Godliness with Contentment 08MAR2014

No Goal But Godliness:

“Godliness with Contentment”
I Timothy 6:6-10

©Good News Community Fellowship;
Marikina City, Philippines

Proposition
The secret of contentment is to focus
on Christ and to seek first the kingdom
of God and all else God will take of
them.


The song by U2 “I still haven’t found
what I’m looking for” Bono the lead
singer of U2 is singing the words, “I
have climbed the highest mountains. I
have run through the fields. I run, I
have crawled. I have scaled the cities
walls. But I still haven’t found what
I’m looking for.”

I think that song more than almost any
other, describes our culture today. How
many people are searching, running,
scaling, looking for something but not
finding it.


I still haven’t found what I’m looking
for. And, unfortunately, many people
think they are going to find it in the
accumulation of things.


It is the love of money, devotion to
getting more and more money that is
the root of all kinds of evil. Paul is
saying that the drive to get rich is a
source of all kinds of evil behavior and
it leads to many griefs.


Half of Jesus teachings deal with our
attitude towards money and
possessions. Jesus knows that God’s
greatest rival for our hearts would not
be Satan, but it would be money.


That’s why Luke 16: 13 says, “No
servant can serve two masters. Either
he will hate the one and love the
other, or he will be devoted to the one
and despise the other. You cannot
serve both God and money.”


With this in mind, let’s look at how we
can keep money in its right
perspective, and it doesn’t matter if we
are rich or poor, we all need to hear
God’s teaching on this.


We need to learn to be content with
what we have right now.


v.6-8 “But godliness with contentment
is a great gain. For we brought
nothing into this world, and we can
take nothing out of it. But if we have
food and clothing, we will be content
with that.”


The word “contentment” refers to
feeling satisfied with what you have in
life. Contentment is not simply giving
up and saying, “well, I guess this is my
lot in life.” Contentment goes much
deeper, and it’s more positive than
mere surrender to fate.

Contentment is not an obsession about
having more, but being secured in
what you have today, even if not
everything is yours.


I think, that’s important for us to learn
because we have this epidemic of
discontent today. We are satisfied with
our salary, until a friend tells us they
got a raise, and all of a sudden what
once was enough is not enough.


Everywhere you turn, people are
discontent with something in their
lives. And, it’s an idea that is
perpetrated by media: Television,
magazines through commercial
advertisements.


Women are satisfied with their looks
and figures until they see a fitness
model saying only 20 minutes a day
and you will look like me. We are
satisfied with our gadgets until we see
a new advertisement telling us all the
features and the technology.

But the problem is, we are always
being told that if we can just get a little
more, then, we would be satisfied.
Then we will be content. But that line
of contentment is always rolling so we
are never content, we are never
satisfied, we are never happy.

In fact, money does not solve our
problem of contentment. Eccl. 5:10
says, “Whoever loves money never has
money enough; whoever loves wealth
is never satisfied with his income. This
too is meaningless.”


A billionaire made a remark how
depressed he was with his income, “I
have billion dollars, bur Bill Gates has
10 billion dollars.” And that is the trap
of the love of money has, you can
never have enough of it, you can never
be truly content.

So, how can we learn to be content?
Paul gives us some reasons why we
should be content and how to bring it
about? Remember, Paul was the man
who wrote that he knew what it meant
to be content, whether he had riches
or poverty. So what are the reasons:

1. Godliness with contentment
brings great gain
There were false teachers who were
teaching that faith was a means of
prosperity. The so called “prosperity
gospel” is the same today. People who
view Christianity in that way miss the
whole point and they end up in
discontentment with what they have.

But if you have godliness (to be like
God and be like Christ) with
contentment you are at peace. You are
no longer running the rat race and
being enslaved to the ways of this
world. So, it is a great gain.


2. We brought nothing into this
world.
We didn’t come into this world as the
owner of anything, we came into this
world poor and naked, and whatever
we have received, we had received it
from someone else.


And that someone else came into this
world the same way we did. So,
eventually we realize that everything in
this world belongs to its original owner,
and, that is God.


Everything we have, we have because
of God’s generosity. However, it is by
no means diminishes our efforts and
hard work, but it means that God is the
owner of all things and we are simply
managers of His property. What we
have are gifts from God and therefore
we should be content.

Remember, we came into this world
owning nothing, it all belongs to God
who gives us all these things for our
enjoyment.


3. We will leave this world emptyhanded.
Many of us today are so engrossed
with obtaining, accumulating
treasures, money in this world to the
point of neglecting the things that
really matter.


We sacrifice our family, we sacrifice our
time for our faith to grow all to get
more money to buy more things, and
for what? Knowing that one day, they
may be taken away from us or we will
leave them behind.


How empty we will feel if we stand
before God someday if our
preoccupation throughout our lifetime
has been on material things. Suddenly,
all the wealth we have accumulated
would not matter in eternity. We have
to leave them behind.

What will matter will be whether or
not we were honest, compassionate,
and generous with what God has given
us.


Matthew 6:19-21 “Do not store up for
yourselves treasures on earth, where
moth and rust destroy, and where
thieves break in and steal. But store
up for yourselves treasures in heaven,
where moth and rust do not destroy,
and where thieves do not break in and
steal. For where your treasure is, there
your heart will be also.”

So, how can we ensure that our hearts
are in the right place?


A) Examine your life to see what is
important to you. Where is most of
your time spent trying to accomplish?
Do you place other things before your
time with God and His people?


J.C. Penny, a very successful
businessman once said, “If any man is
so busy that he can’t attend church on
Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and
Wednesday evening, then perhaps that
person has more work that God
intended them to have.” What’s
important to you?

B) Learn to control your money
instead of having it control you.


This means that we will have to live
within our means. We should not be a
one day millionaire. We should live
within what we have and learn to
discriminate between our wants and
our needs. We need to have a plan for
our money.

C.) Invest in your faith first and
foremost.


There is a story of a preacher who
went to visit a wealthy farmer who was
a non-Christian. The farmer drove and
they were out of the middle of his
property.


As they stood there the farmer
declared, “as far as you can see in that
direction to the west, I own it, and as
far as you can see to the east, that too,
is mine. He pointed to the other
directions and arrogantly said, “as far
as you can see to the north and south,
they all belong to me.

Now, the preacher pointed up towards
heaven and asked, “How much do you
own in that direction?”


Conclusion
Everything around us teaches us to
believe in accumulating material
things because we have an obsessive
compulsion to possess more and
more things, thinking they will bring
satisfaction in our lives.


We have the unquenchable craving for
more, or to grasp for more and more
(tukolike) that brings about a lack of
contentment.


The drive to accumulate more and
more damages our priorities and
relationships. Our priorities are
twisted and we will fall into many
traps. We run after the wrong things
and stop on pursuing matters of God.


Depression is so much more common
today and people are so focused on
getting what they want that it leads to
unhappiness and un-fulfillment. The
more we have the more we want and
the more unhappy we become. The
pursuit of things at all costs, causes
much grief.

Do we want contentment in our life?
Do we want peace? There is
ultimately only one way to true
contentment and peace, and that is to
walk daily with the prince of peace,
Christ Jesus. And I invite you to take
that walk today.

Godliness with Contentment 08MAR2014

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