The Power Of Christian ContentmentSample

The Secret of Christian Contentment

The apostle Paul walked through unimaginable suffering and declared contentment. Today, we stop and listen to his story. Paul’s life of suffering as a Christian began on the day of his conversion: he was struck blind with the heavenly light of Christ’s appearance to him on the road to Damascus. Christ said about Paul, “For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:16). 

In 2 Corinthians 11, Paul lists his credentials of suffering including imprisonments, beatings, and shipwrecks. Still, this isn’t even the complete story of Paul’s suffering! There would be more time in prison and the enduring of afflictions not mentioned in the text of Scripture. As a final act, Nero had Paul executed. 

It is so powerful when a person like Paul steps up to teach us life lessons on contentment. If he can be content in this level of agony, maybe he has something he can teach us. We can read Paul’s credentials from the pages of the New Testament, but the Philippian church had seen Paul live out supernatural contentment firsthand when he and Silas came to their city to preach the gospel. 

Paul declares that abiding, supernatural contentment is a “secret” to be learned (Phil. 4:12), not part of the original equipment of conversion. This secret implies two things: (1) not every Christian has learned it, and (2) it is possible to learn. Many Christians, it seems, go through their entire lives struggling, fuming, fretting, murmuring, fussing, arguing, and complaining against God and against their life circumstances. 

Sadly, I have proven on many occasions that it is possible to be a genuine Christian yet sinfully discontent. And we might never learn contentment. However, it is possible to learn it as Paul did, to reach the level of sanctification where we are actually content “in any and every circumstance.” That gives all of us on this pilgrimage of Christian growth a very real hope. If Paul can learn it, and if he is commending it to the ordinary Christians of Philippi, then we can learn it too. 

Were you surprised by Paul and Silas’s response of not fleeing the jail when the opportunity was presented? Do you think their decision reflected conviction of contentment that God was in control? How do circumstances—positive or negative—effect your level of contentment?