I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at length you have revived your concern for me. You were indeed concerned for me, but you had no opportunity. Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. Yet it was kind of you to share my trouble.
Philippians 4:10-14
The only sure defence for a
budget is contentment! Contentment, however, does not
come naturally. St Paul had to learn it, as he explains in the above passage.
It seems to me that many people
read the above passage and assume that when Paul wrote, ‘I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance
and need’, that the harder lesson was doing without things. But
I suspect that the harder lesson for Paul was facing plenty and having an
abundance.
I think this is likely because Paul seems
to have come from a rich family who were Roman citizens, whose wealth was
probably the means for him to study the Jewish law and to become a successful Pharisee,
so that there always lingered the temptation for him to settle back into a comfortable
lifestyle.
This weekend and next, I will
set out a few of the more basic principles of contentment and, in doing so, I
am indebted to Jeremiah Burroughs’s book, The
Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment.
The
road to contentment can only start by making up our minds to trust God. As
Burroughs explains, we cannot make a ship go steady by propping it outside but
there must be ballast inside the ship to keep it steady. A dogged trust in the
God who made us and saved us is the ballast that will keep a Christian going
steady in difficult times.
Burroughs
also compares getting more involved in ‘world affairs’ to walking among thorns, when
we could just as easily have gone another way. This does not mean that we
should withdraw from society unnecessarily, as if we could find peace and
contentment in an insulated Christian commune. Rather, it means to reject and avoid many of
society’s values, ambitions, principles and strategies.
At a
purely practical level, we need to remember that a consumer society engineers a
great deal of dissatisfaction and discontent in order to keep people spending.
The whims and fancies that society would persuade us are important are, in
fact, important to very few people, if any at all.
I would invite you to think deeply about what motivates you to spend on goods and services that you do not need. I am not suggesting that all these things may be illegitimate or unimportant purchases, only that you consider your motivations.
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Copyright © All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans
2013.
Scripture
quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright
© 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by
permission. All rights reserved.
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