Last Friday morning’s headlines said it all. A stunning 20.5 million jobs lost in April, the worst month since the government began tracking the data in 1939. The unemployment rate stands at 14.7%, the highest on record since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began its monthly series, and climbing. An unimaginably high number of Americans have lost jobs. More stand to lose jobs. Maybe you are someone, or you know someone, who has lost a job or is about to lose a job. The worry is real. The pain is real.
We have no control over when Washington will reopen. Whether we lose a job or we are about to lose a job is not due to anything we have done. What we can control, however, is our state of contentment. After all, isn’t that more important than having abundance? What we want is not really abundance but the state of happiness. Some have abundance, and still do not have contentment. Others have contentment in the midst of suffering need. The Apostle Paul said he knew how to live with humble means, but also prosperity. He learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, of having abundance and suffering need. What did Paul know? I want to know what he knew.
Paul said, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” This verse is not saying we will have success in all things because Christ is strengthening us—that seniors will get accepted into the university of their choice, and young boys will play in the NBA some day, because it is Christ who strengthens them. What this verse is saying, however, is that Paul was able to find contentment no matter what his circumstances. His contentment was not tied to how much he had or did not have. Then in the same verse, he revealed his secret. His contentment came from none other than Christ. There was his secret. Knowing Christ made it possible for him to turn his attention away from how good or how bad his circumstance was. He lived in a state of contentment day after day, year after year.
If your contentment is tied to how much you have or don’t have, it will fluctuate from day to day like the Dow Jones Industrial. But if your contentment is tied to Christ, God promises it will strangely, but wonderfully, stay the same.