Why Nothing Feels Like Enough: The Secret of Christian Contentment | Philippians 4:13

There are families around us right now wondering if they'll be able to keep the lights on this month.

They check their bank accounts, they feel their stomachs drop.

They work two jobs, sometimes three, and they still come up short.

They lie awake thinking, if I just had a little bit more, I'd be okay.

Some of you came to this country with a suitcase and a prayer, and you're still working to make it.

Look, I don't want to diminish or discount those feelings.

Those feelings are real and it's exhausting.

And I want you to know that this morning, this sermon that we're going to be going through today, is for you.

But here's something that might surprise some of you.

You drive 15 minutes east of where most of us live, and you hit South Ocean Boulevard, Billionaires Row.

You got gates that cost more than houses.

You got yachts docked next to mansions, cars in driveways worth more than most people in this room are gonna make in the next five years.

And the people behind those gates, they're not content either.

They've got everything they thought they wanted, and it's not enough.

So they go looking for more, more money, more power, more everything.

And when that stops working, people start making decisions that destroy their families, their health, their lives.

Why?

Because ultimately, there's an emptiness inside.

And an empty person will reach for anything they think will fill that emptiness.

And look, the world's been promising to fill that empty place for a long time.

And we keep falling for it.

I mean, I'll be the first to admit it.

I know I know that I fell for it.

I fell for it back when I was eight years old.

Let me tell, let me share your story.

I was when I was about eight years old, I was flipping through a reader's digest.

Yes, a reader's digest.

Okay, this was back way back in the 1900s, okay, back in the 90s.

And I see this advertisement of a flying car, a hovercraft, and there's this picture of a person actually driving one.

I mean, I lose my mind.

I've never wanted something so badly in my entire life.

So I convince my parents, hey, mom, dad, I need to have this.

Will you buy it for me?

Like, okay, I get them to agree.

We buy it, we mail in the payment.

Yes, we mailed in the payment.

I know a lot of you young people don't understand what that means right now.

That's okay.

And then I wait for about four to six weeks.

Again, we didn't have Amazon Prime back then.

So I'm waiting every single day.

I'm waiting for it.

I mean, I was I was I'm I'm gonna be the first kid on the block flying around in a hovercraft.

Doorbell rings.

The package finally arrives, and immediately I'm confused.

The box, it's tiny, it's maybe two feet by two feet.

I'm thinking, no, no, no, this can't be my hovercraft.

I look at the box, it's got my name on it.

So I open it, you know, I take out all the styrofoam peanuts, and and lo and behold, it's a cheap plastic toy hovercraft.

And to top it off, it had a remote control.

Now I lifted it up because you know the advertisement had a person driving this thing.

So I'm thinking, wait a minute, this is false advertisement.

I take the hovercraft out of the box, and sure enough, there's a carved little person in that hovercraft driving the hovercraft.

Oh, and by the way, the remote control, not even wireless.

It was wired, a long wire.

So I find some batteries, I push the button, and it lifts off the ground.

Right?

No.

About two inches, two inches.

Two inches.

That's exactly what the world keeps offering us.

It looks like the real thing, but it barely gets off the ground.

The person on Billionaire's Row knows that feeling.

So does the family trying to keep the lights on every month.

It's the same ache, it's the same empty place.

And nothing in this world can fill it.

So here's the question.

The question that many of you have, but maybe didn't know how to ask it.

Why can't I just be content?

And why does it feel impossible?

Now we've been in Philippians for weeks now.

You know this letter came from a man in prison, but I want, I don't want that.

I don't want those details to get lost on you.

I don't want you thinking it's just background information.

It's actually the whole point.

Because the man who wrote these words about contentment has nothing.

He's got no freedom, no comfort, no guarantee about tomorrow.

He's chained to a Roman soldier 24-7.

And from that place, he writes a letter that mentions joy 16 times.

And today, we're gonna see Paul's joy and contentment.

So I want you to look at your Bibles, Philippians 4.

We're gonna go jump to verse 10.

You can follow along on the screen.

Actually, before I jump into verse 10, let me give you some quick context.

Okay, Paul's in prison.

The Philippians have sent Paul some financial help.

And Paul is grateful, but he wants them to know that his joy is deeper than the gift.

Okay, verse 10.

I rejoice greatly in the Lord that at last you have renewed your concern for me.

He's referencing the financial gift.

Indeed, you were concerned, but you had no opportunity to show it.

I'm not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.

Did you catch that?

His joy is not relief.

His peace isn't because the pressure in his life finally lifted.

Something else is going on.

He says he learned it.

He didn't receive it.

He didn't stumble into it one morning when everything was going, what was finally going well.

It wasn't some magical thing that suddenly happened to him.

He says he learned it.

Christian contentment is something you learn.

It's not automatic.

It doesn't simply appear when you become a Christian or get baptized.

It gets built over time.

Through a school, nobody volunteers for it.

I want you to listen for the school, okay?

Verse 11.

I'm not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.

I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty.

I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.

Paul is describing two classrooms, and he's been in both of them.

The first classroom is want, not having enough.

The bills won't stop coming.

The job has disappeared.

You're scraping by.

Paul knows this classroom from the inside.

He's been hungry, he's been without.

He's been in chains with nothing.

The second classroom is plenty, having enough.

Actually, the word here is having more than enough, having an abundance.

This is the season when business is good.

My bank account is overflowing.

The life you've you worked so hard for has finally arrived.

It's finally showed up.

Paul knows this classroom too.

And here's what's remarkable.

He is saying that both classrooms were required.

Because it turns out that plenty is just as dangerous as want, maybe more so.

There's a theologian, Jeremiah Burroughs.

He said this, and I want you to really listen up, okay?

If you've nodded off a little bit, time to wake up.

I really want you to hear this quote.

Here's what he says.

When God gives someone a full life without giving them the grace to handle it, okay, did you hear that?

When God gives someone a full life without the grace to handle it, it is like handing a sharp sword to a madman.

Think about that.

I mean, think about the celebrities who you know of who got rich fast and couldn't handle it.

What Burrough is saying here is that plenty without Jesus isn't a blessing, it's a weapon in the wrong hands.

And I want to say something that might surprise some of you.

Sometimes the most merciful thing God can do is not give you what you're asking for.

Sometimes the most merciful thing God can do is to not give you what you're asking for.

Not because he doesn't care, but because he does care.

He knows.

He knows what that sword would do in your hands right now.

And he loves you too much to just hand it over.

The withholding is not cruelty, it's God's grace.

Now, there is a third classroom that can get overlooked.

This is the classroom of your own choices.

See, some of you are not in a hard season because life just happened to you.

You're in a season, you're in a hard season because of a decision you made, a relationship choice, a financial move that you made that went wrong, a moment you can't take back.

And the regret over that choice has become its own prison in your life.

You replay it.

You recalculate.

You ask yourself a hundred times, what if I had done it differently?

Here's what I want you to hear.

Your decision did not catch God off guard.

He knew you before you were born.

And even though you're, even though you had choices that maybe you regret, he has not lost control over your life.

Because remember this the classroom, even of your own choices, is still his classroom.

And he's still the teacher.

Look, God, he does not teach contentment by giving us everything we want.

He teaches us contentment by showing us that Christ is enough when we don't have everything we want.

So, what if the hard season you're in right now, this difficult time that you may be in the middle of?

What if it's not a detour from your life?

What if it's actually the classroom?

What if God is doing something in this, something maybe you can't see it yet, but you're complaining, you're striving, your desperate need to get out of it is the very thing stopping you from learning what the school is trying to teach you.

And look, before you think that I'm I'm just talking to you guys and talking about somebody else, look, I preach this passage to myself all week.

Look, even think about Joseph in Genesis.

If you've been part of a church for for any extended period of time, you know the story of Genesis.

You know the story of Joseph in Genesis.

He spent years in a pit and in a prison for something he didn't do.

No explanation, no rescue, just the school.

But on the other side, he could say, You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.

Look, your hard season is not outside God's hands.

It is in them.

That low-grade complaining that you carry about your job, your money, your life, or how long this is taking, that's not just venting.

That's not just your personality.

That is your soul telling God you don't know what you're doing.

See, chronic discontentment is not a harmless personality trait.

It's your heart saying to God, you're either too foolish to know what I need, too weak to give it to me, or too cruel to care.

Can I ask?

Has anybody in this room been in that classroom this week?

The complaining, the striving, the desperate need for things to be different?

Look, I'm not asking you to raise your hand, but but I gotta know that I'm not the only one in the room that's gone through this.

Look, this is a heavy thing.

It's a heavy thing to sit with, I know.

Because honestly, I've sat with it myself.

Let me tell you what this past week has been like for me.

I knew I was preaching on this topic.

I knew I was preaching on Christian contentment.

And honestly, my first thought was, you know, it's been a long time since I've really struggled with this.

I'm gonna have to think back.

Like, I'm gonna have to think way back because I don't really deal with this anymore.

And almost immediately, it was like God said, whoa, wait a minute.

And all week, I mean, all week, I have felt discontented.

And I tried to tell myself, was, oh, you know, I've been sick all week.

My emotions are all kinds of wonky and wacky.

Yeah, my emotions are off.

That's all it is.

But I knew that wasn't it.

What was going on?

This was God.

It's as if he looked at me and said, Raj, you've grown a lot in this area.

I have blessed you with seasons of plenty, I have walked with you through seasons of need and want.

So, yes, you've grown, but do not for a minute think that you've arrived.

Let me show you.

Let me show you that there is still an undercurrent of discontentment in your heart.

And then the regret started coming.

Financial regret specifically.

If only I had saved more, if only I made that investment, if only I had taken that job.

And the more I sat in this regret, the more inadequate I began to feel, not just financially, as a man, as a husband, as a father.

And then, because regret never stops at regret, I started wallowing in self-pity.

A pastor preaching on contentment while wallowing in self-pity while he's studying the Bible on Christian contentment.

And then came the question that broke me open.

How can I preach this?

How can I preach this to this church about contentment if I'm still struggling with it and I didn't even know it?

How can I show them the solution when clearly I can't even see it myself?

And that's when it hit me.

I started preaching gospel truth to my own heart.

God, I am your son.

You rescued me, you chose me, you made me yours.

And if that is true, then everything you do for me is for my good and your glory.

All that you have done, all that you are doing, all that you have given, all that you have taken away, all that you have you continue to do is for my best.

Because you are my father, and you know what is best for me.

And then I started praying through who who he actually is.

Because here's what I realized.

I wasn't just struggling with who I am, I had drifted from who he is.

I had stopped trusting his character.

So I began praying again.

God, you are great.

Therefore, I can trust you with what I don't have.

God, you are good, therefore, this season is not punishment, it is your classroom.

God, you are gracious.

Therefore, my regret does not define me.

And that's when something started to shift in my heart.

God started to warm my heart and bring me to a place of genuine contentment.

But friends, here's what I'm convinced of.

Anytime we lack contentment, like I mean, really lack it deep down, it's usually because we have drifted from who we are in Jesus.

I mean, Paul says it in chapter three.

He says, I want to know Christ.

There is a holy discontentment there.

There's a holy discontentment that is driving Paul.

Paul is content with his circumstances, but he is hungry for more Jesus.

He is hungry for more Christ.

In fact, that's how all of us should be, but so often we reverse that.

We're content with little of Christ, but restless with all of our circumstances because we want better circumstances.

And when we get when we get these things reversed, that is when our souls just start falling apart.

And when we drift from who we are, we always drift from who he is.

We stop trusting his character.

We forget that God is good, that he is great, that he is gracious and glorious and generous.

And when we lose sight of who he is, everything, everything in our life feels like it's falling apart.

Not our circumstances, our foundation, the ground we walk on.

And look, I don't think I'm the only one who's been in that classroom this week.

So here's the question I want you to sit with.

If you could change one thing about your life right now, just one thing.

And if you believed that if you changed that one thing, you'd finally feel okay, what is it?

What is that one thing that if it shifted, you think you could finally breathe, you could finally relax, you could finally feel like enough.

Because that thing, whatever it is, that is where your contentment is being held hostage.

Paul's been in these classrooms.

He's been in yours.

And he says he found something on the other side that changed everything.

Verse 13 is the answer, and it is either the most overused verse in history, or it's the most radical thing a man in chains has ever said.

He says, I can do all things through him who gives me strength.

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

I want you to think about that for a moment.

I want you to think about where you've seen that verse before.

Because I guarantee you, you've seen it somewhere, everywhere, all over the place.

I mean, on the maybe on a t shirt of the guy who's about to do a 300 pound deadlift, right?

Or maybe on Instagram, on an Instagram post of someone who's who's on a diet and they're about to eat their Brussels sprouts.

I can do all things, right?

It's on bumper stickers.

It's on mugs.

In fact, I saw I saw a guy post it once.

He was holding up a Fish that he caught.

He says, I can do all things.

You look at the fish and you're like, wait a minute, that's about the size of my hand.

Not too impressed.

Listen, Paul did not write this verse as part of his aesthetic.

He wrote it from a prison cell in chains, facing a possible death sentence.

What he meant was something way more specific than a deadlift.

He's saying, I have learned the secret.

I have learned the secret of standing firm when I have absolutely nothing, and when I have everything.

I can survive the prison and I can survive prosperity without losing my soul.

Not because I'm strong, but because there's someone who is continuously, right now, in real time, pouring his strength into me.

Look, this isn't a motivational slogan.

It's a union statement.

Paul is connected to, in union with a living person, and that person does not run out of strength.

The reason Paul can be content in chains is not that he's got great discipline.

It's because the one who is supplying his strength chose chains first.

See, before Paul was ever chained to a Roman soldier, Jesus Christ left the throne room of heaven, walked into this broken world with nothing.

No home, no security, no place to lay his head down.

The Son of God, the one who had everything, who owned everything, chose want voluntarily for us.

Paul writes this, you know, about this in another letter in 2 Corinthians.

Though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor.

Why?

So that you through his poverty might become rich.

Jesus became poor.

He chose the classroom of want, not because he had to, but because we needed him to.

He knows what it is to be hungry.

He knows what it is to have nothing.

He knows what it is to be misunderstood, abandoned, betrayed by the people closest to him.

He knows what it is like to look at a situation that he's in and feel the full weight of it.

And never once did he murmur.

Never once did he say, Oh, this is too much.

This is this isn't fair.

When is it gonna be my turn?

In fact, in the garden, the night before the cross, when the weight, the full weight of what was coming was so heavy that he starts sweating blood.

What does he say?

Not my will, but yours.

And he did it.

He went to the cross for us and to the glory of God.

That is his generosity.

He gave everything.

That is his goodness, he chose the worst so that you and I could receive the best.

That is his grace.

He did it for undeserving people like us.

That is his greatness.

No chain, no cross, no grave could hold him.

And that is his glory.

In Jesus Christ, we see who God truly is.

Listen, friends, when you drift from contentment, you haven't just forgotten a strategy.

You've lost sight of that.

You've lost sight of Jesus.

And the way back to contentment isn't trying harder.

It's looking back at the cross until you see him again.

That same Jesus that went to the cross, that died for us.

He didn't stay in the grave.

He rose.

And the living Christ, right now, today, is continuously pouring strength into anyone who belongs to him.

This isn't a memory of Christ.

This is a living, present Christ for contentment, for standing firm in any circumstance, because the one who has already been through all of it is living inside you.

Here's something else Paul understood that most of us miss.

He wasn't just content in Christ and with Christ.

He was content for Christ.

I want to make sure you heard that correctly.

He wasn't just content in Christ and with Christ.

He was that, but he was also content for Christ.

What do I mean by that?

His life had direction, a purpose bigger than his own comfort.

And when your life is aimed at the glory of God, when that's the main thing you're living for, your circumstances loses a lot of its power over you.

Why?

Because they're no longer the main point.

Jesus'.

Paul can be in chains and at peace, not just because Christ is with him, but because the chains are advancing something that matters more than his freedom.

They're advancing the gospel.

You see, content people, let me see, let me qualify this.

Content people are not people who stopped caring.

They are people who are caring about the right thing.

Her name is Joni Ericsson Tata.

Some of you may have heard of her.

When Joni was about 17 years old, she went for a swim in the Chesapeake Bay.

She misjudged the depth of the water.

And she dove in headfirst.

She hit the bottom.

And in that moment, her entire life changed.

Paralyzed from the shoulders down.

No use of her hands.

No sensation from the neck down.

Seventeen years old.

In the months after the accident, she begged her friends to help her die.

The darkness she was in was it was something that most of us can't even imagine.

That was over fifty years ago.

Joni?

She's in her 70s now.

She spent her adult life in a wheelchair with decades of pain, surgeries, and dependence on other people.

Yet she paints.

She paints with a brush in her mouth.

She's written books.

She's spoken around the world.

She has served people with disabilities in over a hundred countries.

And she said this.

I would rather be in this wheelchair knowing God than on my feet without him.

That is not positive thinking.

That's not resilience.

That is a woman who found what Paul found in chains.

Paul isn't content because prison is okay.

He's not content because he he he talked himself into a better mindset.

He's content because the God who saved him is a God who knows what the chains feel like from the inside.

The God of the universe.

Remember, Jesus wore a crown of thorns.

He carried a cross through the streets.

He was abandoned by the people who said they loved him.

He cried out from the cross, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

He went to the darkest place in the universe.

And then he walked out on the other side.

Paul?

This man in chains?

He has peace.

Because the one who holds him has already conquered everything those chains represent.

And the one who conquered everything now lives in you.

So think about what you walked in here carrying today.

The thing you named earlier.

The thing your your contentment is being held hostage by.

What if the answer to that isn't a change circumstance?

What if the answer is a person?

What if the peace you've been looking for isn't waiting for your life to finally cooperate?

But is available to you right now in the middle of the life you actually have.

See, he had everything.

He gave it up.

He went through everything and he came out of the other side, and now he lives in you.

Said another way.

The one who had everything gave up everything so that people who have nothing can finally have everything that matters.

So when your circumstances are falling apart this week, when the bills show up, when the call comes, when the thing you are counting on falls through, remember who is in you.

Sit with that for a moment.

That is the ground you are standing on.

Is Jesus really enough for you right now?

Is Jesus actually enough for me right now?

You know, maybe you're in a classroom of want.

The bills, the job, the empty account, the season that just won't cooperate with you.

You're not forgotten.

Jesus may have chosen want for you right now.

And he's with you in it.

Let him meet you there.

Maybe you're in a classroom of plenty.

Things are working, life is good.

But there's still this ache underneath.

Because your your comfort promised peace but gave you anxiety.

Christ is better.

So losing your grip.

Maybe you're in the classroom of regret.

The choice you can't undo.

The decision you would give anything to take back.

Some of you have carried it for decades.

It's a hard prison.

But Jesus, he's not afraid to enter it.

So I want you to hear this.

God knew what you were going to choose before you chose it.

Your decision did not, I said it before, I'm going to say it again, did not catch him off guard.

He's not scrambling to come up with a plan B for your life.

And he's using exactly what that choice landed you right now, this season, this circumstance, to shape you into the man or woman he wants you to be.

The cross covered it.

Every choice, every consequence, every version of the life that you think you ruined, the God, our God who works all things for good, that includes your circumstances, that includes you.

So don't lose heart.

And look, maybe you're here today and you don't know Jesus.

You've been trying to fill that empty place with everything you could possibly imagine, except for the one thing that can actually fill it.

Today is a good day to stop looking and start receiving.

So the people who have nothing can have everything that matters.

And that offers for you right now.

I mean, think about this.

Think about what this room would look like if we if this truth, what what what what God is showing us through this passage, if this truth could really get into our bones.

I mean, think about what this church would look like.

The person barely making rent and the person managing a portfolio sitting in the same space with the same piece from the same source, Jesus.

The ex-con rebuilding his life, sitting with the Palm Beach professional, sitting next to each other, content in ways that the world cannot explain.

That is what we're becoming.

That is what we're becoming.

And you know what happens when a church learns this?

Content people become generous people.

They give freely because they're not gripping.

They serve sacrificially because they're not empty.

They love without needing others to fill them.

That is what this church can become, not just content individuals, but gospel-shaped, gospel-driven, gospel-empowered people.

And that is enough for every single person in this room.

Every background, every classroom, every chain, the same supply.

His name is Jesus.

He went through the worst school in history and came out the other side and now lives in us.

And understand something, the cross is where your contentment was purchased.

Not your comfort, your contentment.

He paid for your peace with his poverty.

Discontentment isn't just a financial problem, it's not just an emotional problem, it's a soul problem.

When we drift from who we are in Christ, when we drift from who he is, our souls fall apart.

That's the diagnosis.

But when Christ is your supply, when he is your enough, something happens.

Your soul finds its anchor.

And a soul anchored in Christ can say something that makes no sense to the world around us.

A man named Horatio Spafford.

He lost his four daughters in a shipwreck.

And standing over the waters where they died, he wrote these words.

When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot thou hast taught me to say, would you say it with me?

It is well, it is well with my soul.

That is not a man pretending everything is okay.

That is a man whose soul found its anchor.

Whatever your lot this morning, the classroom of want, the classroom of plenty, the classroom of regret, Christ is in it with you.

And he is enough.

And because he is enough, it is well.

It is well with your soul.

Can I ask you all to stand with me, please?

We're gonna close with a very familiar song.

It is well.

Father in heaven, we thank you this morning for guiding our hearts, reshaping our affection to you.

You are the one who supplies the strength for us to remain content, whether in times of want, in times of plenty, and also during times of regret.

So Lord, would you help us to run to you?

Would you help us to anchor our identity in you?

And help us not to forget your character, your greatness, your goodness, your graciousness, your generosity, and your gloriousness.

We love you, God.

We praise you and we worship you always.

And it's in Jesus' name, all of God's people said, Amen.