But my God shall supply your every need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.

— Philippians 4:19

What does it mean to be content? According to Webster’s it means: “Having the desires limited to that which one has; not disquieted or disturbed by desire, even though not every wish is gratified.”

There are two words that come from the same root; they are spelled exactly the same way. However, they mean altogether different things, and they are pronounced differently merely because of the accent. Content is exactly the same word as content. The only difference is in the accent.

I think there is a story there. You see, being contented means to have the desires limited to that which one has—limited to that which is contained rather than always desiring those things that are not in the container, those things that you don’t have. Unfortunately, most of us lean toward the latter.

We would all like to live contented lives. How do we do that? By fixing our hearts on things above. Is Christ our delight, our joy, our satisfaction, our contentment, and our rest? Rest and contentment are only found in Christ Jesus, because He knows our needs and He has promised to give us all that we need (Philippians 4:19).

Question to ponder:
Today, how can you set your heart on things above?

Comfort, O comfort My people, says your God.

— Isaiah 40:1

The great preacher Dr. R. W. Dale said, “People need consolation. They really need it and not merely long for it.” Another gentleman, Bill Elliot, says, “Christianity is a religion of comfort. Our God is not only ‘the God of all grace,’ He is also ‘the God of all comfort.'”

From the cradle, where a crying baby is picked up by loving arms, to the deathbed, where a cool hand is stroking a wrinkled cheek, comfort is crucial. Life is never easy and we all need comfort from each other. But we also need comfort from God. He is the one who saves our tears in His bottle and ultimately will wipe away every tear from our eyes. He knows how we are made, and He remembers that we are dust. We have a loving and kind God whose eyes are always on His own.

When people tell us, “Everything will be OK,” those are nice words. But when God says, “Weep no more,” it is because He has made all things new. When Jesus saw the people, he had compassion on them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd (Mark 6:34). He sacrificed Himself so that all could be well with our souls. What a difference it makes in our lives to receive God’s comfort.

Question to ponder:
To whom can you show compassion and comfort today?

Now when the people complained openly before the LORD, the LORD heard, and His anger burned.

— Numbers 11:1

We have a whole marketing industry that is based on discontent. From class warfare to envy and petty jealousy, the goal is to make people unhappy with what they have. It is so easy for us to complain, because there is always a “snake in paradise.” As long as we live in this world, there will be trouble and imperfections, from bugs that ruin your picnic to life-threatening disease.

God hates the discontented spirit, the murmurers. The Old Testament describes all the marvelous things God did for the Israelites when they came out of Egypt on their way to the Holy Land. But soon we read, “They murmured against Moses.” They murmured. They were always murmuring. God was sorely displeased with them and He sent fiery serpents upon them because they were rebelling against His providence. This is a picture of what discontentment is.

Now this does not mean that we may not strive to improve our circumstances, but we are to recognize the providence of God and His promise to provide for all of our needs out of His riches in glory. We are to be content in all our circumstances and in whatever state we are in. Paul said, “I know both how to face humble circumstances and how to have abundance. Everywhere and in all things I have learned the secret, both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need” (Philippians 4:12).

Question to ponder:
How can gratitude and trust overcome our natural tendency to complain?

Give us this day our daily bread.

— Matthew 6:11

It is often easy to make our prayers just one “Gimme, Gimme” after another. Give me good health. Give me a new car. Give me a new house. Give me a new spouse. Give me more money.

Some people spend much of their time simply making demands of God, as if He were their personal genie.

It is not wrong to ask God for what we need. The prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread,” encourages us to bring our supplications to Him. But there should be a balance in our prayers. Praise, thanksgiving, adoration, and gratitude will help put our needs into perspective. Pray with confidence to our Father who has promised to provide everything we need. At the same time, remember who He is, and remember the needs of other people as well. In Nehemiah, he commands the Jews, “Go your way. Eat the fat, drink the sweet drink, and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared” (8:10).

Question to ponder:
How can we seek God’s face rather than His hand?

If it is possible, as much as it depends on you, live peaceably with all men.

— Romans 12:18

We see many conflicts taking place in marriages today. Some households are like mini-battlefields.

It takes two to tangle, as well as to tango though, so we can forget about blaming our spouse. That never does anything but change things for the worse. I think of the innocent young thing who came into the pastor’s office. She was weeping and telling of how miserable and horrible and mean her husband was. Then she said, wiping a tear from her eye, “And he wasn’t that way when I married him.”

The pastor said, “Oh, then you changed him for the worse.”

Do you know what unhappy couples try to do? They want to change their spouse, so they spend their whole lives alternating between various methods of doing so. They try yelling, and it doesn’t work, so then they try silence, and that doesn’t work. So, then they try pouting, and that doesn’t work. Then they try threats, and that doesn’t work. So they conclude therefore, “It’s impossible. Nothing works.”

But God wants us to forgive and to patiently learn love. He wants us to work through these conflicts. Marriage was His idea, and it is ultimately a picture of the relationship between Christ and His bride, the Church.

Question to ponder:
If you are having problems getting along with someone (perhaps even your spouse), what can you do to make things better?

Love never fails.

— 1 Corinthians 13:8

It is hard to believe, but arranged marriages, for example, those in India, have often fared much better than marriages in the West based on romantic notions of love.

What these people have learned—that we often have forgotten or have been deceived about—is that love is not some exotic bird that comes flapping down with its wings and sets our hearts aflutter and then disappears just as mysteriously. But love, as 1 Corinthians 13 tells us, is a way of treating other people. There is not an emotion in that whole chapter—but there is instruction about how to deal with people. “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way” (13:4-5 ESV).

Those who truly love have learned that when people treat other people the right way, that feeling we call “love” will develop. We may have that feeling in great abundance before we are married. However, if we treat our spouse in some contrary manner, we will find, before long, that the mysterious bird has flapped his wings and flown away. Then we say, “Alas, what can we do? There is naught left but the divorce court, because, you see, I don’t love him anymore,” or “I don’t love her anymore. It’s not there any longer. It is gone. It’s dead.”

That is all “a bunch of baloney.” We have been fed a lie, and we have believed it. We have based our whole society on the romanticist concept of love and in so doing we have rejected the biblical teaching about the subject.

Question to ponder:
What can you do to strengthen the commitment you have toward your spouse?

Beloved, if God so loved us, we must also love one another.

— 1 John 4:11

God is the source of all love in this world. More than that, He is love. Whenever people love each other in word or in deed, wherever people learn to put others first, there God is present. There is the Spirit of Jesus.

No man ever loved like Jesus. He brought the far-off God nigh through the channel of the Father’s love. He went about doing good. He demonstrated love. He healed the wounded. He raised the dead. He healed the sick. He did all things well.

It is because Jesus came that we know what love is. As we celebrate love, we should show appreciation for those nearest to us. Let us thank God, the source of love. Love was His idea in the first place.

Question to ponder:
How can we be imitators of Christ in our love and service to others?

… in order that the genuineness of your faith, which is more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

— 1 Peter 1:7

One of America’s greatest presidents was born on this day. Although he entered the White House as a non-believer, by the time of Gettysburg, there is strong evidence he had met the Savior (especially when seeking solace after the death of his beloved son).

Jesus was on the mind of Lincoln when he died. You history buffs will remember that 1865 was the year that the Civil War ended. In that same year, on Good Friday, Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth President of these United States, died. He was sitting in a box in Ford’s Theater, not listening to the play, but talking to his wife. He uttered his last words. “Mary, now that the war is over, [it was just over that day] what I would like to do more than anything in the world is to take you on a trip to the Near East. We could go to Palestine. We could go to Galilee where He walked. We could go to Bethlehem, and then we could go up to Jerusalem …”

BANG. The shot rang out that was also heard around the world and ended the life of Abraham Lincoln. The last phrase completed from his lips was, “We could go to Bethlehem.” He never did … in this life.

He became a great president because he was tested by fire. Great and hard-earned wisdom was found in him, as he let the refining work of God’s Spirit ultimately mold his life.

Question to ponder:
When God’s refining fire touches your life, what is your response?

… and He said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them. For all these out of their abundance have put in their gifts for God. But she out of her poverty has put in all the living she had.”

— Luke 21:3-4

Psychologist Abraham Maslow claimed that those who demonstrate the greatest amount of self-love and have the highest self-esteem exercise dominance. In any relationship—a husband and a wife, two friends, or business partners—if one of them has a higher opinion of himself or herself than the other, the one with the highest amount of self-love will dominate. There will often be arrogance. There will be exploitive aspects involved. It does not necessarily follow that the dominant one will love the other.

Which one is able to help other people more? A man who spends all day long in a gym working out with weights, developing huge muscles, standing before the tanning machines, admiring his biceps, or a person who is poor and weak and frail and unmuscular?

I am not sure the answer is clear. It may be that a strong person is more capable of helping people. It may be that Arnold Schwarzenegger is more capable of helping people than Mother Teresa was. However, it does not at all follow logically that he has helped more people than she has. Many of the world’s greatest people have been people who have not been strong, muscular, and healthy at all, but they have sought to do for the Lord the best they could. The key is to serve others, including the widow and orphan, whenever we can.

Question to ponder:
Are you taking the opportunities you get to serve the Lord and others?

… just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before Him in love.

— Ephesians 1:4

I know a friend who just went through major surgery and then, after he was home and thought all was well, a massive infection was found. The doctors had to go back in and cleanse that out. That is like sanctification. Sanctification deals with corruption. A beautiful apple, when cut in half, re­veals one dark spot. It is obviously rotten, and the spot must be cut out. God is purifying us in this life through sanctification.

The holiness of God is imputed to us by faith as we trust in Him, and His holiness is infused into us gradually in sanctification, as we become more and more pure. We need to pray that the impartation of the holiness of Christ might be ours. We need to pray that God would make us holy people. You can be sure that as you become holier, you will become happier in your life. We will never be completely holy before we reach heaven, but the furthest we can come is the longing to be more holy. The strange fact is that the more holy we are, the less we will be concerned with our own holiness and more concerned with the welfare of others.

Question to ponder:
How is it that the more focused we are on others, the happier we find ourselves?