Pastor Candy Christmas | Divine Contentment

• Hi, I’m Pastor Candy Christmas of Regeneration Nashville and I’m so happy to have you here today. If no one’s told you they love you yet, I want to be the first. I love you and I’m very, very glad that you’re here. Today I want to talk to you on the topic of contentment, divine contentment.
• Because we’ll see in scripture and scripture bears this out that divine contentment is almost it’s it’s paradoxical because we think of contentment being you know when when everything is lined up right and all the bills are paid and the kids are happy and the marriage is good and the job is good then I can be content.
• But we’re going to find out in scripture that Paul says, “I’ve had to learn contentment.” Uh Paul says that divine contentment is not natural, but it has to be learned. And that’s in Philippians 4:11. We will be reading uh Philippians 4:11. But what he’s trying to get across is it’s not circumstantial. It isn’t situational, but it is in the peace that passes understanding, which only comes from Jesus Christ.
• So, there are three pillars of scripture that we want to build on today. First, as I mentioned, Philippians 4:11, and we’ll go on to verse 13. So, this is the New King James Version we’re reading from. And Paul writes this, “Not that I speak in regards to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am to be content. I know how to be abased.
• I know how to abound. Everywhere in all things, I have learned to be full and to be hungry. Both to abound and to suffer need.” And this is where we get the very familiar portion of scripture that says this. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Paul did not say that contentment came by revelation or by personality.
• You know, you meet people sometimes that they just are easygoing and hey what you know whatever will be will be. But Paul says that it came from education, from learning in the school of Christ through seasons of abundance, through seasons of lack, through hunger, through fullness, highs and lows. Incidentally, the word learned here means to be displayed by experience and to be discipled by experience.
• Paul’s circumstances became his classroom. Christ was his instructor. So, in other words, let’s break this down just for a moment. Because when things are great and you have abundance and you’re blessed and you have more money than you need to pay the bills and and and the kids are happy and all of that, there’s a learning in that that says, you know what? Yes, I’m blessed, but my blessing and my contentment doesn’t come in things still.
• yet when things are great and maybe you got that raise you wanted and you took that vacation you know that you’ve always dreamed about whatever it is you found the mate that you’ve been you’ve been looking for our contentment doesn’t come from outward blessings but our contentment comes from within and so he was discipled by the good and by the bad also as we’re going to learn.