Contentment.htm

CONTENTMENT.

"Do not live for money; be content with what you have; for God Himself has said, 'I will never leave you or desert you'; and so we can take courage and say, 'The Lord is my Helper, I will not fear; what can man do to me?'" (Heb 13:5,6 NEB).

'I have noticed that wherever there has been a faithful following of the Lord in a consecrated soul, several things have inevitably followed, sooner or later. Meekness and quietness of spirit become in time the characteristics of the daily life. A submissive acceptance of the Will of God as it comes in the hourly events of each day; pliability in the hands of God to do or to suffer all the good pleasure of His Will; sweetness under provocation; calmness in the midst of turmoil and bustle... and an insensibility to slights and affronts; absence of worry or anxiety; deliverance from care and fear; all these, and many similar graces, are invariably found to be the natural outward development of that inward life which is hid with Christ in God.' (H. S. Sutton).

'If we wished to gain contentment, we might try such rules as these:
(1)	Allow yourself to complain of nothing, not even of the weather.
(2)	Never picture yourself to yourself under any circumstances in which you are not.
(3)	Never compare your own lot with that of another.
(4)	Never allow yourself to dwell on the wish that this or that had been, or were, otherwise than it was, or is. God Almighty loves you better and more wisely than you do yourself.
(5)	Never dwell on tomorrow. Remember that it is God's, not yours. The heaviest part of sorrow often is to look forward to it. 'The Lord will provide.'' (E. B. Pusey).