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MARCH 19, 2010
WANTING WHAT WE HAVE
Keep your life free from the love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you
nor forsake you.” So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?” (Hebrews 13:5-6, ESV)
Like you, I’ll assume, I have been the beneficiary of too many words of wisdom in my life to keep count. And I’ve
forgotten the source of most of these. But I can vividly recall with pleasure the friend who passed on this pearl to me: “The secret to satisfaction in life is not having what you want, but wanting what you
have.”
As a golfer, I have to identify with this. For I do indeed play the game where I must play my mistakes. I may not have planned to
be where I am, but now that I am here, I must put my hand to the task of the shot before me. I must be content with what I have and go forward from there.
Are you laughing yet?
Sometimes when we read what the Bible tells us, when we come across exhortations like “be content with what you have,”
and we stand these instructions up against how we really live our lives, we can’t help but laugh! We are so far from God’s way of thinking, and so far from the way He wants us to think.
So here’s a good idea: It’s time to start preaching. We must take the word of God, and say to our lips, “Preach
it!” Then we must say to our hearts, “Receive it!” Then we must say to our minds and our eyes and our hands, “Do it!”
We know from this same letter to the Hebrews that the word of God is living. It is also supposed to be active. But it cannot become
this when we are a resistant people, coveting the things of this world instead of the things of God’s kingdom. We cannot say in the back of our minds, “God will never leave me nor forsake me,” and
at the same time say in the front of our minds, “But what I see before me right now is ____________, so that is the thing that I will go after tonight.” True contentment will not come this way.
Without God’s Spirit living in us, of course, none of this is possible. But without our own spirits willingly responding to
what He is training us to do, we will make little progress toward the kind of character God proposes to establish in us.
--
Jeff Hopper
March 19, 2010
Copyright 2010 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.
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