1. Contentment By Melissa Kruger
Lesson Two
Defining Contentment

2. Is Failure Important in the Christian Life?
How So?

3. Who is someone you look to as a model of biblical contentment?

4. For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is

5. mortal may be swallowed up by life
mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. —2 Corinthians 5:1–5
Why are contentment and longing for eternity not in opposition to one another?

6. What Contentment Is

7. I rejoiced in the Lord greatly because once again you renewed your care for me. You were, in fact, concerned about me but lacked the opportunity to show it. 11 I don’t say this out of need, for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I find myself.

8. 12 I know both how to make do with little, and I know how to make do with a lot. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being content ​— ​whether well fed or hungry, whether in abundance or in need.

9. 13 I am able to do all things through him who strengthens me
13 I am able to do all things through him who strengthens me. -- Philippians 4:10-13 (CSB)

10. 1. Contentment is found ONLY in Christ (Romans 8:11)
2. Contentment is independent of circumstances (2 Cor 11:24)

11. Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
“You cannot be satisfied with any temporal goods because you were not created to enjoy them.
Even if you possessed all created things you could not be happy and blessed; for in God, Who created all these things, your whole blessedness and happiness consists”
Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

12. Contentment is learned (Rom 8:26-27)
4. Contentment is commanded (Hebrews 13:5)

13. What Contentment Isn’t

14. 1. Contentment is not a care free existence (2 Cor 1:8)
2. Contentment is not the absence of relational conflicts and anguish
(Acts 15:36-39, Galatians 2:11-14, Cor 2:4)

15. Contentment is not a life without longing (2 Cor 5:2)
4. Contentment is not necessarily freedom from fear
(2 Cor 7:5, Phil 4:6)

16. “In a word a contented Christian, being sweetly captivated under the authority of the Word, desires to be wholly at God's disposal and is willing to live in that sphere and climate where God has set him.”  ― Thomas Watson, The Art of Divine Contentment

17. The Source of Contentment
Next Week:
The Source of Contentment