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.
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.
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?
" . . . 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
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 . . .
