"[I]f we are faithless, He remains faithful--for He cannot deny Himself."
~2 Timothy 2:13 (ESV)The sum of all unhappiness of man is our determined discontent with both what God has said "yes" to and what God has clearly said "no" to. What God has given, we are prone to want more. What God has not granted, we claim we should possess. But how patient is our God with us. Even though we must learn the lesson of contentment many times, He is yet willing to bless us with another way to learn it. It takes many arrows for the lesson of contentment to sink in to our initially hard hearts, yet He will pierce us if humility will allow Him to.
God never promised a life of ease or a lesson without a piercing. But this kind piercing of God is never so painful as the piercing Christ received for our sin. And this, my friend, gives us every reason to be content. We have indeed received far more than we could ever have imagined. We have indeed been treated far better than we deserve even in the things that we have been denied--the things that if we had received them might well have pulled us, our affections, our time, and our devotion from Him. Isn't this painful mystery wonderful?
How many days I have grieved God with my discontent, yet how Fatherly He is. Never have I approached Him and felt His shunning except when I listened to the false accusation of my enemy, the Devil. Rather, I have come to see that He has always, without fail, been stooped as a Father with open arms to receive the son who has so grieved Him. Forgiveness is His theme, and sanctification His tool to see his beloved children turn from the sin He despises and to His glorious, indescribable Self. He separates love and hate. In other words, because He loves us, He turns us from what He hates.
We would label the affection we have toward things on earth that God has not granted us as love. In reality, it will help to label it for what it is: Idolatry, lust, discontent. We might also label our Father's denial of those things as restriction, punishment, or lack of love. In reality, God's gift of unanswered prayer and denial of things that would do our souls no good is one of the greatest graces we could ever receive.
The Father's blessings knock
And gladly we welcome them in
The Giver Himself knocks
Yet we relate to Him in sin
The enemy knocks with doubt
And faithlessly we agree
The enemy himself knocks
And God's goodness we do not see
But this truth remains
It does not change
In this we find all faith
When we are faithless
He remains faithful
And his patience and goodness here on earth
Are merely a taste
Challenge and Application Questions
- Through what trials has God been teaching you contentment?
