Daily Dose 19: Contentment Honesty

If this were the best it would ever be, would I be content?

If you have asked yourself that question, do you feel a little beyond yourself, rather like you are outside of yourself and looking on? Is there a bit of a squirm in your inner self? Do you feel a wavering sense that part of you must say “No,” to be honest, but most of you wants to say, “Yeah, sure, whatever,” either because you know you should be content, or you don’t really want to face squarely the alternative?

Using the Contentment Question to Convict Yourself

Welcome to the world of convicting yourself, an important element in priority stewardship. Don’t be too quick to shed this uncomfortable feeling by calling the state “being double-minded,” that unhealthy way of thinking  James warns will make us unstable, washing back and forth between two positions. James is talking about vacillating between beliefs.

We are talking about facing reality: the reality of both life circumstances and inner motivations. We are talking about the Holy Spirit having an active part of our thought processes, active enough to use our minds to tell our minds that something does not meet with His stamp of approval and US NOT EXCUSING THE DISCOMFORT AWAY, until we deal biblically with the short fall.

We all recognize this pressure of conviction coming from other people like parents, bosses, teachers, police. None of us likes it. We spend lots of time having our “Yes, but…” excuses waiting to deflect the discomfort. If we are honest, we want our homes to be conviction-free zones, don’t we?

Facing an Uncomfortable Biblical Reality

But here is the wake-up call for “real Christians:” God’s household is supposed to take the lead in convicting themselves, evaluating themselves, measuring themselves by His perfections (1 Peter 4: 17).  After the salvation experience. After all the sins were forgiven. After we breathed that sigh of relief and thought we’d never have to be that ruthless with ourselves again.

The Benefit of Uncomfortable Questions

Guess what? If we would allow ourselves to find ourselves wanting more often and more quickly, then spent more time correcting the falling short than excusing it away, we would know the daily Christian walk far better.

This is what we want within the home: annoying, prying, impertinent questions we can ask ourselves again and again, year in and year out, and have that same question still bring the squirming sensation that means the Holy Spirit has pinpointed another opportunity to be conformed to the Lord.

Genuine contentment has no room for pious lies or fatalistic martyrdom. Genuine contentment calls for such honesty with the Lord that when we answer “Yes,”  we know the area has received the proper priority and attention, was well maintained and cared for, or came about because of events beyond your control. And when we answer, “No,” we are acknowledging that the frustration exists because we prioritized wrongly, let things slide, harbored resentment or bitterness, or in some other way contributed to the problem, and are now prepared to set things right with the Lord’s leading.

Needs in Biblical Homes

Biblical homes require we directly confront the unhelpful tendency to put up with and excuse away things and circumstances—while we nurse the thought that in a few days, or weeks or years things “will change” without effort or input from us.

Biblical homes require us to pinpoint whatever we use (new clothes, furniture, houses, husbands, churches, jobs, teachers) to deflect accurate thinking about our difficult circumstances. We need the skill of accurately pinpointing when our irresponsibility, negligence, and lack of Spirit-generated creativity has contributed to, (yeah, may even have caused, the difficulty) and the character to embrace setting things right God’s way.

To do otherwise, is not contentment, but denial.