Though thanksgiving is to be a regular part of our worship and gratitude is to mark our character, I find a day set aside each year for thanksgiving to be extremely helpful. Contentedness just doesn’t come naturally for a lot of us. Even the great apostle Paul had to "learn" contentment. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said that "[Paul] came to a place of understanding as a result of sheer experience of the dealing of God with him. He had to learn, and experience teaches us all." God places His children in the school of experience that we may learn to be content. "But," says Lloyd-Jones, "it was not to be experience alone. Paul had come to learn this great truth by working out a great argument." And then Lloyd-Jones proceeds to give the "steps of the argument" or what he also calls "the apostle’s logic" or what I am calling "the logic of contentment." Here is the logic of contentment from the pen of Lloyd-Jones. I find it helpful and trust that you will too.
Never easy or automatic, yet, viewed through these lenses of logic, contentment just makes sense. "....for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content." --Philippians 4:11
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AuthorChuck Cook is the pastor of Grace Bible Church - Rolla. Archives
April 2020
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