Contentment Isn't Settling (continued...)

You never know what may come when you least expect it because you are gratefully content with all He has given you where you are right now

    The mystery of our futures can be unlocked in where we are right now. Although it seems the pursuit of making a future would work best, we must remember that our future starts and becomes from right now. 

Contentment is the fruit of a thankful heart and does not reflect complacency or idleness in your life. It simply shows proof that God is your provider, trusted with every part of your life. Contentment shows the evidence that what He wants for your life makes all the difference in how satisfied you are, whether you have much or little to this world and those around you. Contentment is a heart at peace with nothing to prove and nothing more to gain. We miss the good and amazing things right under our noses when we don't see them there. 

Think about how much that happens to us when we are filled with wanting basically what we don't have now. 

If our focus is on what we don’t have, how can we see what we do have right now?

I think in a round-about way we are terrified from missing out on a blessing we don't yet have as if God will dangle it for a brief moment and if we aren't looking, we will miss it forever. 

Let me tell you right now if that were the case, just about every good thing in my life now I would have overlooked or missed it. 

I am so thankful God doesn't do that with us. We will not miss out on something He intends to be ours or else He would be a liar towards the things He promises us. 

That is where we find great freedom. We find freedom to be content with where He has us now, not having to be constantly looking around at our future to jump on that "next break" to catapult us from the place we think we are lacking where we are now. Us looking to jump on or somehow make happen His next provision for us won't make it happen any more than us trying to manipulate our lives to become what He has promised us in the first place. 

Talking with a friend recently reminded me through his decisions in how he is choosing to trust God with something important in His life. He told me, “I have done all I could do . . . but God has to be the one to make this happen . . .”

    Is it possible that things work a little easier than we make them out to be?

For me, I have seen that the battles I face in life often may be exclusively within myself . . . and not necessarily caused by the circumstances around me.

I am reminded of a scene from the latest Rocky movie franchise, Creed. Balboa's character takes the young Creed to the mirrors in the boxing gym. The mirrors are used for the fighters to watch themselves as they shadow box, almost using themselves as their opponent, slipping and avoiding their own punches.

After they walk over to the mirrors and Creed is looking at himself, Rocky Balboa says . . .

"You see this guy here staring back at ya? That's your toughest opponent. Every time you get into the ring, that's who you're going against. I believe that in boxing and I do believe that in life, okay?"

    There isn't a man on this planet who can't agree with that one hundred percent. Most of the time, I cannot blame anyone but myself for believing the perspective I may see towards my life. It becomes really simple . . . I can either have my eyes on what I see or what our Father sees.

It can only be one of those.

Contentment rests here on this simple truth.

    I absolutely love to hear a man's heart in that position of humility, knowing darn well that God is the one who moves the waters to make dry a path that before should have been impossible to walk through. 

He is the one who has the authority to calm the rage in a storm . . . and provide for our every single need. 

We have a freedom to trust Him to war on our behalf while we get to live a life full of adventure and extraordinary passion, not allowing ourselves to be taken back by fear and dismay based on what we see right now. 

It doesn't mean we don't have to fight, but it does mean we don't have to play the role that is God's alone to fulfill in our own lives. 

We can be content with where we are now, all the while having a confident hope and trust that He is working right now on the behalf of a future He has planned for us. We don't have to figure out our future . . . what it will look like . . . or even what will become from all we end up doing now. 

Imagine the difference that would make in how we love and live and pour out everything we have into each day that comes . . . all because we know we are not wasting our best on what may seem insignificant now. 

You never know what may come of the ground you God leads you to take now in your life. You never know what may sprout forth from the seeds you plant now. 

You never know what may come when you least expect it because you are gratefully content with all He has given you where you are right now.

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Just take a few minutes right where you are now and, with opened hands, release the things that you may have speculated for your future and how it has effected how you live now in your life . . . how you love now towards those in your life. See how it has held you back? 

Offer that to the Father and release yourself from its hold on how you live now . . . let Him free you by giving you His perspective. 

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    Hopefully during this journey finding contentment, a thankful heart grows in you, freeing you to see the world how He sees the world.

Contentment Isn't Settling

Being content with where you are right now in your life will not forfeit the future you hope to end up with

    We are free to be content with where we are right now in our life. We don't have to somehow give up our dreams and desires in order to find true contentment. The promises God has written in our hearts are those desires and passions we just cannot seem to silence. We do not have to strive to earn or force the promises He has given us to simply receive. As is the way of life,  He inspires us when it is the right time. Until then? We can be free to be content, now.

We are moved when it is the right time to be moved. It is okay to wait for the next move in the place we are in now and actually enjoy it with contentment because it is not so much a ladder climb up to better things, rather, it is simply a stepping stone in the journey to the place He has for us to go next. 

It doesn't mean you are settling for less of what you know you could do or who you could become if you are content with where He has you in the mean time. 

They are not one of the same but different all together. 

Contentment is a placement of heart regardless of circumstances, rather than settling is based on our decisions upon circumstances.

My circumstance doesn't need to change for me to be content, but it must for me to settle. 

    God doesn't want us to settle for anything less than what He has for us, but He does desire for us to have true contentment worked into our character . . . into the person we are through and through. 

We can try to see where He is leading us, but if we don't know, we just can't know yet. We must wait for Him to reveal the mysteries to us for later. Until that time comes, He gives us the freedom to embrace where we are and learn contentment now.

But what about in the mean time . . . right now?

While we are where He has us now, we can find confidence in enjoying where we are because it is He who has given it. Us having what we have and being where we are right now in our lives is a part of His provision, and we get to find contentment in that. Hopefully somewhere along the way in that process of finding contentment, we also find a thankful heart.

    I have struggled, especially lately, with where I am right now in my life and finding contentment in it. My life doesn't exactly look how I imagined it would at this point, and to be honest, a part of me feels I would somehow betray my dreams and desires if I was truly content with where I am now.

I think we have a harder time with our circumstances when they seem small and insignificant . . . or even when they have lost an excitement they once carried. At that point, we are ready to move on to the next thing . . . something bigger and better. But, He wants us to enjoy where He has us right now in the same way a father wants his children to appreciate all he does for them.

As we turn our focus from the future we don't know anything about to the purpose in the place we are in now, we may be shocked at how the view of our life shifts. It is the way of our loving Father to first address our hearts within before moving things around in our lives on the outside.

We want that promotion or "big break" . . . but He wants that part of our hearts that just can't be content no matter what we have.

We want that specific relationship to just be restored and at peace . . . while He wants us to learn how to see beyond the circumstance through to what He sees.

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    Take the time right now to allow yourself some time to be real and honest with Him. If there are areas of your life that have become a place of discontentment which may look like frustration from disappointments . . . anger of some unfair circumstance you have been left in . . . tell Him. Don't worry about what it sounds like, whether it be complaining or just venting. Be real about it. He sees it in your heart anyways. I think it's time for you to acknowledge it's there in the first place, and He wants you to open up to Him in raw unfiltered honesty.

It is here where He can listen to you, allow you to see maybe a part of what He sees, and finally renew your hope and vision of where He is perhaps taking you in your journey. When your perspective aligns with His, your current state of contentment will be sure to follow.

Trust Him that if you learn to be fully content with where you are, not seeing what is lacking but seeing the fullness in what He has given you right now, you will still walk in His promises in the right time.

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    Being content with where you are right now in your life will not forfeit the future you hope to end up with. 

Being content with seemingly "little" right now in whatever capacity that looks like for you does not disqualify you from God giving you more.

Discontentment does not earn you the seat to having more . . . not in the Kingdom of Heaven it doesn't. In a world obsessed with ambition for having more, as fleeting as our lives being but a blink compared to eternity, we must face the truth that God just doesn't see things the way we see them.

Remember, we want the promotions . . . the rocket-launched career . . . that "big break." If we follow any bit of our hearts that may be discontented, the root would be that. Ambition is where often times our focus drifts to. It is what we generally tend to lean.   

You know what He wants?

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" . . . Let us exalt in our sufferings and rejoice in our hardships, knowing that hardship (distress, pressure, trouble) produces patient endurance; and endurance, proven character (spiritual maturity); and proven character, hope and confident assurance [of eternal salvation.]"

-Romans 5:3-4 AMP

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    It's kind of like a little kid throwing a fit because he didn't get the piece of candy he desperately wanted. 

As adults, we probably think, "Jeeze kid, if you only knew life will surely go on without you getting a small piece of candy."

It is ridiculous to us in how children can sometimes be, yet, that is how we are with God. Maybe not always but we do that . . . we think throwing a fit because life doesn't go our way will somehow alert those around us and God to knowing just how unhappy and discontented we are. 

But any good parent knows it would be a mistake to give in to such brattiness. 

It is okay to be unhappy and discontented with where you may be in your life . . . and it is okay in how angry or frustrating it may make you to be there. 

But you are not settling for less than your dreams and His promises when you give in to where you are right now, confident that it is provision from God. It surely won't work as some kind of protest towards God and your situation to go through each day miserable and grumpy, taking it our on those around you. 

It will however give you great peace and contentment to understand that we never stay in one place too long while following the leading of the Holy Spirit. 

On the other hand, when I say "in one place" I don't mean He takes us from one huge opportunity to the next. 

It just doesn't work that way. 

In fact, I am learning in my own life that, especially those "big" dreams I once had, come not as one enormous step into a dream-come-true type of scenario. Instead, they come in a wonderfully and beautifully orchestrated culmination of many small steps that sometimes seem to not amount to much leading up to what we would call a "big break" or something along those lines.

If that is the case, we most assuredly have complete freedom and undoubtedly can place confidence in taking the seemingly small steps He gives us now . . . what may seem to fall short of the dreams in our hearts coming true to indeed them being a path meant to lead us to those promises.

No, it is not settling for less when we are content with what we have right now and may consider it less than what our dreams may be.

To be continued . . . 

What Did You Expect?

What a powerful thing our thoughts are, orchestrating beliefs to such an extent that it effects the tangible world we live in

    Some of the most powerful lingering forces found in our “mind’s eye” are expectations. Expectations can sometimes be our imagination’s best attempt to connect the things we hope for with some sort of tangible reality. Although expectations themselves are not necessarily a bad thing, they do have the tendency to wonder a little too far off the course of what actually is or could be.

The Devil plays sick games with us while attempting to exploit a wonderful part of our thoughts that could be used to imagine the true faithfulness of our loving Father. 

Instead, we end up allowing our imaginations to sometimes create delusional pictures speculating the “what ifs,” breeding fear and paranoia in our thoughts.

    I remember laying in my bed at night when I was young, becoming so stricken with fear that I wouldn’t be able to move at all. It wasn’t because someone was standing there staring at me or a creature lurking on the ceiling waiting for the right time to pounce on me . . . it wasn’t anything actually happening that had me terrified. It was all in my head as they say.

What a powerful thing our thoughts are, orchestrating beliefs to such an extent that it effects the tangible world we live in. 

As I grew older, it blew my mind just how powerfully equal the effect had when I would stop those thoughts of crippling fears with the exchange of a fatal blow simply saying, “That’s not real.”

It was the Holy Spirit who taught me how to do battle in the intangible places of my thoughts. It took many gruesome fights to break through something I had struggled with for years growing up but He showed me a way to give the correct boundaries to my imagination. God has often shown me the truth here that both what I allow myself to imagine ends up directly effecting what I begin to expect.

What we think in the privacy in our minds about our lives creates the reality in which makes us who we are. We cannot compartmentalize what we think with what we do, for Jesus made it clear they are one of the same. If it is in our hearts, it is as if we have given action to it. 

It works this way with the things we expect.

Our expectations, if not molded and encouraged by God, will always betray us. They will leave us disappointed towards Him for not coming through in the way we assumed would be the best and right way for Him to. Our expectations can literally leave us believing something so far from reality that it is just as long of a fall back down into disappointments.

How do we align our expectations with His reality?

We seek Him for it constantly and don't stop.

We humbly ask for His perspective as we lay our own down. 

Jeremiah 29:13 shows us a part of God's heart that wants to teach us the way we ought to seek Him . . . with a desperation and with sincerely authentic intentionality. That is when we encounter Him. He speaks to us . . . and that gives us faith. 

Faith comes by hearing Him as we take in what He tells us and shows us. It realigns our perspective back to the reality of what He wants for our lives. It re-adjusts our focus to meet how it is He sees the bigger picture and it gives us hope again in ways we maybe lost along the journey over time.

Faith will extinguish our unreliable expectations and replace them with reality and perspective that is true . . . that fulfills.

We long for that. We long to be met with a true reality in a world that seems to try at ever corner to create its own.

So, are you disappointed with where you are in your life right now or how things have ended up?

Go back to the last thing you heard Him say to you . . . the last thing He showed you and let your expectations align with His direction. It will bring you hope again and relinquish the once heavy burden of trying to make things work out the way you want them to.

Did something (big or small) not go the way you were thinking it would? 

Even when we take a step of obedience, it is so important to leave the outcome of that step to God. Again, re-aligning our expectations with His will only free us from needless disappointments that turn into weighty burdens that turn us into frustrated angry men.

    In my life lately I have had such a hard time with taking small steps of obedience. I either deem them too small to really matter much if I don’t do them, or just do them with an attitude where I am saying in the silence of my thoughts, “Where could this possibly take me that is better than where I am? Is this really worth my time?”

God is wanting me to learn that obedience doesn’t require our understanding.

It only requires our hearts and action.

James 2:14 says it beautifully when talking about what is required of us.

Our expectations will always work against us if we don’t have them constantly re-adjusted to fit what our Father is up to in our lives.

Frankly, we have no earthly idea what He is up to.

I ask Him all the time, “God, what are you doing?!”

    Sometimes that question is thrown at Him in anger and frustration, while other times it is lightly tossed with a smirk knowing He can be oddly playful and mischievously loving in the surprising turns life quite often brings.

I think we all know by now the mysteriousness of God is unmatched, yet let that draw us to a place where we push everything aside to seek out for ourselves what it is He in fact is up to.

Let Him shake up our expectations to exchanging them for what He has in store for us . . . a much greater adventure than we could ever hope to expect or imagine.

-Photos taken in Garden of the Gods, CO-