Finding Contentment

Well, grab those message notes as we return to our message series, "The Art of Living Well." We are seeking wisdom from the book of Proverbs, and remember, wisdom is more than simply making moral choices. There are a lot of choices that are... an array of choices before us that are essentially morally neutral, like, you know, where do you go to school, where you live, the career that you choose, whether you root for the Dodgers or for the Giants. Okay, well that last one actually is a moral choice, but wisdom is the ability not to just make good choices, but the best choices given the various options that we may have.

And today we're talking about something that drives just about every single decision that you and I make, and that is our desire for contentment. We want to be content, not just content in a momentary way, you know, brief happiness. We want to be content in a consistent way, in an abiding way. So let's see what Proverbs has to say about finding contentment, and I'm going to invite you, in addition to grabbing your notes, put on your thinking cap today, because this subject has a few more layers to it than you might think at first glance.

Now, do you remember that song by U2 that says, "I still haven't found what I'm looking for." Remember that song? I like that song, and bear in mind that this guy who sings it, Bono, he lives in this house, among others, on the French Riviera, has more money than he could ever spend in his lifetime, and I look at that and go, "Man, I think you found what I'm looking for. I mean, check that place out." But the cool thing about this song is that it basically says, you know, you can experience the very best that life has to offer. You can have immense success. You can have adventure. You can experience love. You can even have faith and still struggle to feel content.

This is such a big issue that the folks at the Gallup organization, every year they do a rather sophisticated study where they try to measure contentment in America. They even break this down city by city, and they measure things like economic factors, overall health, safety, environmental factors, the outlook that people have in their community, how positive they are about where they live, and they compile all this data. And in 2012, guess which city was the most contented city in the United States of America? Anyone care to hazard a guess here? It wasn't Fresno, but there would be a certain poetic justice in this place if that were true. Someone might receive their comeuppance if that were to happen.

Yes, yes. It is not Santa Cruz despite the lovely climate we have and all the natural beauties. Yeah, over here. Honolulu. Great guess, but no it's not Honolulu. Anyone else? Yeah. Not Los Angeles and... Oh, one more, yeah. It's not San Diego. It's not San Francisco. It's not Vail. It's not New York. It's not Hollywood. The most contented city in America is Lincoln, Nebraska. I kid you not. Okay, I didn't see that coming either. In fact, when I shared this with some people on our staff, one of them said, "Well, makes me think that people in Lincoln, Nebraska don't travel much." Which, you know, that's just sour grapes because, you know, it's not us. We didn't win the prize. They're more content than we are.

We live in one of the most beautiful, temperate places on the planet and yet a lot of folks, if the study is to be believed in Santa Cruz, would say, "You know what? I still haven't found what I'm looking for." Which begs the question, why is contentment so hard to find? We're going to spend most of our time here because the fact is, if finding contentment was easy, hey, there'd be a lot more contented people. So what's the problem? I want to give you three reasons why contentment is so elusive and Proverbs speaks to all three of these.

The first reason is this, that despite all the attention and energy that we put on our external circumstances, our homes, our cars, bank accounts, looks, health, even our families and friends, despite all of that, fundamentally contentment flows from my heart. You might want to write that down. Contentment flows from my heart. In other words, contentment flows from the inside out. Now look at this verse, this first verse at the top of your notes and on screen. It's Proverbs 4:23. I'm going to invite you to read this out loud with me. Let me hear you. Here we go. "Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it." Wow, if you have your Bible open and it belongs to you, you might want to circle or underline that verse because that has the makings of a life verse there. "Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it."

Now as you can see, I put a note there in your outline about the word heart because the word heart in the Hebrew mindset of the Old Testament is much more expansive than it is in English. A Bible scholar, Bruce Waltke, puts it this way, "Heart in the Old Testament is the center of all of a person's emotional, intellectual, religious, moral activity." We don't have a word in English that really captures the word heart when you see it there in your text. We just don't. We have to kind of add up a number of them. So when you read the word heart both here and you're going to see it a lot in the verses we see today, I want you to think of, you know, the sum of your internal life or take what we typically associate the functions of our brain, our heart, our spirit and add those all up and you'll have a better idea of what Proverbs is talking about.

"Your heart" is what the Apostle Paul is speaking to when he mentions your inner being in Ephesians 3:16. He says, "I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his spirit in your inner being." Literally, inner man or inner woman you could say. And it's in this inner part or from this inner part of your being that contentment flows. And the amazing thing about Paul's prayer here, by the way, in Ephesians is that he's praying for people who are slaves in many instances. Most of them are oppressed. Some are sick. They have all sorts of problems that are common to humankind and yet Paul doesn't pray that their problems will go away. He doesn't pray that their circumstances will suddenly take a turn for the best, although it's perfectly fine and well to pray those types of prayers. But Paul simply prays that God would strengthen each one of them in their inner being.

So often the discussion around contentment has to do with, you know, money and I want more of it or material things or physical well-being or relationships and yet Paul doesn't hang any of those things on his contentment. And this isn't just some sort of distant esoteric hope for Paul. Look what he says in Philippians 4. He says, "I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation. I can do this through him who gives me strength." Notice the secret of contentment, according to Paul, isn't adopting some sort of Pollyanna lens for the world, nor is it detaching oneself from all natural normal desires. He doesn't say that. He doesn't even say that the secret of contentment is native to his own heart.

And we need to be clear about this because our culture, especially here in Santa Cruz, likes to think that, you know, contentment is somewhere locked deep down in your heart. You just have to discover it and yet that's not what Paul is saying. Paul is saying is that contentment is found in Jesus and it comes through the grace, the love, the power of Jesus flowing into our hearts, strengthening and empowering us, and then and only then can this inner contentment flow outward into the daily particulars of our lives.

And you know, every so often you meet someone who has what you might call the gift of contentment. You know people like this, Josh Fox, by the way, is one of these people. I've known him since he was in college. And Josh just has this gift about him where what you see on stage is what I've seen for the past 20 years of knowing him. I also think of a person that I knew in college named Faye. I worked in a facility for adults that had severe developmental and cognitive challenges from birth. People that you will not see typically in mainstream society. A very difficult place. For some it was severe physical disability. Others it was cognitive. For many it was a combination of both.

But Faye, she was a special, special person. You might have heard me speak about her before. She had such a profound effect on me. Faye, I never could understand why she had to live there. Because aside from being born blind, she had no other discernible cognitive or physical challenges. I have to assume that it was her only option, which is quite sad. And yet so often I would drop into her room and we would plunge into conversation. And Faye was one of the most gifted conversationalists I've ever met in my entire life. I mean she was just such a delightful person.

And of all the things that we would talk about, I can never recall a single time where Faye wanted to talk about how she got such a raw deal in life or wanted to complain about the difficulties that she faced on a daily basis. Instead talking with Faye always seemed to leave me better. Always left me feeling like my day is just brighter after talking to her. And you know we all know people and sometimes it's us who are kind of the Debbie Downers. You know what I mean? I mean consistently and after a while you learn. I probably shouldn't ask this person how they're doing because while you know you've learned you know that while the details may change you're going to be hit with a tale of misery.

And again sometimes we all kind of fall into that but Faye could not have been more different than that. I mean not only would I leave those conversations feeling encouraged but invariably Faye would find a way to slip Jesus into the conversation. Because at her core that's who she was about. Her Savior, her Lord, her best friend Jesus. She just couldn't help it. And I've come to think that Jesus uses people like Faye to remind the rest of us who live often in a world that gives us all sorts of opportunities and resources to go after all the stuff that's out there. He uses people like Faye to remind us that contentment is found in here. In a heart that's been filled with the love and presence of Jesus Christ.

Because if contentment doesn't flow out of our hearts, all other attempts are in vain. Now that said I need to reiterate that this is very difficult. This is essentially the lesson of a lifetime and one of the reasons for that is that we live in a world that puts all the emphasis on the externals and yet the reality is contentment requires giving priority to the inner condition of our hearts.

The second challenge is this. Even when I do start to give attention to, you know, the matters of my heart, it turns out my heart is complex. It's complex and this is one of the things I love about the Bible and especially Proverbs because Proverbs does not present to us some sort of simple reductionistic view of the human heart. It gives us a much more comprehensive view, a nuanced view. For instance, let me show you just five things that Proverbs talks about when it talks about the human heart.

The first one is the physical aspect and what I mean here is that how you think, how you perceive life, how you feel about things can affect you on a physical basis. Proverbs 17:22 says a cheerful heart is good medicine but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. A cheerful heart is good medicine and this is why school-aged kids are rarely ever sick on Saturday morning, right? It's Saturday and Monday morning, oh my tummy hurts. I mean, well if it's a Saturday morning tummy, you better pay attention to it, right? Because then you know your kids are really sick.

On the other hand, if you feel emotionally or spiritually crushed, your entire being suffers. You feel lousy, no energy, you lose your appetite, you can't sleep. A crushed spirit dries up the bones, Proverbs says, and conversely, if a crushed spirit can dry up your bones, then dried up bones can crush your spirit. In other words, pain can have a profound effect on contentment, making it all the more elusive. Yesterday morning my oldest son crashed on his skateboard and all his bones are intact. He learned the lesson of going down hills and finding yourself going much faster than you anticipated. Many of us have learned that but he lost a bit of skin in the process.

He came in the door looking like he had lost a fight with a cheese grater. I think you get the picture there but we've all been there, you know, you get sick or injured. It's not uncommon to also become depressed, anxious, discouraged. There's a relationship between how we're doing, you know, mentally, emotionally, spiritually and how we're doing physically and typically I believe that our physical state will intensify what's going on on the inside. There's so there's this physical aspect, there's also an emotional relational aspect and this also has a huge effect on our overall contentment, I mean how things are going in my emotional, my relational world.

Proverbs 12:25 says an anxious heart weighs a man down but a kind word cheers him up and you know sometimes the issues of the heart are terribly complex. If you're aware of the tragic loss of Rick Warren's son, these are complex issues and I don't even care to venture too much commentary there other than just to say keep them in your prayers. But sometimes it can also be on the other hand as simple as having someone throw their arm around you and just say, you know, I love you, you know, I really appreciate what you're doing, I just want to encourage you. Sometimes just a kind word can make a profound difference in our overall outlook.

The third thing the Proverbs talks about in terms of the complexity of the heart is the moral aspect. Sometimes we feel discontent because we are morally conflicted, right? We like confidence so we have this in this sense of impending doom because we're afraid that we're going to reap what we've sown and in Proverbs 28:1 it says the wicked flee though no one pursues, which is kind of paranoid, right? But the righteous are as bold as a lion. A guilty conscience will have you looking over your corner over your shoulder. It's like, you know, have you ever had the boss call you or email you and say, "I'd like to talk with you. I've got a couple things I'd like to discuss," and you're like immediately rolodexing through all the things that you might have done wrong, right? It's never like, "Oh, they're gonna give me a raise," right? No, no, it's like, "Oh, when did I last show up late? What do I'm gonna call on the carpet for something?" Surely we get all worried about it.

But the righteous, on the other hand, they're as bold as a lion. They don't have to look over their shoulder because they have a clear conscience. Now let's just pause for a second. We've covered three of these five things. Are you getting a sense of how comprehensive Proverbs' view is of the human heart? It's a full view and I point that out because sometimes, and especially in Christian circles, we can simplify things down to one narrow category and typically it's this moral aspect. So someone says, you know, they confess just, you know, I'm just not content and it's not uncommon for folks to say, "Hmm, you're not content? Well, are you reading your Bible? Are you praying? Do you have unconfessed sin? Are you in a small group? What about a daily quiet time?" and so on and so forth. We hand them a list as if it's just always that simple. That's a disservice. That's not wisdom. Our hearts are more complex than that.

And by the way, self-help books, various schools of therapy or psychology, psychiatrists can sometimes, in due respect, fall into the same trap of reducing us to, you know, just a few simple solutions. But the heart is more complex than that. There's a physical aspect, an emotional relational aspect, a moral aspect, and then Proverbs takes it even further when it talks about an existential aspect. Yes, existential, because listen, one of the things that we may avoid thinking about is our own impermanence. You can't escape it. Life is flying by at this warp speed and we all know where it ends, don't we? Proverbs 14:13 talks about this existential angst when it says even in laughter the heart is sad and the end of joy is grief because our hearts know that even in the best moments it's so temporary.

It's so temporary that in the greatest laughter there is a twinge of grief because of this. I mentioned a moment ago my son Jackie turned 13 years old on Friday. I can't believe it. I mean I was the guy here talking about the newborn baby just last week, I think. And I can distinctly remember looking down at him when he was a toddler and thinking to myself, watching him sleep in his crib, if God doesn't have an answer to the impermanence of life, then this is one of the cruelest jokes in the universe to be given someone who you love so much only to have it end in oblivion, really. This is why we yearn for something more in life. This is why we intuitively know there has to be an answer beyond the grave, which really leads to the final piece of our heart's makeup and that's the spiritual aspect.

Why do the vast majority of people around the globe and for all time have the spiritual or religious impulse? I mean think of the ways that people try to connect with God. Why is that? Well, the answer comes from another of the Bible's books of wisdom, one that was also written by Solomon, the book of Ecclesiastes 3:11, and in Ecclesiastes, Solomon writes, "He has also set eternity in the human heart yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end." God has set eternity in our hearts, the knowledge that he is there, and so we grope for him even though we cannot fully understand him. It's part of what human hearts do.

And now when you add all this up, these five things—and this is not exactly a comprehensive or exhaustive list, but just these five things—add all those together, take that into consideration, and it is a wonder that anyone finds contentment. It really is. There's so many variables playing out all the time and if that's not daunting enough, there's still one more reason why contentment is hard to find and that's number three: my heart suffers from inherent loneliness. This is something adolescent girls, by the way, have been trying to convince us all along when they say nobody understands me. There's an element of truth to that because no one truly or fully does understand you—not your best friend, not your spouse. Even in the best of marriages, nobody truly understands you, not completely.

And as a result, Proverbs 14:10 says each heart knows its own bitterness and no one else can share its joy. What a lonely verse is saying that there are places in our hearts that are hidden from everyone else, things that are unique to our experience that no one else can quite understand or identify with, and knowing this creates a kind of loneliness that you can't completely escape. So wow, aren't you glad you came today? Because wow, when you think of all of these things, it's like, well can anyone ever find contentment? Well hang on because the Bible provides an answer to all of this.

But before we move on to the answer, there's a couple things, two things that are worth mentioning. The first one is this: in light of the last point about the uniqueness of the human heart, I think that we ought to be very reluctant when it comes to presuming that we understand everything about other people. You know when some people share something about their heart and it's not unlikely to go, "Oh, I understand what we're talking about," right? We sometimes we don't even let them finish the story. "Oh, I understand what you're talking about. I totally relate to that." You know, maybe you don't understand what they're talking about. Maybe we don't. Maybe we should be humble in our estimation or our ability to understand what's really going on in the heart of another person. In fact, elsewhere in Proverbs it talks about how we don't even fully understand ourselves, let alone anyone else. Only God truly understands any one of us, so that's one takeaway from this so far.

The second one is this, and this is my hope for all of us here this morning: in light of the inward nature of contentment and the complexity of the human heart and the uniqueness of each one of us, I hope that you are able to give yourself some grace today. Here's what I mean by that: just maybe some of you, you're not just naturally the most contented person in the world. You're not the most contented Christian, in fact, and you feel guilty about that. You feel ashamed. You feel like something's wrong with you because maybe you're just not naturally as joyous as everybody else. Listen, I hope that you will be encouraged knowing that it's not as simple as sometimes we make it out to be. It's just not. The Bible penetrates our heart or the, excuse me, the gospel can penetrate our heart in an instant yet it takes a lifetime for it to press itself into our soul. So give yourself some grace in this department and give others some grace as well. Like I said, if it was easy, most of us would be content all the time.

Finally, know that there is hope. Absolutely there's hope. So flip over to page two if you haven't already. Let's just talk about that briefly and I'll say from the outset I don't think the Proverbs gives us the full answer here, but it does get us on the path. It gives us some hints, little breadcrumbs that we can follow, and one of those hints is in Proverbs 13:12. Check this out. It says hope deferred makes the heart sick but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. Now circle that phrase tree of life. It's kind of an odd way to put it. Longing fulfilled is a tree of life. This is what's fascinating about this. The tree of life is mentioned in Genesis. It's in the garden of Eden and it's also mentioned in the last book of the Bible in Revelation. The very end of Revelation, there's the tree of life again when God makes all things, makes heaven and earth new again and this beautiful glory that we look forward to.

So there's a tree of life at the beginning and the end. No book in the Bible mentions a tree of life except one in between those two, and that's Proverbs. It mentions it four times, in fact. Tim Keller talks about the significance of this tree of life language and I want to credit him for bringing this to my attention. But here's what's so intriguing about this because these references to a tree of life, what they're really doing is they're prompting us to think back to that original tree, the one that was lost to Adam and Eve when they were banished from the garden. And every time that we experience a longing fulfilled or intense pleasure, that serves as just a little reminder, a pointer to the paradise that we lost. We still long for that garden even though you not, we've never even experienced it. Even so, our hearts long for that garden.

This is why we seek contentment in every conceivable way because we want to get back to Eden. That's what we want. We want the kind of relationship with God, with others, with our world that we were actually created for. That's what drives us and wisdom will help us to a certain degree because wisdom can lead to blessing and that blessing reminds us of goodness and more, but ultimately we need more than just wise principles. We need wisdom personified. We need Jesus Christ, who the Bible calls the wisdom of God. And so Jesus comes and he says in places like John 10:10, "I have come that they may have life and have it to the full." We lost the tree of life, didn't we? So what does Jesus do? He bears our sins on another tree, on the cross, as it says in 1 Peter 2:24, "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed." Because Jesus, listen to this, because Jesus was willing to climb the tree of death, you and I have been given access to the tree of life. That's the good news of the gospel and that's why this tree of life is talked about in Revelation because that's what we're heading towards. That's the gift that's been given to us: a future and existence so alive, so glorious, so amazing that 1 Corinthians 2:9 says no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.

And when you live your life now in light of then, it truly does change your perspective on everything. And yes, it can plant in your heart a deep and abiding contentment because you know where you are headed and that day is coming. And when it does, we will look back on this life in this broken world where everything has been corrupted and damaged by sin, and one thing's for sure: on that day we will no longer ever have to seek contentment again. You won't have to hunt for it then. Now until then we wait, we toil, we suffer sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, and all the while the world holds out all sorts of things that come with the promise, "Oh, this will make you happy," or "This will take away your pain," or "This will truly quench your thirst," but none of them do because what our hearts truly thirst for is God. Not even paradise is enough because we were created to love God above all else.

It's like the brilliant mathematician Blaise Pascal said, "There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing but only by God, the creator made known through Jesus." So if you know, brother or sister, if you know that that hole in your heart has been filled by God, that's the greatest thing you could ever say about your heart. And may you experience true lasting joy and contentment because of that truth. And possibly if you're here and you still feel the ache of that hole, that vacuum, and you know you've tried to fill it with so many other things, we all have, things that only left you tired, wounded, guilt-ridden, and restlessly discontent. If you can relate to any of that, then maybe right now the spirit of Christ is saying to you, "Would you like to come and receive rest? Would you like to come home to the place that I prepared for you all along? Would you like me to fill that hole that only I can fill?"

Wherever you are this morning, I want to leave you with a picture of the hope and the future that Jesus offers us. C.S. Lewis portrays this beautifully in the final book of the Chronicles of Narnia, the book The Last Battle, and at the very end, finally after all their travails, all their battles, the kings and the queens and the subjects of old Narnia find themselves in the new Narnia. And this is what it says: "It's like a story you have never heard but very much want to know. The difference between old Narnia and the new Narnia was like that. The new one was a deeper country. Every rock and flower and blade of grass looked like it meant more. I can't describe it any better than that. If you ever get there, you will know what I mean." It was the unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right forehoof on the ground and neighed and then cried, "I have come home at last. This is my real country. I belong here. This is the land I've been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now." The reason why we love the old Narnia so much is because sometimes it looked a little like this.

Amen. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your presence with us here this morning, and Father, like the great Saint Augustine said so many centuries ago, you have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in you. So Lord, I thank you for the invitation that stands before each one of us this morning to find our rest, our contentment in you. And Lord, it's really impossible for us to do this in our own strength. It's the gift of your presence, the gift of your love and your grace that suffuses our being in a way that can transform our outlook. And so Lord, we pray for your grace this morning. We pray for the gift of contentment to be at ease wherever we are in any and all circumstances, which again is only possible through your power.

But Lord, I do want to pray for anyone among us here this morning especially who would readily admit, "I still haven't found what I'm looking for," and I've looked in a lot of places. In fact, I know I've sinned. I've taken, I've hurt others in the process. If that's you, then you might want to just in your own heart admit that and then you might want to tell the Lord something like this in the quiet of your own heart: "But Lord, now I want to receive the life that you offer. I believe that Jesus, you died for me on the cross, taking my sins upon yourself, taking my death so that I might have life eternal. And Lord, I ask you to enter into my heart, into my inner being now and forevermore and help me to follow you in faith from this moment onward."

And Lord, for all of us, I pray that you would dwell in our hearts through faith and that being rooted and established in your love, we'd have power to grasp how wide and how long and high and deep is the love of Jesus Christ so that our hearts may be strengthened, contented, at rest in you. I pray this in the great and powerful name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, and all God's people said, Amen.