“We must never be content with who we are, only with what we have.”

A thought by James MacDonald (2015-06-18) from his book, Lord, Change My Attitude: Before It's Too Late (p. 101). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title of the book to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

The positive attitude that takes the place of covetousness is contentment. And James says, “Contentment is a satisfaction with God’s sufficient provision.” It is being satisfied with what we have but not with who we are.

1 Timothy 6:6 says, “But godliness with contentment is great gain.”

James says, “Now notice that contentment has a partner. Do you see it in verse 6? Contentment has a partner, like salt and pepper, like Dallas and Fort Worth, like my wife and me— meant to be together. Contentment’s partner is godliness. ‘Godliness with contentment is great gain,’ as the New King James Version puts it. We must never be content with who we are, only with what we have. That is why these two words are such powerful partners. Godliness deals with who I am; contentment deals with what I have. Godliness is being unsatisfied with my character formation in God, and contentment is being satisfied with what I possess in God. Together, they add up to great gain.”

Now the writer of this letter to Timothy is the Apostle Paul and James says, “Please notice that Paul is not condemning the desire for gain. Deep within each of us is a hunger for improvement. Did you know that? Down in the secret places of who you are, Almighty God has given you a desire to make your life better. Isn’t that good news? My life can be better. It doesn’t have to be the way it is right now, and it doesn’t have to be perfect, but it can definitely improve a lot! That desire for your life to improve, that passion to ‘gain,’ is not only not wrong, it is God-given!”

He then says, “But often that desire for gain causes many people to desire wrongly. We exercise desire in the wrong ways because our minds are depraved. Face it, we’re bent! We’re rarely satisfied with what we have… Yes, godliness plus contentment is great gain. That is an equation as absolute and unalterable as 2 + 2 = 4. It’s a winning formula: Godliness + contentment = great gain. Yet in a world that increasingly rejects absolute truth, that formula is not only rejected, it is ridiculed.”

But we won’t will we?

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