When my husband and I were trying to buy our first home, the world was in the mess of a pandemic, and I was navigating remote schooling for my children, I wrote these words in my journal:
I want to cultivate contentment in the unfinished.
As I read those words four years after writing them, I prayed, “God? I still need your help with that.”
You’ll never be content…
…until you recognize that the life you have today—right now, this very messy moment—is the one in which God wants you to be content.
It is one of the most believable lies to think, “If only _______, then I would be happy.”
But it’s not true. If you can’t rejoice in your lot today, you won’t be able to rejoice in it tomorrow. Contentment doesn’t depend on what’s in my hand, but the state of my heart. The apostle Paul wrote “I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content” while sitting in a jail cell (Philippians 4). He didn’t need to wait until God freed him from jail to write about his contented heart. His heart was at rest because his contentment was not based on his location or status but on his Savior.
“You say, ‘If I had a little more, I should be very satisfied.’ You make a mistake. If you are not content with what you have, you would not be satisfied if it were doubled.”
―Charles H. Spurgeon
Things are always unfinished.
Life is change, movement, and motion. You want it to be so. If your life was finished, you would, by definition, be dead.
But even when we die, we’ll leave things unfinished. Relationships we worked to grow, problems we tried to solve, spiritual struggles we attempted to give to God, careers we wanted to start (or end)…all of our lives are composed of a host of unfinished pieces.
Godly Contentment ≠ Stoicism
But godly contentment is different from stoicism. Stoicism says you can’t change it, so learn to accept it.
Godly contentment is trusting and rejoicing in God’s sovereign plan even while you may be praying for a situation to change—perhaps even actively working to change it! Godly contentment is not suppressing your hopes and dreams, but desiring God and his will more than anything. It’s being so full of love and reverence for God that all your longings are impacted and subordinate to your desire for him. This is the practical outworking of what it means to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37).
Godly Contentment = Submission
Contentment and submission to God’s sovereignty are inseparable. You cannot be content without trusting and submitting to God. And you can’t trust and submit to God unless you realize that he is your loving Father who allows all these “unfinished” pieces in your life to remind you of your need for him.
For now, you live in a land of unfinished things. But as you trust in and submit to your heavenly Father, he can take your grasping heart and transform it to be satisfied and content.
You can cultivate contentment in the unfinishedness of your life when you trust in the finished work of Christ on your behalf. If you are in Christ, he has begun a good work in you and he will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:6).
One day, God will bring everything to its intended end. Until then, trust God with the unfinished things and hold onto your hope, knowing that the God who promised is faithful (Hebrews 10).
Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
He who calls you is faithful;
1 Thessalonians 5:23-24
he will surely do it.