Boring Life and Contentment

It seems that lately any time someone asks me how I'm doing I reply, "Alright. Life's kind of boring right now."

Perhaps I need to make it more exciting, or perhaps I need to learn contentment in boring situations.

I listened to the first part of a sermon by Charles Stanley last night. It was called "The Secret to Contentment." Contentment is something I've been trying to learn about for the past year and a half or so (ever since going to Bolivia - you can read my other blog for more details on that). Life just sometimes gets to a point where everything is the same day after day... and life is just boring... or annoying.

Charles Stanley defined contentment a few different ways...

Contentment is the sense of sufficiency found in our sufficiency in Christ Jesus
Contentment is a sense of inner peace, inner quietness and rest

I know when we give our lives to God that there is no more need for anxiety and worry. We can have peace and inner quietness and we can rest in God. When we rely on ourselves, we rely on someone who cannot control the future and who does not know what is going to happen. There is no security in that. When we give our lives to God and rely on Him, we are trusting in someone who can take care of us completely and who has ultimate control over where our lives go. We just have to give over that control and stop pulling away to rely on ourselves. God is good (all the time!) and He knows what's good for us. When we trust God, there is no more need for worry.

But, as for my boring life, I'm not really anxious... I'm just bored. But, I suppose that in that I need to trust that God knows what He's doing.

The other points he made that I thought were interesting are the roots of anxiety. He said that there are three main ones...

1. Fear... fear leads to anxiety. Sounds obvious enough. It's a fear of lack of control, of the future, of the question "will I be able to handle the future?"

2. Unbelief... not believing that God can handle all the things that come our way.

3. Attempting to play God... we think that we're strong enough and able enough to control certain situations - when we find that we can't control them, we become anxious

The third point he made that I thought was rather nicely put was that the first step to contentment is to recognize your inability to cope with life, to deal with sin and guilt. Then... (this is me talking, not Charles Stanley... because I haven't listened to his talk any farther than this)... we need to give our lives over to God because He's already taken care of our sin - we don't need to feel guilt and shame (not that we can give ourselves permission to keep on sinning with the excuse that we don't need to feel guilty... but I'll leave that discussion for another time). When we give our lives to God, He can transform us into new people that are able to praise Him and work for His glory. Then we need to trust Him with our lives. And then we find contentment. I think there must be more to it than that... perhaps not, but I'll update once I've finished the rest of Charles Stanley's talk.

So, perhaps life seems rather boring right now, but my life is God's and I know He knows what He's doing. So, I'm going to relax and I'm going to trust Him (right now!). Perhaps then life won't be so boring when I realize that God said "Heidi go to Ambrose" and that since He said that, He has a plan for me here (no matter how uninteresting it may seem right now). Perhaps just trusting that God knows what He's doing will put life into my life. I think so.

God is Good
He knows what He is doing
I can trust Him (all the time!)