I read a story about a Jewish man in Hungary who went to his rabbi and complained, “Life is unbearable. There are nine of us living in one room. What can I do?” The rabbi answered, “Take your goat into the room with you.” The man was incredulous, but the rabbi insisted, “Do as I say and come back in a week.” A week later the man returned looking more distraught than before. “We can’t stand it,” he told the rabbi. “The goat is filthy.” The rabbi said, “Go home and let the goat out, and come back in a week.” A week later the man returned, radiant, exclaiming, “Life is beautiful. We enjoy every minute of it now that there’s no goat--only the nine of us.”[1]
This Jewish man’s circumstances did not change. There were still nine people living in one room. What changed? His attitude changed! He became content in the same difficult situation.
Paul is in prison when he instructed us about contentment in Philippians 4:11: “I have learned in whatever state [circumstance] I am, to be content.” Paul is incarcerated not for robbing a bank but for preaching the gospel. He is hungry and poor. He can’t make tents to fix his problem. He could have been frustrated, but he was content.
The author of Hebrews 13:5 contrasted covetousness and contentment: “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.’” If I am covetous, I am not content. Warren Wiersbe wrote about millionaire Bernard Baruch. Someone asked him, ‘“How much money does it take for a rich man to be satisfied?’ Baruch replied, ‘Just a million more than he has.’”[2] The covetous are never happy because they always want more. They are not content with what they possess. The covetous want another, more expensive car; another, bigger house; another, better job; another, more beautiful wife. The content are happy with God’s provisions.
Let’s define contentment. Contentment is the state of mind when we are independent of difficult circumstances because we are dependent on Christ! If we are not content with our car, house, job, or wife, we need to answer two questions to help us to choose contentment with Christ’s gracious supplies.
In what difficult circumstances am I to choose contentment?
First, there are difficult financial circumstances. John the Baptist counseled a Roman soldier in Luke 3:14: “Be content with your wages.” On your job or in your career, you not only go the second mile but third, fourth, and fifth. You are the first on the job site and the last to leave. Another employee with the same job doesn’t even go the first mile, yet he makes higher wages than you. You have done all you can. This inequity is out of your control. “Be content with your wages.”
Next, there are also difficult physical circumstances. Paul testifies about his thorn in the flesh in 2 Corinthians 12:7-9. After asking God three times to heal him to which God answered “No” three times, Paul resolved: “Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities ... when I am weak, I am strong” (1 Cor 12:10). That sounds like contentment. I talked to a pastor last week who had a stroke which affected his vision so badly he can hardly read. That is hard for a student of God’s Word. This dear man of God must join the Apostle Paul and “take pleasures in weaknesses.”
Last, there are difficult life circumstances. Paul informed us in Philippians 4:12 that he had been hungry. He is in jail in Rome for doing God’s call. He is chained to a Praetorium guard. Sometimes we feel we are serving a prison sentence in our constricting circumstances. We imagine we have been destined for misery. The truth is that life is hard. My mom is suffering from recurring and intermittent dementia. We have had a great mother/son relationship. But now, she calls and leaves me nasty voicemails. Which hurts me, and which hurts her when later she realizes what she did.
In the throes of these difficult circumstances, Paul rejoiced in 4:10: “I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at length you have revived (ἀναθάλλω [anathallo]) your concern for me.” Paul compares the gift from the Philippian church delivered by Epaphroditus to blossoming flowers.[3] Paul in essence said the gift that Epaphroditus hazarded his life to bring was like a bunch of flowers that turned his jail cell into a garden.[4] Paul rejoiced over what he had and did not complain about what he did not possess. Take a few minutes and make a list of God’s blessings in your painful situation. Now, take a few more minutes and “give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thess. 5:18).
Having answered the question about some of the difficult circumstances in which we are to choose contentment, let’s answer this practical question, “How can I choose contentment in financial, physical, and life-difficult circumstances?”
How can I choose contentment in difficult circumstances?
The good news is if you are struggling with covetousness, you can learn contentment. Paul apparently grew up in a wealthy home which at salvation he willingly gave up: “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ” (Phil 3:7). His father, who was a Pharisee, was affluent enough to afford the famous Gamliel to tutor his son. Dad’s goal for his son was most likely for his son to grow up to be a Pharisee. Because of Paul’s conversion to Christianity, his dad who could afford to help his unjustly imprisoned son chose not to. Paul is in financial straits and Dad will not help.
Paul, however, learned to be content (Phil 4:11). Paul in 4:12 gave us three specific areas of contentment in his personal testimony when stated three times “I know,” “I know,” and “I am instructed.” Paul testified I have learned to be content in poverty (abased ταπεινόω [tapeinoo]) or humbled like Christ in Philippians 2:8. This poverty characterized Paul’s life in general after conversion. Again, Paul stated, I have learned to be content in wealth, specifically “to be full.” This word was used to describe the 5000 Jesus fed in Matthew 14:20. They had more than they needed. This is how Paul grew up. He ate a lot of leftovers. Then Paul informed us that he had learned to be content when hungry. Paul employed the word that depicted Christ after he had fasted forty days (Mt 4:2). There were many nights Paul went to bed with his stomach growling. Like Paul, we can learn to be content in gut-wrenching trials. But how? What is the secret?
We can learn to be content by depending on Christ’s strength for contentment (4:13). Paul did not depend on his strength for contentment. Paul did not say, “I can do all things!” Paul is not referring to what would become the Positive Thinking Movement espoused by progressives such as Norman Vincent Peale. I listened to one of his sermons preached in 1987 in the Crystal Cathedral entitled “Positive Thinking Works Wonder.” Peale spoke of Mary Kroll who lived outside of Portsmouth, Ohio. Her family was poor. Her chore was to wash clothes on a scrubboard. She was about to graduate from high school. No one in her family had graduated from high school or gone to college. While doing her menial chores, she had a vision of walking up on the platform at commencement at a university to receive her diploma from the president. The next day, her priest called her into his vestry. He said, “Mary, I have a scholarship for tuition and board for four years at Saint Mary of the Springs College in Columbus and I have been keeping it for the student in Portsmouth High School who could qualify for its high standards. When Mary walked onto the campus that fall in Columbus, it was exactly the same in specific details that she had seen in her vision.
Peale declared, that Mary had never heard of the science of positive imagery or positive thinking. She graduated with the highest marks and went on to be one of the most successful salespersons in the industry. Peale based his Positive Thinking theology on Philippians 4:13. What did Philippians 4:13 mean according to Peale? “You can, if you think you can.” Paul promised you can only through Christ’s strength, not your mental visualization.
Norman Vincent Peale’s Positive Thinking is making a comeback. The New York Times ran an article with the headline, "The Power of Positive Thinking Reborn." The subhead read, "A New Generation is Manifesting in the Name of Wellness."[4] Manifesting is what Peale called Positive Thinking. The journalist began by talking about a young boy who at age nine had set his heart on owning the Power Ranger Flip Heads. He said, "I never told anyone, but I wanted these toys so bad. I sat in my room holding this scenario in my head of how I would feel when I got them” .... He launched his dreams into the universe .... The universe heeded his call .... ‘The very next day, my dad got me the Flip Heads. That's when I realized that there was something to this." Manifesting is the secular version of Positive Thinking among the youth today.
Paul did not say, “I can if I think I can.” Paul affirmed, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” D. A. Carson wrote that “all things” cannot be completely unqualified (e.g., jump over the moon, integrate complex mathematical equations in my head, turn sand into gold).”[5]
Paul actually started verse 13 with “All things, I can do, through Christ who strengthens me.” Paul starts with “All things” because he is referring to the “all things” or all kinds of difficult circumstances in which he learned to be content in 4:11, 12. That is the context. The promise is that Christ will give us the strength to be content in the most trying trials. John MacArthur contended this only refers to the physical and not the spiritual.[6] Charles John Ellicott, however, expanded the application of the strength of Christ for believers when he wrote: “Properly, I have strength in all things, rather (according to the context) to bear than to do. But the universal extension to the maxim beyond the immediate occasion and context is not inadmissible.”[7]
Paul in Colossians 1:27c-28 extended this strength from Christ to be appropriated by the believer for ministry: “Christ in you ... [who] powerfully works within me.” Charles H. Spurgeon was an example. On his fiftieth birthday, a list of 66 organizations was read that he founded and conducted. A prominent leader was there and said, “This list of associations, instituted by his genius, and superintended by his care, were more than enough to occupy the minds and hearts of fifty ordinary men” (Dallimore, Spurgeon, 173). The missionary David Livingstone, asked him once, “How do you manage to do two men’s work in a single day? Spurgeon replied, “You have forgotten there are two of us”[8] referring to Christ in him, working in him mightily.
This same Christ is in you to give you strength to accomplish supernatural feats in ministry and to be content in difficult trials. You are not alone!
[1] Steven Coles, Lesson 27: The Secret for Contentment (Philippians 4:10-13) at Bible.org.
[2] Warren W. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary, Logos.
[3] Stephen Davey, “Enough” at Wisdom for the Heart (accessed 07/20/2023).
[4] Louw-Nida, ἀναθάλλω: (a figurative extension of the meaning of ἀναθάλλω ‘to bloom again)
[5] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/20/style/self-care/how-to-manifest-2021.html
[6] D. A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies (Grand Rapids: Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition,) 115-116.
[7] John MacArthur, The MacArthur NT Commentary, Philippians (Chicago: Moody Publishers; New edition,2001, 303.
[8] Charles John Ellicott, Commentary on the Whole Bible, 8 vols. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 552.
[9] John Piper, Preaching Through Adversity.