Along the Way

How to Learn Contentment

Reading and meditating on Jeremiah Burrough's work, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, has been a tremendous challenge and encouragement to me. In the last two chapters he delineates how one attains a contented heart. He reminds us of several considerations and directions that should be done for directing the heart in contentment. Here, I'll mention a few.


There are several considerations for contenting the heart in any trial. Essential to our development in this virtue is focus of our thinking. In Colossians 3:2, the Aopstle Paul exhorts us to "Set our minds on things above, not on earthly things." Burroughs calls our attention to some of these heavenly thoughts that should we should make a practice of considering. First, we should consider the greatness of the mercies that God has given compared to the "littleness" of the things we lack. Paul says, "I consider that the present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us." (Romans 8:18).



Second, we should consider the abundance of the mercies that God grants and we enjoy. There is an immeasureable wealth of spiritual blessings that can fill our thoughts throughout every day (Ephesians 1:3). Burroughs uses a word picture to convey this truth: "If you pour a pailful of water on the floor in your house, it makes a great mess, but if you throw it into the sea, there is no sign of it. So, our troubles considered in thenselves, we think are very great, but let them be considered with the sea of God's mercies we enjoy, and then they are not so much, they are nothing in comparison."



Third, Consider the way of God towards all his creatures. God allows and determines all kinds of situations and circumstances for all his creation: "we do not always have summer, but winter succeeds summer; we do not always have day, but day and night; we do not always have fair weather, but fair and foul." Why should we think it strange that there are a variety of circumstances with us, sometimes in the way of prosperity, and sometimes in the way affliction?



Fourth, consider that we have a very short time in this world. the trials and troubles that we endure are but for a moment in the great expanse of eternity. "Do but shut your eyes and soon another life is come." The Apostle Paul put it this way, "Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light an momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." (2 Corinthians 4:16-18).



Fifth, remember others who have been faithful in great adversity. Hebrews 11 gives a list of faithful men and women who believed God in spite of intense opposition and trial. Some experienced in their lifetime the deliverance and miraculous provision of God. "Others were tortured and refused to be released, . . . some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated." Since we follow great heritage of faithful men and women, Jesus included, let us joyfully keep our focus fixed on the goal and "scorn the shame" that this world heaps upon us.