Contentment

I have been asked on more than one occasion about contentment. I also recently read a friends profile in witch this person talks of struggling to find such a thing. Where is it? Do you find it in friends, family, career, life or all of the above? Maybe church or God? Where is this allusive thing called contentment? Well first of all let me say do not confuse contentment with happiness. The kind of contentment I am writing of, is much more than that. I'm writing of the contentment that God speaks of.
This is something that I find few people have experienced. As I see it, the problem is that we spend our lives chasing happiness with the thought that, if we could find enough happiness, then it would lead us to contentment. That could not be farther from the truth. Understand one thing, true contentment is a gift from God. It's not something we can find, just by looking for it. Would God want you to be content before your surrender to him is complete? Some one once asked me, how I could not have desire or want for anything more. The only answer I could give was, " because I am truly content." GALATIANS 5- 16 through 26 [16] So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. [17] For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. [18] But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law. [19] For the acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; [20] idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions [21] and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
If you can look at the fruit of the Spirit in a Greek study you will see how interconnected these words are. They are progressive. We can not have joy without first having love and we can not have peace without first having joy. God tells us that His first and greatest command is to love Him with all your heart. Then He says to love one another the way we love ourselves. Matthew 22 38&39 . The Greek word used here for love is the same kind of love He gives us. It is imposable for one human being to love another with this kind of love. To someone who is not saved, this may sound like a contradiction. It is not. Once the Spirit has come to live in us, the first thing He teaches us as we walk, is how to love, and we quickly realize that we're not the one doing the loving. It is the first fruit of the Spirit. Then as we walk we start to learn about joy and once again we see that this joy is not coming form us, but the spirit with in us. Then peace comes and we soon start to see that without Him inside us we are nothing, we are incapable of producing any fruit without Him, including the last thing on the list, SELF-CONTROL.
Yes we are even incapable of self-control. That's a hard nut to crack! lol. I think that's why He save's that one for last. To me it goes without saying, that as the Spirit inside you finds rest and contentment in your total surrender to him, there is where you will find yours. As for myself, I have been all the way to the top of that surrender roller coaster and all the back down. A word of advice as you ride. When you get to the top, slam on the brakes and hold on for all your worth, because the first thing I lost on the way down the other side, was my CONTENTMENT.