After reading this blog entry that my friend posted today, I couldn’t help but share it with others because I too believe that many people setting in our churches’ pews struggle with discontentment in the lives. Maybe the reason our marriages, families, and churches are so fragmented today is because we don’t understand how to be content. If I am honest with myself, I too battle discontentment just like every other person. Please read this article and listen to its message.
“Discontentment Anonymous”
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
“I just don’t know why I came to this place.”
It was the strangest sight I’ve ever seen, the image of that unexplainable slip of paper waiting for me on my desk this morning. Every afternoon I leave with my desk clean, as I had yesterday, yet there was that small slip staring at me, waiting to be read. I hadn’t left it there. Who could it have been?
It hadn’t been cut or ripped away from what seemed to have been a larger piece of paper. It appeared independent, crafted so small as a scrap meant to stand alone, not as some misplaced part of a whole. It also appeared personal, meant specifically for me. All it said was, “D.A.” with an address and a time. The time was easy enough to decipher, and the address was familiar, but what was the meaning of “D.A.”? Was I to attend a meeting at this place and time? How could I entertain something so mysterious? How could I not?
All morning I pondered, “D.A. This makes no sense,” yet I knew what curiosity alone would demand I do. Shortly before the time inscribed on that strange slip of paper I found myself driving, parking in front of an unassuming building I’d passed many times before except never having the slightest inclination to enter. “I’ve never seen a sign at this place. What’s inside this building?” I wondered aloud.
With five minutes to spare I actually entered its front door to find a short, well-dressed man leaning over a greeter’s desk. He looked up from his newspaper only long enough to ask, “Your letters?” “My letters?!” I replied. “Yes, your letters… you’re new here and you must’ve come because of a slip of paper with two letters.” Then it dawned on me, “Yes, sir. This makes no sense. Can you help me? Mine says ‘D.A.’” Returning his gaze to his newspaper yet nodding to his left, he mumbled, “Down that hallway, fourth door on the right.” “But can you tell me what this means?” I pleaded. Never looking up, the man repeated, “I just point the way, sir. Down that hallway, fourth door on the right.”
This was the strangest place I’ve ever been. Except for that unhelpful greeter this place looked completely abandoned, a total waste of space. Walking this dimly lit hallway, with every step resounding in a tile-floored echo, was the most unnerving thing I’ve ever done. Finally I saw a door, “A.A.” I know of Alcoholics Anonymous, of course. Perhaps a local group of theirs meets here. Then at the next door I saw, “B.A.,” and at the next, “C.A.” Then I got the picture. “At least I didn’t draw ‘Z.A.,’” I laughed, hoping humor would relieve my worry. Unsuccessful, knowing that my door was next on the right unnerved me all the more. Standing in front of it, the letters “D.A” etched on it in plain view, I found myself slightly out of breath, heart racing, nervous… “Am I actually going to open this door? I just don’t know why I came to this place.”
Turning the knob and walking through, my senses were struck with sights and sounds I’d have never expected in a million lifetimes. Instead of finding a small, empty but cramped meeting room, my eyes spied a vast arena of people. I was instantly looking down at an aisle with filled seats on both sides–an aisle leading downward not to a court or field but to a solitary platform with a single microphone placed in the center. My curiosity fully in control now, I hurried to the lone empty seat I saw. Settling in and more anxious than ever, I instinctively checked my watch. With its time matching the time I read on my slip of paper, I noticed another well-dressed man making his way to the microphone. Amzaingly this enormous crowd of people silenced as one when he tapped the microphone. “Are they as nervous as I am? Do they know why we’re here? What is he possibly going to say?” I wondered, my mind racing but every ounce of me hushed, straining to hear…
“Welcome, everyone, to this week’s meeting of Discontentment Anonymous.”
“Discontentment Anonymous?! What in the world is this about?” my mind exploded. “There’s no reason for me to be here! And it certainly doesn’t feel too anonymous!” Before I could storm back up the aisle and out, though, he spoke again, “My name is Joshua, and I have a few folks for you to meet.”
Nearly turned at this point to leave my seat, I paused as another man made his way to the microphone. Curiosity again won the moment as he introduced himself, “Hello, everyone. My name is Jim.” Nervously he grabbed my attention, continuing, “and I struggle with discontentment.” Jim seemed so exposed and graphic in what he shared. “I grew up in a family that had nothing,” he said. “My mother and father did their best to provide for us, scraping us by on what seemed like so little. We just never had what other families had. I found myself so envious of them, thinking I deserved better, resolved that my life would be different. I worked my way through school and slaved my way to the top of a local company’s food chain. On our home we’ve spared no expense. I drive whatever I want, as does my wife. Every gadget I purchase the day it’s introduced. We take vacations and spend like there’s no tomorrow, but I’m never satisfied… never. It’s never enough, even when I make myself think that once I buy this or achieve that I will have ‘arrived.’” Jim shocked me as he turned seemingly inward, “What’s wrong with me? I never thought about it until recently, but I really struggle with discontentment.”
The crowd murmured to each other as Jim left the platform, leaving me to glance innocently at others around me. As powerful as Jim’s sharing was, part of me was consoled, “I don’t struggle like that. Thank God I’m a Christian,” while again wondering, “Why am I here anyway?”
Again entertaining thoughts of bolting, I was interrupted by the sight of another person climbing the steps of the platform, this time a woman. “My name is Linda,” she said, choking back tears, “and I struggle with discontentment.” To my surprise I heard hundreds respond, “Hello, Linda.” She continued, as if bolstered by the crowd’s greeting, “I’m a wife and a mother of three young children… this is very difficult for me… I love my husband, believe me, I do. There’s something missing between us, though. He’s never been mean or abusive, but I find myself always dwelling on his faults, about how my needs just don’t ever seem met. I can’t get what I desire out of my mind, always feeling like I’m settling for less than I deserve.” Weeping, she finished, “The other day I found myself talking to a coworker, tempted as never before by the thought of what life would be like with him. What’s wrong with me? It’s like I’m never satisfied! I’m really struggling with discontentment.”
Never have I heard a crowd this size so quiet as Linda left the platform. I was watching people identify with her pain and struggle, fighting emotions as they did so. Still I counseled myself, “I may feel discouraged from time to time, but I’m not like Jim or Linda.” Then I watched a third person take to the platform. Portraying an air of regret mixed with conviction, he spoke, “Hello, my name is Bill.” This time what seemed like thousands responded, “Hello, Bill.”
“My struggle with discontentment showed itself in my life with my church,” he explained. “I’m a Christian, very active as part of my church family. I’ve served in every way you can imagine… on committees, in ministries, helping with events. Doing my part is important to me because I look around and see so few others doing anything of value. I’ve heard for years the idea that 80% of the work churches do is done by only 20% of its membership, and how real that is frustrates me. Lately, though, my frustration has grown worse, all but out of control. I hear others arguing and competing with one another as if we’re rivals, and it angers me, but the more I look at myself the more I see the same coming from me. I nearly exploded the other day when our budget committee recommended what it did, and all but ripped our worship leader’s head off after that song sounded not quite right.” His eyes flashing with relived agitation yet his body language clearly showing a fight for self-control, Bill settled in to finish, “I realize I’m as big a part of the problem as anyone else. I’m never satisfied and always fighting the thought that I and my efforts aren’t treated as deserved. I’m really struggling with discontentment,” he paused, ”but I don’t want to anymore.”
By this time I was bent over, head in my hands, suddenly understanding why that scrap of paper had mysteriously become mine. I may never know exactly who left it but I knew in that instant how God intended it. Funny, though, as I came to grips with my own struggle I was reminded in thought, “But I’m a pastor. This can’t be true of me.” Yet the Holy Spirit used Bill’s testimony to expose what was my own…
“D.A” was for me… I was but one of an unnumbered throng in the middle of an age-old struggle against discontentment.
My mind again was racing, no longer with nervous energy but with the spiritual energy of recalled Scripture verses bubbling to the surface of my memory. I remembered discontentment being at the root of Israel’s problems throughout their exodus, how they grumbled against Moses and, by implication, God, earning a generation of wandering in the wilderness and death for it. I remembered Job being warned about discontentment, Solomon wisely teaching against it, Jeremiah lamenting over it, Jesus demonstrating the opposite of it, Paul exhorting away from it, even James condemning it.
I remembered Psalm 37:1, “Fret not yourself because of evildoers; be not envious of wrongdoers!” plus verse seven, “Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices!”
I remembered Ecclesiastes 7:10, “Say not, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’ for it is not from wisdom that you ask this.”
I remembered Luke 3:14, where Jesus taught, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages.”
I remembered Galatians 5:26, “Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.”
I remembered Philippians 2:3-4, “Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others,” plus verses 14 and 15, “Do all things without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world.”
Finally my memory stuck to Philippians 4:11-13, to one particular phrase, in fact. “Not that I am speaking of being in need,” Paul wrote, “for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”
Up the aisle, out the door, back up the hallway, past that well-dressed, newspaper-reading greeter, outside and nearly to my car I was before I realized it, so fixated had I become on what God was saying to me. It was no longer Jim’s, Linda’s, or Bill’s voice resounding in my spirit. It was His, and He was overwhelming me with my need to repent, to embrace the secret of being content in Him.
Finally sitting in my car, I found my mind drifting back to a moment of study some time ago, on a day I was preparing for a sermon on discontentment. I’d read commentary by Dave Harvey of Sovereign Grace Ministries, believing what he’d written would relate well to what many of our listeners were obviously experiencing. Suddenly I realized that his words were as much for me. Harvey had said, “Contentment comes when we compare what we have to what we deserve,” a statement I understood in light of God’s grace but adapted, contending, “Discontentment comes when I feel that I’m not getting what I deserve,” which is true. Harvey went on to teach, though, ”Sometimes I think believers don’t really comprehend that to live is to experience unfulfilled desires… when those dreams are unfulfilled, it can prompt discontent in our life.” Discontentment at its heart is “frustrated ambition,” Harvey continued, “disappointment because we’re not getting what we want when we want it in the way we want it.”
At the root of discontentment, then, is pride… simple, garden-variety selfishness. I realized that I couldn’t blame what discontentment I felt on my circumstances or how difficult life seemed. I realized that I couldn’t blame what discontentment was mastering my thoughts and actions on others or how I was being treated. Discontentment is never the fault of circumstances or other people in our lives. Discontentment is the choice embraced by us once we’ve allowed room for the sin of self-indulgence. We cultivate the ground of sin with preoccupation on what we want or feel we deserve for what we do, say, or are. We water what we’ve planted with lingering self-absorption, always viewing the world in which we live through the myopic lenses of our own pride, soon enough convinced that others should as well. And the plant of discontentment grows, seemingly full-grown as quickly as it sprouts yet continuing to take over our lives, smothering what glory we might be to God because our every thought is dominated by disappointment over what is compared to what we think should be.
. . . . . . . . . .
Was it all a dream? The slip of paper… the drive… the building… the greeter… the hallway… the door… the aisle… the crowd… the platform and those testimonies… the way God seemed to speak through it… was it all a dream? It doesn’t really matter, does it? What matters in this moment is my realization that I’m now little better within the kingdom of God than part of its biggest problem. I struggle with discontentment, and a vast, unnumbered throng of believers struggle right along with me. It’s the cancer among churches that mostly goes unidentified until it’s too late, yet the warning signs are clearly there for those willing to see them.
If you have “frustrated ambition,” or you’re constantly losing the battle against disappointment because you’re not getting what you want when you want it in the way you want it (whatever “it” is), or if honesty forces you to admit how frequently unsatisfied you feel over the idea that you’re just not receiving what you deserve, it’s not an appointment with “Discontentment Anonymous” that you need. It’s a fresh dose of Christ-centered humility that you and I need, created in a genuine encounter with Him and resulting in the killing of pride. The longer we let it breathe in our lives, the more suffocation the plant of discontentment causes, and the farther we drift from any contribution we might make that would truly be for God’s glory.
My name is Michael. I’m one of thousands of pastors in the life of the kingdom of God as it is present in the world today. I’ve seen God do wondrous things in the lives of people, drawing them to His Son for salvation and growing them for service. In spite of this, I have succumbed too often to discontentment. Selfish pride has been allowed to have a grip it should not, and I too frequently find myself battling the kind of frustration and disappointment about which I’ve spoken here. Unlike what was said in the fictitious testimonies I penned above, I know what’s wrong with me. I understand why dissatisfaction becomes so real at times, that there is a time for godly dissatisfaction and for action fueled by it, but that this kind of frustration cannot be rationalized away. It’s not the fault of my circumstances or of others around me. Discontentment is the choice I’ve too frequently made on my own, but I don’t want to struggle against it anymore. Lord Jesus, You’ve been too good to me, Your love far too unfailing and Your grace too amazing for me to let this continue. If the secret to contentment in any situation is so abiding in You that humility and satisfaction in You are the results, then I surrender anew. Lord, be my satisfaction today. So dominate my thoughts and line of sight that what I would desire would be filtered completely by Your presence and power. Equip me to leave no further provision for my flesh or its selfishness, then to deny myself, take up my cross, and follow You all over again tomorrow.
One day at a time… one desire at a time… everything in submission to Him… therein must lie the secret of being content in Christ.
What about you? Please consider this your “scrap of paper,” and right now as your time.
Until we meet again, press on…
Michael
http://www.immanuelbaptisttemple.org/index.php?page=pastors-pen
