When we think about what we want, we tend to live in this space of dissatisfaction. We’re always striving for something more. I suppose in some ways this is good. This partly drives us forward in trying to reach a new milestone. Goals are a good thing.
I just wonder if this tension we feel between satisfaction and dissatisfaction are always good. Many of us are constantly striving towards more than what we currently have. Generally, we see ourselves striving for more stuff. We live in a very materialistic culture. The interesting thing is there’s one thing in life that we’re universally trying to get more of, yet it’s also almost universally condemned—material wealth, or the attainment of it. How do we resolve this conflict?
I notice that often times my own dissatisfaction with what I have only manifests when I start comparing what I have with what my neighbor has. I can be quite content with the car I drive one day, until I see my neighbor pull out of his garage with a new Mercedes. Then I’m looking at my car and suddenly it doesn’t look so good. Why not, I wonder? It’s the same car I had before my neighbor bought his. Interesting how that works, isn’t it? But often our own satisfaction is only relative to someone else’s level of attainment. And it’s not necessarily that this always results in outright envy, but it does result in a discontent in our own lives. We become competitive without realizing it. And it becomes a matter of keeping score. Joe Shmo down the street has a nicer house with more square footage and nicer cars, too. What am I gonna do now?
Well, I’ve found this one thing to be helpful. First of all, just be happy for my neighbor. I can think, “Good for him. That’s nice he can afford that and enjoy those things.” And I’m not talking about a fake kind of nice, like, “Good for him”, while I crush an empty can with my bare hands. But just a genuine heartfelt feeling of good will towards that person. This is a good place to start.
The next thing I do is be thankful for what I have. Maybe the car or house I have aren’t the ones I would like to have. But the reality is, there’s always something worse. Actually, the worst would be no car and no house. When I compare what I have to nothing, something always looks better than nothing. And that’s the thing, we don’t always appreciate what we’ve always had. Sometimes we don’t appreciate it until we don’t have it.
Being satisfied and content in this day and age seem to be undervalued commodities. Something probably good for us to revisit in our modern day society. Maybe we don’t even know the value of just being satisfied with what we have because we’ve never taken the time to experience it.
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Isaiah 1:18, “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” This is God speaking to sinful Judah and Jerusalem. He was tired of their sinful ways and wasn’t looking for anymore sacrifices and incense. He wanted them to change their ways. A change of direction and heart. Here it says, “Come now, and let us reason together.” What God was looking for here wasn’t a compromise. God wasn’t trying to find a middle ground between His righteousness and Israel’s sin. There is no middle ground. The meaning here is God pleading with them to just come to Him and we can correct these things, if you just come to me and admit the error of your ways. This is the first common ground we must come to ourselves. We come to Him open-hearted and honest with our condition. We get in agreement with Him and what He asks of us.
1 Corinthians 9:19-22 says, “For though I be free from all [men], yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more. And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; To them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law. To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all [men], that I might by all means save some.” I believe the importance of what Paul is saying here is profound. Paul presented the Gospel message to people from all walks of life. The reality is, he didn’t present it by compromising his beliefs, but while staying in the confines of what was lawful he approached it from their perspective. He wanted to show them the light of the Gospel, but he didn’t want unnecessary and needless things to get in the way of them coming to the truth. He says, “I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.” This was his desire and endgame he had in mind. He didn’t want to get in disputes with them on some side-issue. We often do this with each other in the Church and get in arguments over things that aren’t of primary importance. And we often lose the main idea in the process.
In Ephesians 4:13 it says, “Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ:” What we truly want is for all of us to get in agreement with the truth, not us deciding what is true—putting our own biases and opinions aside and seeking the truth together in unity—a knowledge of the Son of God, leading to our perfection and fullness in Christ.
Isaiah 1:18, “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”
1 Corinthians 9:19-22 says, “For though I be free from all [men], yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more. And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; To them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law. To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all [men], that I might by all means save some.”
In Ephesians 4:13 it says, “Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ:”