CONTENTMENT
When people cast fear to the wind and spend
themselves and risk their lives and fortune in the
cause of God’s truth, and in love for other people,
then God is revealed for who He really is: infinitely
valuable and satisfying – so much so that His people
don’t need the fleeting pleasures of sin in order to
be content.
John Piper
Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, Bethlehem
Baptist Church, 2002, P. 120.
Christians can be and ought to be content with the
simple necessities of life… First, when you have God
near you and for you, you don’t need extra money or
extra things to give you peace and security… God is
always better than gold… Second, we can be content
with the simplicity because the deepest, most
satisfying delights God gives us through creation are
free gifts from nature and from loving relationships
with people. After your basic needs are met,
accumulated money begins to diminish your capacity for
these pleasures rather than increase them. Buying
things contributes absolutely nothing to the heart’s
capacity for joy… Third, we should be content with the
simple necessities of life because we could invest the
extra we make for what really counts (God’s kingdom).
John Piper
Desiring God, 1996, P. 102-103, Used by Permission,
www.desiringGod.org.
The antidote for covetousness is contentment. The
two are in opposition. Whereas the covetous, greedy
person worships himself, the contented person worships
God. Contentment comes from trusting God.
John MacArthur
Discouragement is dissatisfaction with the past,
distaste for the present, and distrust of the future.
It is ingratitude for the blessings of yesterday,
indifference to the opportunities of today, and
insecurity regarding strength for tomorrow. It is
unawareness of the presence of beauty, unconcern for
the needs of our fellowman, and unbelief in the
promises of old. It is impatience with time,
immaturity of thought, and impoliteness to God.
William Ward
Today in the Word, April, 1989, p. 18.
This is God’s universal purpose for all Christian
suffering: more contentment in God and less
satisfaction in the world.
John Piper
This is the secret of being content: to learn and
accept that we live daily by God’s unmerited favor
given through Christ, and that we can respond to any
and every situation by His divine enablement through
the Holy Spirit.
Jerry Bridges
The Practice of Godliness, NavPress, 1996, p. 99.
Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com.
All rights reserved.
The very first temptation in the history of mankind
was the temptation to be discontent…that is exactly
what discontent(ment) is – a questioning of the
goodness of God.
Jerry Bridges
The Practice of Godliness, NavPress, 1996, p. 86.
Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com.
All rights reserved.
The contented person experiences the sufficiency of
God’s provision for his needs and the
sufficiency of God’s grace for his
circumstances. He believes God will indeed meet all
his material needs and that He will work in all his
circumstances for his good. That is why Paul could
say, “Godliness with contentment is great gain.” The
godly person has found what the greedy or envious or
discontented person always searches for but never
finds. He has found satisfaction and rest in his soul.
Jerry Bridges
The Practice of Godliness, NavPress, 1996, p.
85-86. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com.
All rights reserved.
Contentment is one of the most distinguishing
traits of the godly person, because a godly person has
his heart focused on God rather than on possessions or
position or power.
Jerry Bridges
The Practice of Godliness, NavPress, 1996, p. 85.
Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com.
All rights reserved.
Gratitude is a handmaiden of contentment. An
ever-growing attitude of gratitude will certainly make
us more content since we will be focusing more on what
we do have, both spiritually and materially, than on
what we do not have. But contentment is more than
focusing on what we have. It is focusing on the
fact that all we do have; we have by the grace of
God. We do not deserve anything we have,
materially or spiritually. It is all by His grace.
Jerry Bridges
Transforming Grace, NavPress, 1991, p. 199. Used by
permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com.
All rights reserved.
The cure for the sin of envy and jealousy is to
find our contentment in God.
Jerry Bridges
Copied from The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry
Bridges, © 1996, p. 120. Used by permission of
NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved.
The Christian is the most contented man in the
world, but he is the least contented with the world.
He is like a traveler in an inn, perfectly satisfied
with the inn and its accommodation, considering it as
an inn, but putting quite out of all consideration the
idea of making it his home.
C.H. Spurgeon
You say, “If I had a little more, I should be very
satisfied.” You make a mistake. If you are not content
with what you have, you would not be satisfied if it
were doubled.
C.H. Spurgeon
Christian contentment is that sweet, inward, quiet,
gracious frame of spirit, which freely submits to and
delights in God's wise and fatherly disposal in every
condition.
Jeremiah Burroughs
The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment.
The person with the discontented heart has the
attitude that everything he does for God is too much,
and everything God does for him is too little.
Don Kistler
Tabletalk, 9-18-01, p.15. Used by Permission
of Ligonier Ministries.
He has great tranquility of heart who cares neither
for the praises nor the fault-finding of men. He will
easily be content and pacified, whose conscience is
pure. You are not holier if you are praised, nor the
more worthless if you are found fault with. What you
are, that you are; neither by word can you be made
greater than what you are in the sight of God.
Thomas à Kempis
Imitation of Christ.
When a man no longer seeks his comfort from any
creature, then he first begins to enjoy God perfectly,
and he will be well content with whatever befalls him.
Then he will neither rejoice over having much, nor
grieve over having little, but will commit himself
fully and trustfully to God, who is all in all to him.
Thomas à Kempis
Imitation of Christ.
I would rather be what God chose to make me than
the most glorious creature that I could think of; for
to have been thought about, born in God’s thought, and
then made by God, is the dearest, grandest, and most
precious thing in all thinking.
George MacDonald
Quoted by J. R. Miller, Finding One’s Mission,
Peiner Publications, n.d., p. 2.
We must come back to the soul
and to God who made it. We were made for Him, we are
meant for Him, we have a correspondence with Him, and
we will never come to rest until, like that needle on
the compass, we strike that northern point, and there
we come to rest – nowhere else.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
I Am Not Ashamed: Advice to Timothy, Baker, 1996,
p. 82-83
Be content with what you have, never with what you
are.
Author Unknown
For me, true contentment on earth means asking less
of this life because more is coming in the next. Godly
contentment is great gain. Heavenly gain. Because God
has created the appetites in your heart, it stands to
reason that He must be the consummation of that
hunger. Yes, heaven will galvanize your heart if you
focus your faith not on a place of glittery mansions,
but on a Person, Jesus, who makes heaven a home.
Joni Eareckson Tada
Heaven: Your Real Home, Zondervan,
www.Zondervan.com, 1995, p. 126. Used by Permission.
If I am not satisfied with what
I have, I will never be satisfied with what I want.
Author Unknown
The secret of contentment is the realization that
life is a gift, not a right.
Author Unknown
The richest person is not the one who has the most,
but the one who needs the least.
Author Unknown
No one person can be the source of your
contentment. Contentment comes only from God, and the
sooner we start seeking it in Him, the better off we
will be.
Richard D. Phillips and Sharon L. Phillips
Holding Hands and Holding Hearts, P&R, 2006, p.
171. Used by Permission.
To rejoice in another’s prosperity is to give
content to your lot; to mitigate another’s grief is to
alleviate or dispel your own.
Tryon Edwards
Contentment, then, is the product of a heart
resting in God. It is the soul’s enjoyment of that
peace that passes all understanding. It is the outcome
of my will being brought into subjection to the Divine
will. It is the blessed assurance that God does all
things well, and is, even now, making all things work
together for my ultimate good.
A.W. Pink
Comfort for Christians, Baker, 1989, p. 85-86.
True contentment is the power of getting out of any
situation all that there is in it.
G.K. Chesterton