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Being Content


         Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said,
“Never will I leave you;
    never will I forsake you.”
          So we say with confidence,
“The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid.
    What can mere mortals do to me?” (Hebrews 13:4-6)
          The second instruction in this passage is a double whammy: keep your life free from the love of money, and be content with what you have. Those can be really hard to do, probably as tough as avoiding sexual immorality. I notice this most when I go to Florida. There, I walk by RVs that people have been living in for thirty years (like mine), and double-wide park model mobile homes with easily twice as much room or motor-homes that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. I am fond of the people at the park where I live in Florida, but there are moments as I walk that I find myself wishing for what I think they have, whether it’s a spouse who helps with whatever, or space, or heat, or a big screen TV, or carpentry skills, or a decent pension.
          I also see other folks who want the government to take money away from the rich and give it to the poor. It seems to me that their jealousy has hardened to envy and hatred. They don’t just want to live like those who have more, they want to take away what those folks have, and they pronounce the “rich” to be evil just because they’re rich.
          When I find jealousy rearing its ugly head, the thing that usually helps me is the thought that God doesn’t want me to live like that right now  And I bring to mind the fact that God has give me comparative wealth. He’s met my needs and more in the past. He’s guided me where He wanted me to be before. He will again.
          And according to the author of Hebrews, I’m getting it right. I may not be getting all the details right, but the reason we shouldn’t love money, and the reason we should be content with what we have is because of one thing we have: God. Regardless of what else we may have, having God makes us wealthier than Bill Gates and the top ten most wealthy people in the world, combined. That doesn’t mean things will all be easy, but we don’t need to fear, and we should not be jealous or envious of those who are so poor that they lack Him, because with Him, all good things are possible. Without him, you can have only temporal wealth. As tempting as  that is, it’s poverty compared to having God.

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