Content or Content?
Content or Content
“and the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful.”
Mark 4:19
Do we worry more about the content of something or about being content?
Being content is a choice that shouldn’t be dependent on the content of the situation.
Many times however we allow the content to overtake being content.
Had enough yet?
In this devotion content will have two meanings used in two different ways.
Content can be used to describe something that is contained. The material contained within something. The contents of something. Content can be what you put in front of you, what you surround yourself with or what you have in your life.
Being content is an action. It’s having no further need to be fulfilled - it’s being fulfilled to capacity. You have to actively be content, otherwise you’re discontent.
Being content should come from the inside and not from the things around you. The things around you are temporary and worldly. The things around us can alter the things in us.
So how can we become content without having to rely on the the things around us?
We have to realize we are not capable of doing it on our own. We need to understand that we are going to sin and that doing wrong is human nature.
It sounds horrible and so negative but it’s true. If you’re reading this, you’ve sinned. Crazy thought, right?
Since we can’t do it on our own and we need help, we have to turn in the right direction to be content. Sure their are things that can bring temporary contentment. Money, meaningless relationships and alcohol are only a few.
Lasting contentment comes from a lasting relationship. This relationship is with God.
When we turn to God and admit that we can’t do it on our own and that He is the only one that can help us - we will be content.
The results aren’t instant but the relationship is.
When we give our lives to God and place our trust and faith in Him, He will provide everything for us. As our relationship grows closer to Him it gets further from the world.
The contents of this world are not what makes us content. Our relationship with God is. Thus, the further we get from the world, the less we rely on the contents of the world for our contentment.
Through prayer and reading our Bible and having other Christ-centered Christians around us, we can feel content.
I still struggle here.
I don’t turn to the world anymore to feel content, I’ve adjusted there. But learning to break bad habits through building a relationship with God, takes time. It takes sacrifice and commitment. It takes discipline.
And it’s time well spent. I would rather spend the rest of my life building this relationship, giving glory to God, then having this world take my life from me.
A relationship with God will never end, it’s eternal.
Learn to be content. Place your trust in God and give your life to serving Him.
Read the following chapters where these verses are contained to understand the context that they were written;
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
Ephesians 6:12
“yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye needs go out of the world.”
1 Corinthians 5:10
“and the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful.”
Mark 4:19