A Learned Virtue
Theme of the Week: The Secret of Contentment
Saturday, November 29, 2003
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Q. You call contentment a learned disposition. How do you learn it?
A. Two ways: • Stop teasing yourself with images of what you don't have. When you go to the mailbox and pull out the Land's End catalogue, walk it to the garbage. Don't hang out at the mall just to hang out at the mall. Don't stare at travel posters dreaming about where you'd go if you had the money. Don't keep putting these images of what you have to have in front of your eyes.
• Begin the habit of saying thank you for what you do have. Every time we're tempted to be discontent over something we don't have, it's an opportunity to thank God for what we do have in that same category.
A week ago my neighbor called me over to his driveway and showed me his new van. This thing has everything: a CD player, a button you push and the side door opens and closes, all sorts of cargo space. I oohed and aahed, and then I walked to my driveway where my 14-year-old Chevy wagon with 120,000 miles on it was parked.
As I walked to my driveway, I prayed, "Thanks, God." And I meant it, because that car just got us back from a wonderful vacation, and that car runs like a top. We can fit nine bodies no sweat—a little bit of sweat—in that wagon. On our way back from vacation, we stopped on Sunday to hear the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir. Do you know I left my car unattended for four hours and nobody touched it? The next time you're tempted to grouse over what you don't have, thank God for what you have.
Jim Nicodem pastors Christ Community Church in St. Charles, Illinois.
Adapted from Preaching Today (205) by permission.
Copyright © 2003 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.
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Lord, teach me to get along happily with whatever You wisely and graciously choose for me.
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