful younger blonde haired and blue eyed sister. Everywhere we went in Mexico, she stood out. So you betcha, I had to struggle through this insecurity and come to the conclusion that I am okay with what God has given me.
And not only am I okay with it, I know I am blessed.
I can be blessed in the realization that I am enough to Him. I can be blessed knowing that God created me with a special and unique purpose different from my blood sister and to any of my other sisters in Christ.
It is so freeing to not be in competition with my sister or my friends! You know why? Because competitions have winners and losers. And at some point, each of us is going to come out the loser in some department if we play the comparison game. And as speaker Micca Campbell put it, “Competitive women turn other women into losers to make themselves winners. And that’s a form of idolatry.”
I don’t want to turn other women into losers – and I for sure don’t want to stand before God one day as an idolater!!
One of my most impacting memories from childhood involved my best friend from elementary school turning on me. We had been best friends for 3 years – we did almost everything together. Then one year in sixth grade – we decided to both run for class secretary and we both liked the same boy running for class President and you know where this is headed…..I won both. (Well, sort of. Although I obviously didn’t date at that age– rumor was, whether it was true or not, was that he liked me.)
Then my best friend found out she was moving away, and at that point, things were more than she could bear and she turned on me completely. She decided I was her #1 enemy and her #1 objective in life seemed to be to make sure everybody hated me before she moved away. I can remember her screaming at me hateful things on the playground and me getting so upset that I threw up in class. Talk about humiliating. Just so happened she sat in front of me, so I threw up on her!
This experience both completely dumbfounded me at the time, and to be truthful, effected me deeply for years. It has only been in the past ten years that I have been able to process this experience, identify how it wounded me, and gain healing from it.
You may think this sounds a bit silly to be so impacted by a seemingly harmless childhood encounter like this, but Satan used this to wound my spirit for almost two decades. There are many times I would reflect back on this friendship gone bad and allow Satan to speak his lies into me unknowingly that I must not be worthy of anyone’s friendship and that it wasn’t worth taking the risk to trust other women.
In my twenties, as the Lord was taking me through a healing time, I was reminded of this experience and asked the Lord to completely heal me from this and to reconcile this relationship if He desired. You see, I hadn’t seen this childhood friend in over 16 years. I had known her when we lived in southern Mexico where my parents were missionaries at the time and so were hers. After she moved away, I received one letter of apology from her, but we never reconnected again after that. I had no idea of whether she had married and what her new name might be, but I tried unsuccessfully on and off to find her online.
It was within the year after I prayed that prayer for reconciliation, that I received a call from my mom down in south Texas who said, “You’ll never guess who I heard from today!” Apparently, my childhood friend was living in the same town as my parents in South Texas and had been driving down the road one day and saw my mom’s real estate advertisement and recognized the name. She decided to contact my mom and see how I was doing.
I was in complete awe as I recalled my prayer to the Lord earlier that year and realized that he had orchestrated this for me. We talked and met up at a restaurant a couple of months later when I was visiting my parents. Although I did not need the meeting with her for me to receive healing from this past hurt, it was a beautiful reminder that God cares about the details of my life and that He answers my prayers.
I’ve also taken away from that experience that our own discontentment can lead to us wounding others deeply. I’ve also learned that Satan will use anything he can to wound us and thus hinder God’s work in us.
So you may ask – how do I find contentment? I truly believe it starts with a thankful heart. When you decide to focus on being thankful for who you are and what you have, you have taken a huge first step. A heart that is discontent believes that God is keeping something from them that they deserve, just like Eve did. A heart that is thankful recognizes and trusts in God’s sovereignty over their lives and is able to humbly submit to God whatever circumstance they are in. (I Thessalonians 5:16-18: Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.)
Think what might have happened if Eve had said, “Lord, I am tempted to focus on this one tree I can’t have right now, but instead I THANK YOU for all of these other beautiful trees with fruits and vegetables that I can freely eat from.”
The chapter of James 4 talks about this very issue and also says, “Humble Yourself and He will lift you up.” It is impossible to humble yourself before the Lord, if you are not thankful. Thankfulness is the first step in a humble and meek attitude. You cannot submit to God’s authority if you are not thankful to Him.
And let me just take this one step further and apply this to your relationship with your husband and say, it’s gonna be real hard to submit yourself to him as you should if you are not thankful for him….I struggle at times with this command to respect and submit to my husband as I believe God requires of me…but one of the biggest things that has helped me is to stop and remind myself of how very thankful I am for him and what a gift from God he is to my life…and suddenly his little imperfections that make me want to lash out at him or disrespect his authority over my life seem much smaller and much less important than they did a few minutes before.
I truly don’t think the lesson of contentment is a one time decision, but a lifelong commitment that we must come back to again and again. The flesh will constantly pull at us and entice us to give in to it, but we have been given the tools to fight against it. In fact, as we begin to age as women in a society that places such an emphasis on youth and beauty, we will have to keep this lesson in mind so that we can age gracefully with a beauty that shines from within that comes from a heart full of thanksgiving to God for who He has created us to be at that moment in time – wrinkles and saggy boobs and all..haha. (Can't believe I just said boobs in my blog. ha)
And when we learn this lesson of contentment, we will be free to minister to those around us in a much deeper way. As Micca Campbell (can you tell I enjoyed her talk?:))put it, “You can’t minister to women you are competing with.” You can rejoice in the beauty, or accomplishments or whatever of those around you and know that you have been blessed in a different way than them in order for your unique purpose to be accomplished.
You give others permission to be themselves when you are content with yourself. One effect of jealousy is that is could cause the person who is the object of our jealousy to shrink back and be less than God intended them to be. I know I have found myself doing that at times when I have been the object of someone’s jealousy – whether it be because of my job or my education or whatever. If you are the object of somebody’s jealousy, you have to realize that it is not your problem. Pray for them, but do not let their insecurities cause you to shrink back and be less than God has called you to be.
And those are my humble and imperfect thoughts on what I’m learning about contentment. I'm sure there's a lesson #3 for me down the road!
So in my last entry I said, “Once we discover that He is what our hearts truly desire and long after, we will be content.” While I still think that’s true, I now think this inward struggle to maintain contentment is going to be a lifelong commitment. I don’t think we arrive at contentment and we have it set. I think there will be temptations until we are in heaven with Jesus by our side!
Recently a speaker, Micca Campbell, came to our church to speak on this subject. I began processing some things she's shared and it gave me a little more courage to write some things down on how being discontent manifests itself as jealousy and envy in us women a lot of times which in turn allows us to wound other women.
Envy is defined as wanting something that you don’t have. Jealousy is the fear that something we have will be taken away.
When we lose our thankfulness for who we are and our place in life or what we’ve been given, we open the door for Satan to tempt us again as he has from the beginning, since the garden of Eden, when he showed Eve what was off limits to her. Eve allowed this discontent to creep into her thoughts and her heart which turned into actions which in turn have affected mankind forever.
Like all of us, I’ve been the object of others discontentment in life at times which has manifested itself as jealousy towards me on occasion in my life. And it’s not pretty. In fact, the Bible says in Prov. 27:4, "Anger is cruel and fury overwhelming, but who can stand before jealousy?"
I cringe saying that a bit because I have a fear that the reader might think that I think a little too highly of myself. But I know I’m not that smart, that talented, or that pretty. And I don’t have as many nice things as many of my close friends. Although I am happy with myself in these areas most of the time.
But, I have at certain times struggled to be content with what I’ve been given in each of these departments of my life.
Probably my biggest lifelong insecurity has been my looks. I was raised in a country where blue eyes and blonde hair were considered much more beautiful than my brown hair and brown eyes. And I have a very beautiful younger blonde haired and blue eyed sister. Everywhere we went in Mexico, she stood out. So you betcha, I had to struggle through this insecurity and come to the conclusion that I am okay with what God has given me.
And not only am I okay with it, I know I am blessed.
I can be blessed in the realization that I am enough to Him. I can be blessed knowing that God created me with a special and unique purpose different from my blood sister and to any of my other sisters in Christ.
It is so freeing to not be in competition with my sister or my friends! You know why? Because competitions have winners and losers. And at some point, each of us is going to come out the loser in some department if we play the comparison game. And as speaker Micca Campbell put it, “Competitive women turn other women into losers to make themselves winners. And that’s a form of idolatry.”
I don’t want to turn other women into losers – and I for sure don’t want to stand before God one day as an idolater!!
One of my most impacting memories from childhood involved my best friend from elementary school turning on me. We had been best friends for 3 years – we did almost everything together. Then one year in sixth grade – we decided to both run for class secretary and we both liked the same boy running for class President and you know where this is headed…..I won both. (Well, sort of. Although I obviously didn’t date at that age– rumor was, whether it was true or not, was that he liked me.)
Then my best friend found out she was moving away, and at that point, things were more than she could bear and she turned on me completely. She decided I was her #1 enemy and her #1 objective in life seemed to be to make sure everybody hated me before she moved away. I can remember her screaming at me hateful things on the playground and me getting so upset that I threw up in class. Talk about humiliating. Just so happened she sat in front of me, so I threw up on her!
This experience both completely dumbfounded me at the time, and to be truthful, effected me deeply for years. It has only been in the past ten years that I have been able to process this experience, identify how it wounded me, and gain healing from it.
You may think this sounds a bit silly to be so impacted by a seemingly harmless childhood encounter like this, but Satan used this to wound my spirit for almost two decades. There are many times I would reflect back on this friendship gone bad and allow Satan to speak his lies into me unknowingly that I must not be worthy of anyone’s friendship and that it wasn’t worth taking the risk to trust other women.
In my twenties, as the Lord was taking me through a healing time, I was reminded of this experience and asked the Lord to completely heal me from this and to reconcile this relationship if He desired. You see, I hadn’t seen this childhood friend in over 16 years. I had known her when we lived in southern Mexico where my parents were missionaries at the time and so were hers. After she moved away, I received one letter of apology from her, but we never reconnected again after that. I had no idea of whether she had married and what her new name might be, but I tried unsuccessfully on and off to find her online.
It was within the year after I prayed that prayer for reconciliation, that I received a call from my mom down in south Texas who said, “You’ll never guess who I heard from today!” Apparently, my childhood friend was living in the same town as my parents in South Texas and had been driving down the road one day and saw my mom’s real estate advertisement and recognized the name. She decided to contact my mom and see how I was doing.
I was in complete awe as I recalled my prayer to the Lord earlier that year and realized that he had orchestrated this for me. We talked and met up at a restaurant a couple of months later when I was visiting my parents. Although I did not need the meeting with her for me to receive healing from this past hurt, it was a beautiful reminder that God cares about the details of my life and that He answers my prayers.
I’ve also taken away from that experience that our own discontentment can lead to us wounding others deeply. I’ve also learned that Satan will use anything he can to wound us and thus hinder God’s work in us.
So you may ask – how do I find contentment? I truly believe it starts with a thankful heart. When you decide to focus on being thankful for who you are and what you have, you have taken a huge first step. A heart that is discontent believes that God is keeping something from them that they deserve, just like Eve did. A heart that is thankful recognizes and trusts in God’s sovereignty over their lives and is able to humbly submit to God whatever circumstance they are in. (I Thessalonians 5:16-18: Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.)
Think what might have happened if Eve had said, “Lord, I am tempted to focus on this one tree I can’t have right now, but instead I THANK YOU for all of these other beautiful trees with fruits and vegetables that I can freely eat from.”
The chapter of James 4 talks about this very issue and also says, “Humble Yourself and He will lift you up.” It is impossible to humble yourself before the Lord, if you are not thankful. Thankfulness is the first step in a humble and meek attitude. You cannot submit to God’s authority if you are not thankful to Him.
And let me just take this one step further and apply this to your relationship with your husband and say, it’s gonna be real hard to submit yourself to him as you should if you are not thankful for him….I struggle at times with this command to respect and submit to my husband as I believe God requires of me…but one of the biggest things that has helped me is to stop and remind myself of how very thankful I am for him and what a gift from God he is to my life…and suddenly his little imperfections that make me want to lash out at him or disrespect his authority over my life seem much smaller and much less important than they did a few minutes before.
I truly don’t think the lesson of contentment is a one time decision, but a lifelong commitment that we must come back to again and again. The flesh will constantly pull at us and entice us to give in to it, but we have been given the tools to fight against it. In fact, as we begin to age as women in a society that places such an emphasis on youth and beauty, we will have to keep this lesson in mind so that we can age gracefully with a beauty that shines from within that comes from a heart full of thanksgiving to God for who He has created us to be at that moment in time – wrinkles and saggy boobs and all..haha. (Can't believe I just said boobs in my blog. ha)
And when we learn this lesson of contentment, we will be free to minister to those around us in a much deeper way. As Micca Campbell (can you tell I enjoyed her talk?:))put it, “You can’t minister to women you are competing with.” You can rejoice in the beauty, or accomplishments or whatever of those around you and know that you have been blessed in a different way than them in order for your unique purpose to be accomplished.
You give others permission to be themselves when you are content with yourself. One effect of jealousy is that is could cause the person who is the object of our jealousy to shrink back and be less than God intended them to be. I know I have found myself doing that at times when I have been the object of someone’s jealousy – whether it be because of my job or my education or whatever. If you are the object of somebody’s jealousy, you have to realize that it is not your problem. Pray for them, but do not let their insecurities cause you to shrink back and be less than God has called you to be.
And those are my humble and imperfect thoughts on what I’m learning about contentment. I'm sure there's a lesson #3 for me down the road!
