The Contentment Paul Learned
Daily Scripture
Philippians 4:10-14
I was very glad in the Lord because now at last you have shown concern for me again. Of course you were always concerned but had no way to show it. I’m not saying this because I need anything, for I have learned how to be content in any circumstance. I know the experience of being in need and of having more than enough; I have learned the secret to being content in any and every circumstance, whether full or hungry or whether having plenty or being poor. I can endure all these things through the power of the one who gives me strength. Still, you have done well to share my distress.
Daily Reflection & Prayer
Paul thanked the Philippians for their gift, then said something that sounds strange right after. He wasn’t saying this because he needed anything, he wrote. He had learned to be content in any circumstance.
He explained what that learning looked like. He’d known what it was to have little. He’d known what it was to have more than enough. Both had taught him the same lesson, that his peace didn’t depend on either one.
Then he wrote the line many people memorize. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. It gets used often as a promise about achievement. Paul meant something narrower. Christ’s strength held him steady whether he had plenty or nothing at all.
Adam Hamilton, writing about this same passage, said the real satisfaction of our souls is Jesus Christ, and that we can be content because Christ stays with us no matter what we’re facing.* Paul had learned that slowly, through having too little and through having enough.
Paul praised the Philippians for their gift anyway, even though he hadn’t needed it. His contentment didn’t make their gift meaningless. It just meant his peace no longer depended on it.
Christ was the source Paul kept naming. He strengthened Paul continually, through scarcity and through plenty, and that ongoing strength was what Paul’s contentment rested on. We’re called to depend on that same strength for our own contentment, whether we’re living in a season of plenty or in a season of need.
Paul says he learned contentment through both scarcity and plenty, not by deciding to feel differently. Think of one season when you had less than you needed and one when you had more than enough. What did each season teach you about where your peace comes from?’
This passage is often quoted as a promise of strength for whatever someone is trying to accomplish. Where have you leaned on that meaning instead of the one Paul intended? What might change if you read it as a promise for endurance instead?
Prayer
Lord, thank you for staying near through both plenty and need. Teach me contentment through whatever I’m facing right now, instead of letting me avoid it. Help me stop expecting your strength to mean accomplishment and start trusting it to mean endurance. Thank you for steadying me in all seasons. Amen.
GPS Insights
Janelle Gregory
Janelle Gregory serves as Resurrection's Human Resources Lead Director. Janelle enjoys traveling, watching sports, learning, playing board games, and spending time with her son and her husband, Brandon. She finds that her heart is constantly wrestling with the truth that she needs a Savior, and the times when she's at her very best are when she's just too tired to put up a fight.
I have a special talent at the grocery store. I can pick the slowest checkout line. Every. Single. Time. I’ll survey my options carefully. Line 4 has six people, but Line 5 only has three. Easy choice. Except the person at the front of Line 5 has a coupon that won’t scan. Then there’s a price check. Then someone needs to find a manager. Meanwhile, Line 4 is moving along beautifully. People who arrived after me are practically skipping out of the store with their groceries while I’m still standing there watching the same person try to scan the the darn coupon. And that’s when I start thinking, “I picked the wrong line.”
I wonder how often we do that with life. We look around and become convinced that someone else got the better line. Their career seems to be moving faster. Their family doesn’t seem to have the struggles ours does. They have more money, more opportunities, they’re taking the vacation of a lifetime, etc. And suddenly, the life we were perfectly fine with five minutes ago doesn’t seem quite as good. We picked the wrong line.
I think that’s one of the reasons contentment can be so difficult. We tend to think contentment will come when our circumstances finally cooperate – when we have enough or when the hard thing is finally over. But there will always be another line moving faster.
Contentment isn’t convincing ourselves that everything in our lives is exactly the way we want it to be. Sometimes we really are in a hard season. Sometimes we’re waiting for something important. Sometimes we genuinely don’t have enough. Contentment is learning that our peace doesn’t have to depend on any of those things. It’s finding that peace when life is going great and then finding it in the darkest of times. It’s finding it when the cashier turns on the flashing light and says, “I need a manager on five.”
Because God is present in all of it. The secret isn’t finding the perfect line. It’s learning to stop watching every other line long enough to recognize that God is right here with us in this one.
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Scripture quotations are taken from The Common English Bible ©2011. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
References
* Adam Hamilton, Enough: Discovering Joy through Simplicity and Generosity (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2009), 84 — confirm against physical copy.
