Redefining Contentment

Dictionary.com defines contentment as “happiness with one's situation in life.”

I think a lot of people would agree with that definition of contentment. It really wouldn’t matter if you asked a Christian or a non-Christian to define content-ment, that is probably very close to the definition that most people would give.

Happiness with one’s situation in life may be the world’s definition of content-ment, but I think after our study we will find this should not be a Christian’s definition of contentment.

I would like to suggest it is actually that definition that is causing a contentment crisis in our nation. And it’s not a crisis among non-Christians, because they really don’t have any other way of living life, because they don’t have the Spirit. However, it is a major crisis in American Christianity, which is leading to some very non-Christian decisions, actions and teachings.

Some show divorce statistics in America as 1:1, some say it’s 2:1. For every marriage in America there is a divorce. Or for every two marriages in America there is one divorce. Either way you look at it those numbers are atrocious. But what’s even more disturbing is that the numbers are virtually identical when you compare non-Christian statistics and Christian statistics.

According to George Barna’s research he has found that 34% of non-Christ-ians have been divorced at least once. And 33% of Christians say they have been divorced at least once. That means that the vast majority of Americans have been impacted either directly or indirectly by divorce.

Statistics for adultery and pornography are virtually identical for Christians and non-Christians. Christians are just as likely to purchase a lottery ticket as non-Christians today. At the same clip Christians and non-Christians say you can tell how successful a person is by how much money they have and how much stuff they own. Christians are just as likely to use drugs or have sex outside of marriage or before marriage as non-Christians.

Why is that? Well I think it is because we have mis-defined contentment.

In order for us to get a handle on contentment, we must truly understand what it means, not as we define it, but as God defines it. Let me suggest to you this morning that contentment is really trusting in God to do what He has promised to do. So a lack of contentment is actually a problem with a lack of under-standing and faith.

Unfortunately, we don’t have the time in this article to completely resolve these issues, but what I hope we come away with is the foundation that we can take form this and start to build on it Biblically. If we truly want to live a content life then we are going to have to take this study and then start doing our homework.

So what is it that allows a Christian to be content? First we have to under-stand how God made us. Second we have to understand the promises that God gave us in relation to how He made us. And finally we have to have faith that God is going to deliver on those promises.

So how did God make us?

Genesis 2:7
Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nos-trils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

Genesis chapter two verse seven shows us that God made us body, soul and spirit. As you start to really dig into the Word of God, you will find that God is a God of patterns. God is one God, but in three different and distinct persons. He made man in three different ways with three different needs.

The Bible says that God formed man out of the dust of the earth. He took dust and formed the body of Adam. And the body just laid there lifeless and motionless. It wasn’t until God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life that Adam became active and able to move, because it is the Spirit that allows your body to move. And then Adam wasn’t complete until he became a “living being,” meaning that he was able to interact with his environment emotionally.

God gave us a body that has a need.

God gave us a spirit that has a need.

And God gave us a soul that has a need.

It’s not until we understand what these needs are and how God provides for these needs that we can live a life of contentment, especially in the 21st cen-tury.

But ultimately our promise from God is eternal life. We can find that in I John chapter 2 verse 25 where it says, "This is THE promise which He Himself made to us: eternal life" (emphasis mine).

That goes back to Genesis three where we see the temptation of Eve. And that gets its foundation in Genesis 2:7 where God made us body, soul and spirit.

So in order for us to get a handle on this turn with me to Genesis chapter three and we’ll start reading in verse one.

Genesis 3:1-6
1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, "Indeed, has God said, `You shall not eat from any tree of the garden'?" 2 The woman said to the serpent, "From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; 3 but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, `You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.' " 4 The serpent said to the woman, "You surely will not die! 5 "For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.

In the original rebellion of Adam and Eve our issues of life physically, emo-tionally and spiritually were all undercut. And God gave Abram the Covenant of Life in which God addressed the three areas of man’s neediness.

So what does the Abrahamic Covenant say? Turn with me to Genesis chapter 12. Let’s start in verse one and read through verse three.

Genesis 12:1-3
1 Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go forth from your country, And from your relatives And from your father's house, To the land which I will show you; 2 And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing; 3 And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.

God promised Abram a land that would provide for his physical needs. He promised him a seed, which would provide sustenance for his soul and And He promised him a great name, which would provide the satisfaction that his spirit would need.

The three needs of man are body, sould and spirit, which are physical, secuity and status.

The body has a phyiscal need to be taken care of. That being life at the phys-ical level, the need for air food, shelter and health.

In the soul the need is relational security. The bottom line is that the soul is a passive responder to the things that are coming down the pike. And the soul only has the ability to rejoice or scream in terror, depending on what it sees coming down the road. So in order for the soul to have its need of security and peace to be met there has to be a relationship with someone that is strong enough to control what’s coming.

In the Old Testament provisions were made among relatives that they would take care of each other. They called it the Kinsman redeemer. If a woman was married to a man and he died, then there was someone that would look after that woman’s land and possessions and make sure that her needs were still being met.

If someone was killed then there was a relative that would go out and find the killer and then kill him to make sure that justice was served. They even had cities of refuge, so that if you are out chopping wood and the axe handle falls off and kills your buddy then you had to immediately go to this city of refuge where you life would be spared, because he had a relative that was going to be on the hunt to kill you whether it was an accident or not. They were big on relationships, because in those days the bigger your family was the safer you were likely to be.

And in the New Testament Jesus says that He will never leave us nor forsake us. In Ephesians Paul said that when the Comforter was given to us we were sealed with the Spirit of God until the day of redemption. So the issue with the soul is security and it needs to have a relationship with someone who’s cap-able. And God is most capable of all.

In the area of the great name, the issue is with the spirit, because the spirit’s most basic need is recognition for a job well done. That’s why works salva-tion is such a big deal for some folks, because people want to be able to achieve. They want to be able to qualify themselves for whatever good might be coming their way. They want to deserve it. And then they want the credit for doing it. But when that need is twisted by sin it becomes pride.

Paul says in multiple places that God has made salvation by grace through faith so that no man is capable of boasting. Boasting is a relational destroyer. And so the spirit has to be kept in check, because the spirit will destroy relationships, which will in turn kill the soul.

So how will the spirit be kept in check when it is highly motivated to achieve. It’s only when we realize that God has provided to meet that need and we trust in Him for that. He made that promise to Abram and He also makes a promise to us.

God made this Covenant of Life with Abram, but it came about in three sep-arate covenants that He later made. The first one was the Land Covenant found in Deuteronomy 29, in which God made an eternal promise to the nation of Israel that they would always have a land that He was going to give them. And what it boiled down to is that God said He was going to provide for their physical needs if they would obey Him.

And God has also made provisions for Christians. But we fall short in one of two areas when it comes to physical needs. One we either try to apply the promise made to Abram and the nation of Israel to Christians or we under-stand that God didn’t make that to Christians, but we think He promised to take care of our physical needs in the here and now and we try to find the "verses" that prove our point.

So here’s where we start to get into my argument that contentment is a lack of understanding and faith. Many Christians today think that all of their physical needs have to be met or something is wrong. We see this in adultery, divorce, pornography, alcoholism, drug addiction and so many other physical things. We are trying to meet a physical need of pleasure. The body can either feel pleasure or pain and no one wants to feel pain and there are a ton of people that want pleasure all of the time.

But unless we can come to the understanding that God has not made us as Christians a promise for our physical well being for the hear and now, we will not come to terms with contentment.

God has not promised us a pain-free life of luxury, ease and good health. When Adam and Eve sinned our physical bodies were given over to sin. And in sin there is death, there is pain and there are tribulations and tumoils and sickness and disease and starvation and lack of clothing and a lack of food.

Here in America we really don’t have a huge understanding of that, unless we have been to the mountains of West Virginia or in the inner city where there is just rampant homelessness.

I grew up in Ardmore, Oklahoma. And while there were some what we considered “bad parts” of town, I lived a pretty sheltered life. I graduated high school in Oklahoma and then went to college in Oklahoma.

And when you talk about metropolitan areas, Oklahoma City, where I went to college, is probably one of the nicest, cleanest metro areas around. Sure OKC has its problems, but they are not just terribly obvious and out in the open. If you want to find trouble you can find it if you go looking.

I say that to say this. I remember the first time I ever went to St. Louis, Missouri. And I remember one of my best friends telling me about growing up in the projects and just the hard life that he had lived. And when I saw the environment that he was talking about I could relate to what he was saying, because I could see it with my own two eyes.

God has taken His focus off the physical and turned it to the spiritual aspect of life. Does God still care about our physical well being. Sure He does. And from time to time He will miraculously heal someone from cancer or some other life threatening disease. And He has provided us with great medical breakthroughs in the area of expanding our life expectancies and healing certain diseases or preventing certain diseases. And we live in a country that has zero amount of want when it comes to food. Sure we have hungry people here in America, but it is all on us not because of a deficency in the amounts.

But folks God is not nearly as concerned with our physical well being as we are.

God has not given the church a promise that He will take care of our physical needs on an individual or corporate basis in the here and now. But our body has a tremendous need for avoiding pain and embracing pleasure. And this need is so great that it puts tremendous pressure on the soul and spirit, which causes us to make a number of decisions that we wouldn’t otherwise make.

An example is a friend of mine had a pinched nerve that he had and he hand’t done anything about it and just went on about his every day life and eventually it got to the point that he went to the chiropractor and he couldn’t help him and so he didn’t know what else to do. But the pain just kept getting worse and worse. It hurt so bad that he could hardly move.

The pain wouldn’t go away no matter what he tried, except when he sat down, bent over and put his head between his knees. Well obviously a person can’t go on with life like that, so his wife took him to the emergency room the next morning. And the doctor came in and examined him and said I’ve never seen anything like this and so he started to write out the prescription.

My friend recognized the drug he was writing down, and it was a drug that would take the pain away, but wouldn’t leave you in a normal thinking capac-ity. So he said to the doctor, so you’re going to start messing with my mind eh. And to that the doctor replied, Do you have a problem with that? And he said not at this point.

Your body will cause you to make decisions that you wouldn’t normally go along with. And my friend said that during his three-day stay in the hospital he came to understand why drug addicts are drug addicts. Because in order to get the relief that he needed for them to be able to work this problem out of his back they had to give him enough drugs to keep him “out of it.” He said that’s why drugs attract people, because it makes them feel good. It allows them to escape the reality of life as long as they are high.

Our bodies have a capacity to demand that we pay attention to them.

And because we are so wrapped up in the physical we see some pretty discouraging numbers when it comes to Christians and non-Christians. And it’s those numbers that we read about earlier. People are consumed with the idea that God wants them to be “happy” and “feel good” so much so that when their spouse isn’t meeting their needs they dump them and move on to the next, and when that one fails, they move on to the next and another, and another and another.

And were are consumed with physical pleasure that we look at pictures on the internet that we know we shouldn’t be looking at, and we sniff, or smoke or ingest or inject things into our bodies, that we know we shouldn’t be putting in their, because we want to be happy.

Or we try to drink our way to happiness. Those are all physical level things.

If we don't come to a realization that God is capable of being trusted in our physical area of need then our bodies will dominate our lives.

So without specific promises from God regarding our physical needs, what do we do? Without specific promises it seems as though we are sailing in a sea of competing needs that the body will dominate unless it is given a certain amount of attention.

Mark 10:28-29
28 Peter began to say to Him, "Behold, we have left everything and followed You." 29 Jesus said, "Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms, for My sake and for the gospel's sake, 30 but that he will receive a hundred times as much now in the present age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with persecutions; and in the age to come, eternal life.

Jesus is trying to tell the disciples that being committed to Him is going to be worth it. And what it seems like on the surface is that Jesus is telling them that He will give them 100 fold back what they have given up. He will give them 100 farms, 100 houses, 100 brothers, 100 sisters, etc.

So does that mean that the church has been given a promise of physical provision? Well that’s exactly what some of the wealth and health preachers would like us to believe.

So what’s the problem with that interpretation. It’s the “s” on the end of mothers. What does a 100 mothers look like? It doesn't look like anything, because it is physically impossible to have 100 mothers.

When He put the plural on the end of mothers He took the meaning out of the literal. If He hadn’t put the “s” on the end of mothers then it would not be problematic, because you can have a 100 houses, 100 brothers and sisters, farms and children, but you can not have 100 mothers.

Therefore we have to move out of the literal interpretation and ask the ques-tion well what is He trying to say? And it seems as though Jesus is trying to say that nobody hangs on to their houses, brothers, sisters, farms and children unless they have a great deal of their life invested in them. Meaning if a per-son’s life is not found in those things, then they won’t have a problem with letting them go, but if we think life is wrapped up in those things then it will be hard to let go of them for the sake of the Gospel.

There are many examples of this in our society today. People will be purpose-fully quiet about their faith, because they fear they may lose their job. If we can't take a stand for Christ, because we might lose our job, then we have too much of our life vested in our employment.

Sometimes parents will do everything under the sun for their children, taking them to ball practices, dance rehearshals, piano recitals, swimming lessons and you name it, but they won't go to church. Too much life is being vested in the "doing of those things."

Another example of this is when parents or grandparents live a considerable distrance away from their kids or grandkids and they can't get over that dis-tance. And it actually causes them great anguish, because too much of their life is wrapped up in their kids or grandkids.

If we have something that we own or something that we do that we will not give up for the sake of the Gospel then it has too much power over our lives and we are saying that’s the source of our life and that’s idolatry.

So when Jesus says that if we give up these things for His sake then we will be getting back so much life that it will seem like we have 100 times what we had to begin with. And we will, because if we give up anything for God He will pour out His life on us a 100 fold, because that’s His nature.

He’s not promising land or physical well being. He’s promising the essence of life not the instrument.

Acts 4:34-35
34 For there was not a needy person among them, for all who were owners of land or houses would sell them and bring the proceeds of the sales 35 and lay them at the apostles' feet, and they would be distributed to each as any had need.

What was going on in Acts three and four? People were coming to know Christ by the thousands. And these folks, who for the most part were not from this area, were staying in Jerusalem because they were brand new Christians and they wanted to hear the Apostles teachings.

There were certain feasts that if one was a good Jew they made the pilgramage to Jerusalem to celebrate. One of these feasts was the feast of passover, which was being celebrated during the time of Jesus' crucifixion. And so there were untold numbers of Jews both local, regional, national and international that were gathered in Jerusalem at this time.

The problem with being a believer in Jerusalem is that is where Jesus was crucified and the religious establishment was still up in arms over the preaching of Jesus. If you are a believer in Jerusalem then not only is the religious establishment against you, but the majority of normal everyday Jews are not agreeing with you either, so how are you going to find a place to work, how were you going to find a place to live or food to eat, etc.

Well according to Acts 4:34-35 there was not a needy person among them. Why was that? Because all who were owners of land or houses would sell them and bring the proceeds of the sales and lay them at the apostles feet and they would be distributed as people had need.

This is the classic anti-Jewish mindset. To Jews the land was the living end. The land is their life. Here you have Jews selling their stuff saying this is not my life, Jesus is my life. All this stuff is worth is just to be sold so we can feed these believers. They had bought into the faith and no longer did their life come from their stuff.

Paul writes to the Corinthians and tells them about gathering up an offering for the poor Christians in Jerusalem. They were poor because they couldn’t find any work and a famine was coming. They wouldn’t be starving if they had a land promise.

So what are we supposed to do? I Timothy 6:8 says If we have food and covering, with these we shall be content.

The way we deal with not having a promise of a land is to scale back our focus on the material. How far does that have to go? Well Paul says if we have food and covering that is enough. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong to have more than that, but if that’s all we have then we can be content, because that’s not where life is.

That’s a hard point to get across to American Christians, because we have so much stuff, and we have the ability to get so much more stuff that stuff is where a lot of our lives are today. But we don’t own our stuff our stuff is owning us.

The proof that life is not in the physical is because when we die we will still be alive even when our body is dead. But it is a difficult thing to do, because for 1,500 years God dealt with the nation of Israel based on the land covenant. Do what I say and your physical well being will be taken care of. So how do we shift our focus, which we have to do, because God has shifted His focus?

During this time that God was committed to the well being of man’s physical needs based on the faithfulness of the people, very few were actually being faithful to God and as time went on fewer and fewer folks were being faithful.

The same is true in America today. We continue to stay focused on the outer man, the physical aspect of our being, then life will continue to slowly die away.

God has moved away from a plan of a showcase nation. God said that other nations would look to Israel and to Israel’s God. That’s what happened during the reign of Solomon. People were coming from everywhere, because of Solomon and Solomon’s God. But it didn’t last.

So God shifted from a physical focus, to a spiritual focus. God shifted from the nation of Israel to a multi-national bride for His Son. People being redeemed from every nation, tribe and tongue, so that the Spirit of Jesus could indwell them so that the life of Jesus could be manifested through their bodies, so there was no showcase nation, but showcase individuals.

And showcase individuals would be far more effective than a showcase nation, because individuals are far more easy to maintain a certain process with than nations are, and showcase people can be anywhere in the world to be seen. And there are Christians practically everywhere in the world.

We have to make that shift if we are going to be content. And that shift has been taken off the physical until the resurrection when we receive our glorified bodies. But even then we will not be focused on our bodies, but we will be focused on Him, so the question is why don’t we start focusing on Him now?

Matthew 6 31-34 tells us not to even be anxious for food and clothing, because God knows we have need of those things. But instead we are to first seek His kingdom and righteousness and all these things will be added to us.

The warning here is that the more we continue to focus on the physical and the more we become pampered the more rebellious we will become.

But not only has God taken a focus off of material things, He has also taken his focus off of the health of our bodies as a fundamental practice.

II Corinthians Chapter 12:7-10
7Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me--to keep me from exalting myself! 8 Concerning this I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. 9 And He has said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness." Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. 10 Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.

There has been great speculation as to what this thorn in the flesh was for Paul. But regardless of what it was we know that Paul had a continual physical disability. And Paul asked the Lord three times that this thorn be removed. And all three times God refused.

What’s the big deal about that? Well if God refuses under a promise that He has made then He is a liar and is no longer a God worth serving. So therefore when God refused to take the thorn away from Paul He was making it very clear that the Land Covenant did not belong to the church. The church does not have a covenant promise of health, but the Lord said no, because My grace will be sufficient for you and My power will perfected in your weak-ness.

Paul in other letters talks about some of his companions being ill almost to the point of death. These were faithful people that God didn’t heal. God has not promised us a life of physical well being while we are hear on earth. So when you hear some of the preachers talking about well they just didn’t have enough faith. That’s bologna, because God didn’t promise us that. If that was true then Paul wouldn’t have told Timothy to stop drinking just water and take some wine for your infirmities. If there was a promise from God he would have told Timothy to buck up and get some faith so God can work in you.

So fundamentally when our body starts to fail us or the material possessions start to disappear or be destroyed we are to turn to His Grace. We’re supposed to turn to Him and say okay God if you want the Life of Jesus to be manifested in this aching, hurting body then You are going to have to give more grace so that Life can be see here. Because if that grace is not given what you are going to see is the life of a grumpy, crotchety hurting person that can’t do anything but talk about how grumpy they are or how much pain they are in.

But health and wealth is promoted all the time, because that’s what people want to hear. They don’t want to hear the truth, they want to hear that God is going to heal them or their family member and that God wants them to be rich, rich, rich.

But what we have is a shift to the life and well being of our souls. Physical life is a good thing, but it doesn’t compare to a healthy soul. There has been an abundant number of examples of Christians whose physical well being was horrendous, but their souls were so healthy and so nourished that they radiated the truth and the testimony of Christ, despite their physical conditions. These people are just proving what God told Paul in II Corinthians were He says My Grace will be sufficient for you.

In the Church Age the focus is on the well being of the soul and the relational development. Think about it. How relational was God in the Old Testament? You didn’t have the Spirit of God indwelling people in the Old Testament. The Spirit would fall on a person for a period of time, but it was for the most part temporary. David even had to pray take not thy Spirit from me, because the Holy Spirit came and went.

God was relationally distant because He told the people to build a tent with multiple sections and He would come down once a year to the inner most part, but there was only one man that could enter His presence. That’s not what you call relationally intimate. And if you didn’t happen to be that one man you never got to enter the presence of God. And if you weren’t from the line of Aaron then you were very limited to where you could even go within the tent. In the Old Testament economy God kept His distance from people and He told them to keep their distance from Him.

There was a distance factor built into His relationship with the people while He was focusing on the outer/physical man. All that changed after Jesus came in the flesh and He came as relationally intimate as He could as one person to another. He suffered and died and then ascended to the Father, Who sent His Spirit to every believer that would put their trust in Him. And so God has become as relationally intimate as is possible in the time/space continuum that we have in the here and now. In other words He's as close as He can possibly be, because He’s living in you.

Jesus told His disciples just before He died that it is better for me to go away. His disciples didn’t believe that and a vast majority of Christians today don’t believe that either.

If you had your choice of having Jesus physically living in your house rather than what you have, what choice would you make? Christians are always saying that if Jesus was just here and I could ask Him this or He could tell me that . . . what we are saying is that the provision of the Spirit is not sufficient to satisfy us, but we want the physical Jesus. But when Jesus was here He said it was better that He left so the Spirit could come.

Not only is God our “abba” father/daddy, but God has chosen to call us friend. We can have a friendship with the Living God. He’s not this distant far away being that doesn’t care about us.

We spend 1.3 trillion dollars a year to make sure that are bodies are healthy. We spend 1.3 trillion dollars a year on the physical aspect of life, but we don’t spend a fraction of that to make sure that our souls and spirits are as healthy.

Here’s a case in point. If we were to ask the typical American Christian how do you walk by the Spirit. They wouldn’t be able to answer us or their answer would be extremely vague. We are commanded to walk by the Spirit, but the vast majority of Christians don’t know how to do that.

If you ask them how do you walk across the floor they can tell you, because that’s physical, but when you get into the spiritual realm we start to flounder and flop. God doesn’t want us to be lost, but the fact is God has moved into an area that is not as easy to connect with because it’s not material.

When the disciples came to Jesus asking Him to teach them how to pray, they weren’t lacking in an ability to pray, they just understood they couldn’t connect with the Father the way Jesus did. So they said how do we do that?

So Jesus gave them a prayer that is not supposed to be said in repetition, that’s just words. But what He gave them was a prayer that was supposed to inform them about where their priorities were supposed to be and how they were supposed to relate to their priorities.

And the first request is that the Name of God be hallowed. May Your name be the focus of our desire and attention. Our goal is that the name of God be hollowed.

The second request is give us this day our daily bread. When is the last time we asked God to give us our daily bread? We don’t do that in America when we have a freezer full of food. Or two or three freezers full of food. That’s the American way.

We don’t have to ask God for our daily bread, but the implication of the prayer is that the disciples could run into some situations where they didn’t know where their next meals were going to come from and they were supposed to pray for their food that God would provide it.

When we adapt ourselves to hoarding resources those resources become our god and our life. That’s doesn’t mean that we want a hurricane to come and destroy our homes and wash away all our stuff, but if it does we have two key promises in the New Testament that says God’s grace is sufficient and that I don’t have to worry about life.

That’s why in the shift from the old economy with Israel to the new shift to the church we don’t have a land promise. Our bodies have been given over to corruption and God says I’ll take care of that at the resurrection. Until then we are going to focus on some more important things.

The Davidic covenant came along in II Samuel chapter seven. And David’s problem there was that he was worried about God leaving him like God had left Saul. Because David was worried about God’s ability to pick up and move he didn’t want God living in a tent, because that is the very essence of being temporary. You don’t live in a tent if you are going to stay somewhere for a long time and/or permanently. David wanted to build him a temple or a permanent housing structure. He wanted the building to be his showing of loyalty to God so that in turn God would be loyal to him.

David had the idea that the relationship between him and God is only going to be there if he obeys what God says. He thinks God has put a condition on staying with him like He put a condition on the Land Covenant that said the nation of Israel could only enjoy the blessings of the land if they obeyed Him. Which meant if they disobeyed God then the blessings of the land would be taken away.

But God says its not about being temporary. He says David our relationship is going to remain forever and your house is going to rule forever. And out of the line of David we get Jesus Christ. The church isn’t supposed to focus on Jesus as the King of the Davidic Kingdom. But it’s the underlying issue of security that we are focused on.

The message of God to the church is that of God’s commitment to us. It’s a message of security with God in relationship. It’s a security based on grace. So it’s real security.

And just like David, God has promised us as Christians through His Son Jesus Christ that He will never leave us nor forsake us. We are as secure as we can ever be in Jesus Christ. Some folks say that’s not enough because I can still be hurt and I can still feel pain and I can still suffer and die. But even though all of those things are true we are secure in Jesus Christ. We can not find any more security outside of that.

That’s why we see people that are extremely greedy. They think the more money they have the safer they are. The more money they have the healthier they will be, because they can buy all the latest drugs and get all the latest treatments. And people try to hoard material possessions, because they think that will help in their relational security with other people. That is what sin has twisted our need into. I’ve got to have more stuff.

Then in Jeremiah 31 God says that He will establish a “new covenant,” which is unlike the Mosaic covenant which was temporary. In Jeremiah 31 God says that He will write His laws on the hearts of people and they will be His people and He will be their God.

That is not the focus for believers in that the law has not been completely written on our hearts. It is being written slowly as we continue to study and grow in our relationship with God.

For Christians the great name is picked up in I John chapter three verse one where it says “See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God.” God says these are my people. That’s a status thing.

When God says that He loves you enough to call you His sons and daughters then you have all the status you ever need. Your status comes from how much value another person places on you . . . how much they care for you. And when God lays down His own life so that we might live we have all the status that is necessary.

But our focus shouldn’t be on the great name, because the Bible says that Christians will be hated because Christ was hated. That’s starting to become a clearer picture in our nation as every other religion in the world is being pro-tected, but if you are a Christian you are an intolerant fool.

The problem is we don’t think of it that way. And we don’t see the signifi-cance of the death of Jesus Christ, and so we go searching for status from someone else. And so we boast about what we have accomplished and we do things to try to impress people so that they will think more highly of us.

God is more concerned with the security of our soul. And until we make that shift in our own focus, contentment is going to be hard to find and even harder to hold on to. We must truly understand God's promises to us as the church and then we must have faith that He is going to deliever and make good on those promises.

"Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®,
Copyright © 1960,1962,1963,1968,1971,1972,1973,1975,1977,1995
by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission."