Be Content

“Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for He has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’” –Hebrews 13:5

Be content with what you have.

How often do you find yourself wanting something? Or maybe the better question is this:

How often do you find yourself wanting something other than Jesus?

For me, the answer is all the time. Because I know I need Jesus, and my brain tells me from knowledge of Scripture and past experiences that Jesus is what I need, but yet my longing looks to other places.

There is a difference between NEEDING Jesus and WANTING Jesus. Because we all NEED Jesus. From the most unknown places on the planet, to the biggest cities, to third world countries and first alike—every person from every walk of life NEEDS Jesus.

But we don’t all want Jesus.

It is a huge decision to place your life in Christ’s hand and confess that you NEED Him, but maybe it is even more important to continue to WANT Him long after that decision has been made. And you have to WANT Him more than anything else.

Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have.

One of the biggest distractions in life is money. Everything costs something. Our lives revolve around making money and spending it. It is one of the biggest sources of stress and worry. So Jesus steps in and says, “Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have.”

When we aren’t content with what we have, our priorities aren’t straight. Because what we have is everything that we need. What we have is Jesus.

Yet, we still want money. We want financial security. We want good-paying jobs and good hours even if it means being away from our families or it means working and doing something we don’t like to do. We want nice cars and houses. We want to eat three meals a day. We want to have extra cash to go to the movies, go shopping, and go on vacations.

And we often want all these things more than we want Jesus. Then, we wonder where He has gone when we look around and see all our worldly riches fading away.

If you look at the verse again, it doesn’t end with “Be content with what you have.” It ends with, “I will ever leave you nor forsake you.”

Money isn’t consistent. It comes and goes, and usually goes a lot quicker than we would like it to. But Jesus is consistent. Jesus doesn’t just walk into our lives and leave. He won’t leave us. His overflowing goodness never runs out. So why do we choose to want other things that we can never fully have?

You will never be able to fully experience everything that God can offer you if you just NEED Him. The difference between missing out on this experience and experiencing Christ fully is in what you WANT. If you want money and fancy things, good luck. But if you truly and continually want Jesus, you will find a genuine and lasting contentment that can’t be found in money and other things.

It sounds too easy though, right? It seems like a trick; like its too good to be true. But over and over again I hear stories from people about how when they put everything in God’s hands and they looked to Him for what they needed, suddenly their lives changed and things fell into place. I just recently experienced this. I specifically remember a night when I was literally on my knees (as much as it hurt due to never-ending knee problems), begging God to step into my life and fill the empty places. I kid you not, the very next week huge opportunities presented themselves and my life was changed. Money that I didn’t have before was suddenly more than enough. Plans that fell through suddenly turned into an open door for a better opportunity. And most importantly, my heart was full in a way that it hadn’t been for a while.

Maybe it seems silly or strange to you. Maybe it seems fake because it is something you have never experienced. But I pray that one day you do.

Step by step, start changing your attitude towards the things that you want in life. Change your priorities. Stop checking your bank account every other hour waiting to see if something miraculously changed. Then, one day you might wake up and realize that God has given you more than enough of what you NEED and Jesus is really all that you WANT.