Just Be "Content"

So it's been over a month since my last post...

If I can be honest (which I can, since this is my post), a big part of why I hadn't written is that I came out of a span of a few months where I really felt like I had "nailed" my singleness and then started to shake on that feeling a little bit. I felt (feel?) like Peter when Jesus calls him out of the boat and he starts walking on water, but then he looks around and sees the storm and realizes that he has no business walking on water and starts to sink.

What I have discovered to be true in my faith is that seeking God, seeking obedience and walking in faith really, truly, ultimately lead to joy. I don't find that any of that comes naturally or is easy, nor do I say it glibly and nor would I give it as a pat answer to someone who is struggling. But I do believe that it's true and I've found that when I fight for truth, I find God and joy follows.

I have also discovered that I had an unrealistic expectation in my life.

When I found that joy and contentment (which, I emphasize here, were the byproduct of walking with God), I had an expectation that I had finally just arrived at joy and contentment and would now experience them naturally for the rest of my life because I had discovered "the secret."

It turns out that this works similar to the way a lot of things work. For example, when I was training for my first half marathon and watching carefully what I was eating and found myself in really good shape... and then, content to be in shape, I started slacking off and... well, found that my "in shape" clothes stopped fitting. Oops.

We can look at all sorts of disciplines and aspects of our lives where we know it to be true that we can't arrive at a goal and stay there by coasting.

To exacerbate the whole situation, joy and contentment aren't even really the goal or the plateau. It seems there is a cycle at play: life sucks, so we seek God, we find God, we find contentment, we rest in our contentment and stop seeking God because we have contentment, and then we hit challenges in life and wonder what happened.

All of this vicious cycle has led me to one conclusion: contentment isn't the goal! I know this will sound blasphemous to all those who are trying to be content so God will bring you a spouse (big wink with tongue out here), but God doesn't want you to be content... He just wants you. And I believe that when we lose sight of him in our quest to be content in him, he brings us back to a place where we seek him.

Sound made up?

Well, actually, in 2 Corinthians 12, when Paul struggles with his thorn in the flesh, God refuses to take it from him, saying "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."

We are in a season of advent right now as we reflect on what it is like to wait in eager expectation. As we get tastes of joy and contentment in our lives, they ultimately point us to the ultimate joy and contentment that will come when we are one day fully sanctified, free from the effects of sin and reunited at last with Christ. The tastes of joy that we have now are a gift, but we must always remember that they are a byproduct and not the goal. We will not be able to rest and "arrive" until the day that we at last fully experience our citizenship in heaven. It's going to be work until then. As Paul says in Phil. 3:13-14: "Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."

So back to Peter.

Peter may have started to sink, but Jesus reached down and helped him up in that moment.

Those moments - both the moments where we are walking on water, and the moments where we need Jesus to help us up - are necessary to grow our faith and our relationship with God. Know that both moments will come, and keep walking forward.