Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church

Phil 4:11-13

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. I can do everything through him who gives me strength. Phil 4:11-13

I wonder if a wave of contentment swept over San Diego sometime last week? When the majority of people went home and saw their houses standing and when other went home and, while their homes were damaged or destroyed, their families were standing. We were content with ashes everywhere, even with houses and cars damaged.

Of course, not everyone was swept up in such a wave of contentment, everyone can’t be. But, even for those of us who were, like all waves, this one will quickly recede if it hasn’t already. Already, or soon, we will be frustrated with the ash. We already are having to plan for thanksgiving and buy for Christmas. And, as contentment recedes, discontent moves in, or for many of us, moves back in. We were discontent before and now we are again.

But for a brief moment, we may have actually understood what the Apostle Paul meant when he said, I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.

Let me read that text from Philippians 4 and then we will look at what it takes to be content. Phil 4:11-13 11 I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. 12 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. 13 I can do everything through him who gives me strength.

I confess that I have been discontent for a couple months now. I know I shouldn’t be and that makes me feel guilty. Now, with the fire, I am actually ashamed of it, all of which makes me even more… discontent. I admit that my discontent seems to grow out of my desire for more things or at least I am trying to satisfy my discontentedness with more things. I am wresting with this, so I went to a friend who financially can have anything he wants. I asked him, what is the pathway to contentment? He looked at me as if to ask, “What do you do for a living.” I think he got a little worried. If I don’t know the answer, then he is in big trouble.

Well, ultimately, it came down to me wanting more things. He said what things and I said a new car. He gave me this look like “you’re kidding, right.” His garage is bigger, and his cars are worth more, than my house. What else do you want to make you content? I said a 50 inch, HD flat panel plasma display with blue ray technology and surround sound. Again, the look. He’s got three or four of those. What else, he asked. I said, that’s it. That’s it! He said. That’s what you need to be content? Trust me, it wont.

Of course I know that things won’t make me content in the long run, but that seems to be my internal coping mechanism. When I’m not happy, I want to buy something… or eat something. So going out and buying something to eat is hugely tempting. Just as an aside, I think that is why cookbooks sell so well. You get to buy them, intend to cook and anticipate eating without ever actually having to do it. I don’t have to tell you, it doesn’t work.

But, in that conversation, my friend did give me an insight which seems to align itself with what Paul is saying in our text. It came as he told me his story of being evacuated. As the fires moved towards his home, he and his family left and went to a hotel downtown which was full to bursting within a couple hours. The hotel waived their rules about pets. Dogs and cats and birds were in hotel rooms. Staff put bowls for water and bags of food throughout the hallways. The noise was loud, the maid service was bad, or non-existent, the pool was covered in ash and none of the people in the hotel, including my friend knew if they had homes to return to. But, my friend was content. Why? Because what mattered to him was keeping his family safe. He was committed to his family’s well being.

Now, compare my friend to the unfortunate conventioneers whose planes from Wisconsin and elsewhere landed at Lindberg field during the middle of our fire store. After harrowing flights and delayed transportation, they made it to hotels only to find out their reservations were useless because evacuees and their pets had taken their rooms. Imagine some poor fellow who had planned this trip for he and his family to this convention and hotel for months, planning to get out of the Midwest winter. Imagine by chance he got a room next to my friend, had to step over bags of dog food to get to his room. Found an unmade bed, and no clean towels. His blood pressure rising, his wife tries to make the best of a bad situation and sends their two kids down to swim in the pool…which is closed due to ash.

Two families, next to each other in identical hotel rooms. My friend is happy as a lark. How content is our Wisconsin traveler? Why? Because he was looking to a thing, the hotel room, the vacation, to give him his contentment. Whereas my friend found his contentment in his commitment to his family. Here is what we learn.

Lasting, meaningful Contentment is the result of commitment.

Since Paul’s statement about being content comes from the last chapter of Philippians, we have given you a list of key verses from the rest of the book. Look through those. Do they sound like the sentiments of a content man? 1:21 For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.

3:8 I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord

3:10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings

Seems more like a committed man.

Transitory contentment and happiness is found in things like hotel rooms, cars and plasma TVs. But that contentment goes as fast as it comes, maybe with the first scratch or payment. Paul’s contentment does not come from a thing. It comes from his commitment to Christ. I can’t show you what Paul’s contentment looked like but I can show you the face of a content man. Leonidas, King of Sparta in 480 BC. He lead 300 Spartans to defend his nation against one million Persians.

(I do not recommend the movie by the way). King Leonidas, facing impossible odds, an unaccomplishable goal and certain death. But, in that moment, he wanted to be no where else, doing anything else, a man committed, to his men, his nation, his values. A man content.

If this is too unfamiliar a face, too violent a face, think instead of the face of Martin Luther King, of Mother Teresa, of people whose commitment did not waver in the face of sacrifice, whose cause was greater than whether they had little or much, who faced insurmountable odds, who could have stepped out of the path of sacrifice but refused. Think of the face of Jesus Christ himself.

How content are you? Are you waiting for things, a job, a house, a relationship to provide it? Our faith, our God, our savior are not only worthy of our commitment, they can form the kind of commitment in our hearts that results in contentment regardless of what we have or don’t have.

There is a place there on your insert for you to write down something you have been committed to in your life and remember how content you were to work for that thing.

There is a second thing we learn from Paul about Contentment.

Being content doesn’t mean being complacent.

Discontent, Frustration and bitterness and the consumerism that we use to mask them are not terminal conditions. Paul says he has learned the secret to contentment and its this, I can do everything through him who gives me strength. Paul is in prison. Others are preaching in ways they hope hurt Paul and he can’t do anything about it. The Philippians are far away and he may never see them again. But he has the ability to be content with all of it because he derives his strength for Christ. It isn’t about things, its about Christ and Paul won’t rest until he has achieved the goals Christ has set out for him. At least, that’s how Paul sounds to me.

1:6 he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion

2:5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus

3:13,14 Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on

When we are committed to being the people God wants us to be, we become content to let him work on us and change our hearts. He can teach us what we need to know, mold us into what we need to be. And in becoming the people he means for us to be we will become more content and less and less complacent.

So, what do we do? We are not called to defend against a million like Leonidus or to be shipwrecked like Paul. Our job is to take one step at a time. To start with who we are and take a step towards who we are called to be. Practically speaking, I have two recommendations.

First, Act out of commitment not discontent.

I need to not just go buy that TV. Paul is right. We can do everything through him who gives us strength. In any given situation, we have a choice to live out of our commitment to Christ which leads to contentment or out of discontent which mostly leads to consuming more things. If you will indulge me, I have a proud dad story about my daughter Annie that illustrates this point. Annie worked at It’s a Grind coffee shop for six months before leaving for college. She was never the neatest kid at home but when she went to work, she knew that her bosses wanted the place clean. So, she committed herself to cleaning. She would mop floors and wash dishes, sometimes while other employees talked to each other. She also lived her life in such a way that her faith in Christ was known. Everybody knew she was a woman of faith and cleanliness. When she left, her bosses told her she always had a job when she came back. It might have ended right there and the story would never have made it into a sermon. But, a couple weeks ago, my wife, Carolyn was in the coffee shop with a friend, months since Annie had been there and the boss happened to recognize her. He was excited to see her and told her to follow him into the back room. A little surprised she went with him and he proudly pointed to this poster on the wall. It said WWAD. What would Annie Do. It wasn’t a coincidence that they used that term. That was a nod to her faith, honoring both what she believed and what she modeled as an employee.

Take a moment and write down something you have been complacent about that needs to change.

So, you can act out of commitment not discontent.

The second practical thing you can do is face your discontent.

Don’t try to drown it out or pray it away. But look at it and see what might be tied to it. Paul says that he had learned to be content whatever the circumstances. Its something that can be learned and needs to be learned. It doesn’t come automatically.

I want to go back to my friend at the hotel. He has faced his discontent. He went on a mission trip to Ethiopia to make a difference and to discover whatever it was God wanted him to do with his life. He hated the trip. The flight was long, the food was bad, the place was hot and uncomfortable. None of that was the problem. It was the Ethiopian soldiers with machine guns drawn shouting at the whole missions team. They had stumbled into an area near an air force base and the soldiers were accusing them of spying and taking pictures of their airplanes. They were confiscating and trying to open the cameras and getting more and more upset because there was no film in any of them to pull out. The cameras were all digital. Soldiers were coming to take my friend’s very expensive camera. That wasn’t the problem. It was the memory card in his camera. It had 500 photos of airplanes from an air show he had attended before flying to Africa.

Scared for his life, he fumbled with the camera and slipped the memory card out and into his mouth before handing it over. Unsatisfied the soldiers began going through his luggage. None of that was the problem. It was that they were about to take away his medications. Two weeks before he left on the trip, stints were put in his heart. His doctor wasn’t sure he should go but said it would be alright as long as he took his heart medication everyday no matter what. They were going to shoot him and then he would have a heart attack.

Well, his group was ultimately released…only to be driven through crowed streets with people banging on their cars, shouting foreigners, foreigners. None of that was the problem. For some reason, at the last minute they couldn’t stay at their hotel and they were delivered to an enclosed compound, sleeping outside on cots with mosquito netting. Like any of us might have been, my friend was miserable, angry, nervous and seriously discontent. But, unlike most of us, he had a universal medivac card in his wallet with a a phone number that that could be called from anywhere in the world, by satellite phone if necessary, and if he were ill, a helicopter would fly in and carry him away within a matter of hours. Lying on that cot with that card in his wallet, he was done with Ethiopia. He was giving up. Forget about it. It wasn’t worth it. All he had to do was fake a heart attack, not very hard at that point, and he was out of there, first thing in the morning.

He had gone to Ethiopia to face his discontent but his ultimate consumer cop out was the phone number on that card which he was going to call as soon as the sun came up. Then, in the middle of the night he woke up, wide awake as if his name had been called and he looked up into the most beautiful cloudless, star-filled sky he had ever seen. The voice that must have awakened him spoke again. It said, I am in control and it is all going to be all right. Trust me. Then a shooting star flew from one side of the horizon to the other. I kid you not. A Christian all his life, he says it was in that moment that, as an adult, he gave his life to God in a whole new way. He stayed in Ethiopia, not necessarily content, but not complacent to live with his discontentment.

God doesn’t meet us all so dramatically but he can be just as life changing with each of us. We need to face our discontent and act out of our commitment. God, others, and we ourselves are counting on us.

There is a movie I would recommend to all of us. Its called Facing the Giants. A football coach at a Christian High School is faced with a losing team, complacent with their status as league losers. The coach confronts one pivotal kid, his star player, who has allowed his discontentment with the team to discourage him, to play it safe and to be satisfied with less than his best. I think every one of us could use a coach like this. In fact, we have one in Christ if we will listen and not give up.

Whose next?