Are you discontented with your
life? Why? Do you wish you were taller or
smaller? Why? Do you wish you had a better
job or a job? Why? Do you wish you never took the
first hit, shot, puff, pill, injection? Why? I wish I had
a better family. Why? I wish this year would go
by a little bit faster. Why? I wish I made more money. I wish I wasn't so lonely. I
wish we didn't have silly rules on dating. I wish we weren't
having hot dogs again. I wish we were out of here. Why? All of those are microcosms and
micro seasons of discontent. Think about those things, how
they thread through our every warp and woof of thinking and
our daily thinking and our daily interactions that we have just
with our mind. Can you be content when you relapse?
Was there a season of discontent before you relapsed? Will there
be a season of content knowing that you got to walk the walk
of shame and say, oh, I relapsed. But nobody cares. You care. You inflate it. You make it bigger
than it always has to be. Can you be content when you lose
a job? Can you be content when your boyfriend or girlfriend
breaks up with you, your husband or wife walk away from you? See,
those are tough seasons now. So let's get down to where the
rubber meets the road here. Can you be content in the miscarriage
or the loss of a child? A good friend of mine just lost
his second kid. Can't imagine that. Can, oh my
God. Can you find contentment when
your mom or dad or brother or sister gets diagnosed with a
terminal condition? Can you find contentment when
your best friend disses you? Can you find contentment when
you're broke? You would find so much discontentment,
everyone in this room would find more discontentment by winning
the lottery than they would by losing all their money. Can you
be content when you realize that you actually hate the struggle
that you're in the middle of? Can you be content when your
hair turns gray, your belly sags and you got man boobs? Can you
be content when your kids are a jerk? Can you be content when
your kids think you're a jerk? Can you be content when you are
a jerk? Can you be content when your
friend overdoses and dies? Can you be content that you can
pay your car off and then someone hits it that same day? And can
you be content that Christ came to earth to do for us what we
could never do for ourselves and that we can truly rest and
have peace with God by having a relationship with Christ? That's
contentment. Grace is incredible when we compare
it to sin, because sin takes us farther than we want to go,
it keeps us longer than we want to stay, and it costs us more
than we're willing to pay. But grace? Grace meets us where
we're at, but never leaves us where we are. Grace is always
sufficient when you understand it comes from Christ and what
he accomplished at the cross. Can you be content and be thankful? Are happy people thankful or
are thankful people happy? Thankful people are happy because
there's always something to be thankful for. Grace means that
every stupid, iniquitous thing you've done now serves a purpose.
So quit beating yourself up. Quit lashing out at yourself
and self-flagellating over the sins that you've committed and
the thoughts that you have. They're now serving a purpose to keep
you at the cross and keep Christ and what He's accomplished on
your behalf in front of you 24-7, 365, only for the rest of your
life. That's contentment, is knowing exactly that. As we've
prayed before, nothing is perfect, life is messy, relationships
are complex, outcomes are uncertain, and people are irrational. Are
we really haughty enough to think that we're not in that same part
of that? I am far from perfect, I'm a
hot mess, I constantly bring complexity to my relationships,
I exude uncertainty, and by golly, my self-absorption and discontentment
is totally irrational. Discontentment is venomous and
the only antidote towards it is always going to be found in
Christ. There's a guy by the name of
Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher. He talked about
something called amore fate. And amore fate is a Latin term
that basically means love of my fate or love of my life. And
he goes on to say here that it's used to describe an attitude
in which one sees everything that happens in one life, including
suffering and loss, as good or at very least necessary. Nietzsche's
love of fate naturally leads him to confront the reality of
suffering in a radical way. When we use the word suffering,
think of the term of discontent. Think of the term of anger. Think
of the term of anxiety. Think of any term you want to
put in there as far as suffering, which means you are in a season
of discontent in some way, shape, or form. For to love that which
is necessary demands not only that we love the bad along with
the good, but that we view the two as inextricably linked. Only
great pain, says Nietzsche, is the ultimate liberator of the
spirit. I doubt that such pain makes us better, but I know that
it makes us more profound because we're forced to confront ourselves.
He says here that the challenge for all modern men is to create
and live by affirming values, to find meaning in a world that
has become void of any such thing. In the present age, we often
feel like we're straying as though an infinite nothing. Nietzsche's
exhortation to all is to fight against this empty drift, to
become who you are, to love the suffering and challenge as much
as you love ease and comfort. He says here that the most spiritual
men, listen to this, this is highly profound, highly profound.
The most spiritual men, as the strongest, find their happiness
where others would find their destruction. In the labyrinth,
in hardness against themselves and in others. Their joy is self-conquest. It becomes them in their nature,
in their need, and their instinct. Difficult tasks are a privilege
to them. To play with the burdens that
crush others is their recreation. That is heavy, heavy thought
processes in understanding seasons of discontent. What are you so
discontent about? You're discontent because you're
running away from Christ and Him crucified, not to Him and
Him crucified. Think of where you can lay every
sin, where you can lay every burden down, is at the foot of
that cross, and know that your sins have been forgiven. You
are free to take second place. You are free to lose. You are
free to be who you are because who you are individually makes
you beautiful because God made you that way. If all of us were
the same, it would be boring. Where is your season of discontent?
What is the root cause of your season of discontent? Self-conquest
doesn't mean looking in here. Self-conquest means looking unto
Jesus. That's conquest because every
time I lose, I'm free to lose because Jesus won everything
for me. I can be small because Jesus is big. I can look and
love Sherry because I've been loved unconditionally and I can
love someone else unconditionally. I don't want to love Kyle because
Kyle can do something for me. I want to love Kyle because I'm
called to love my brothers and sisters in Christ. Where's your
season of discontent? Self-absorption? Self-conquest
means I'm going outside of myself to where all things have been
solved, and that's at Calvary. Forgive them, they don't know
what they're doing. The seasons of discontent, is
it a season or is it a reason? Are you looking beyond your own
selfishness and saying, what's in this? Yeah, what's in it for
me? But what's in it for me to be bigger, better, stronger in
my walk with Christ? And then I trip and I fall and
I fail and I bring Sherry down with me and I kick Kyle on the
way down. It's okay. I'm going to get back up. I'm
going to help Sherry up. I'm going to go ahead and nurse Kyle back
to good health and I'm going to keep on walking. And then
you know what I'm going to do when I get to row two? I'm going to fall down again.
But I'm going to get up. because as Nietzsche says right
here, to play with burdens that crush others becomes my recreation. Which means I'm free to love,
I'm free to obey, I'm free to do what Christ and God commands
of me because it's already been done for me. I can't lose. To find contentment, you must
be found in Christ. Then your hearts can sing with
profound joy that I have breath in my lungs, there are people
in my life who believe in me, I have a thrice holy God who
is working out my salvation each day, that grace and mercy to
do what I'm called to do is mine, and that the journey, be it good,
bad, high or low, has brought me here to where exactly I am,
because all we have is right now. Can you be content in the
moment? Can you find contentment outside
of yourself? As Christians, can we find 100%
of our contentment in what Christ has accomplished for us? I beg
of you and I pray for you, please let that be your answer, is yes,
I can. I can rest in Christ.