This week eight members from this church attended a workshop led by Bill Kemp entitled, “Ezekiel’s Bones”.  The workshop itself had some great points about spiritual passion, but there was a story that has stuck with me all week.  Reverend Kemp told about a time when he was appointed as the pastor of a small church in Maine.  One of the parishioners told him that he had to garden.  He had never been a gardener and really did not desire to be a gardener, so he asked the church member, “Why?”  The church member told him that by February the winter will have driven him close to crazy and he will need to have some tangible hope for spring.  So he planted tomatoes and potatoes and survived February quite well.

We have been focusing on our relationship with our money for the last several weeks and if you are like the average American you are tired of winter when it comes to financial matters.  Consumer debt has increased, savings have decreased, stress over finances are causing physical symptoms of sleeplessness in some, and threatening many marriages.  While we have been looking together at the book, Enough, many of us have sighed in the course of the month, “There is never enough time, money, or rest.”  It is time for us to become gardeners.  Perhaps it is time for us to cultivate contentment.  It will not surprise you that I have discovered three alliterative steps to cultivating contentment in the passage that was just read.  They are: prepare the soil, plant the seed, and protect the site.
 

Step One: Prepare the Soil

I love how this passage begins, “Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment.”  It is one of those, “Everyone knows this” kind of statement.  However, everyone doesn’t know this.  The Stoics tried to foster a sense of contentment by becoming completely detached from material things including those that might provide physical comfort – the food and clothing mentioned later.  E. M. Blaiklock noted in his commentary that the Stoics crushed all emotions and hardened the heart.  He quoted T. R. Glover who wrote, “They made a desert of the heart and called it peace.”  This is not the contentment called for in our passage today.  It is the autarkeia in Greek which roughly translated is “self-sufficient”, probably more accurately translated “contentment”.  It is only used one other time in scripture – in Philippians 4:11 where Paul noted, “I have learned to be content with whatever I have.”  So then this contentment is not really connected to what we have.  Blaiklock went on to say that Christ within us is our self-sufficiency.  This autarkeia begins with godliness.   How is the soil prepared for this?

I planted a rose garden for Tammy once – it was about 22 years ago in the only house without wheels that we’ve ever owned.  It was a beautiful rose garden and Tammy did a great job protecting the site.  However, preparing the soil exercised and abused muscles that I never knew I had – neither did they.  Those muscles had been sleeping for decades.  It took work to pull up the sod, turn up the dirt, and add in the sand, topsoil and mulch.  However, if the soil had not been properly prepared the roses would not have been nearly as beautiful.  In fact, since it had been so long I decided to review the necessary preparations online.  I found this rather obvious quote, “A good planting start makes all the difference in how the plant will flower and perform over the years. I would say, it's the difference between success and failure, so it makes sense to do it right.”

I Timothy 6:6 offers us a recipe for a beautiful life and it is not contentment for contentment’s sake, it is not a separation from all that is material.  “Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment.”  First, we must prepare the soil with godliness.  That’s why the season of Lent is so meaningful.  It provides a time for intentional reflection and spiritual inventory.  Am I as close to God as God desires? Let’s start a garden.  The first step in cultivating contentment is to prepare the soil and we do that with godliness – Christ-centered piety.
 

Step Two: Plant the Seed

Again it is a rather elementary step, but you might be surprised how many of us plant one thing and expect something else.  I get the sense that sometimes we throw away the seeds and plant the package in which they came.  That is, sometimes we get it backwards.  James Mackintosh, a Scottish philosopher from the late 1700’s wrote, “It is right to be contented with what we have, but never with what we are.”  Adam Hamilton mentions this quote in his book, Enough, that we are reading as a congregation.  If you don’t have yours yet, pick one up today on the Involve Table in the Welcome Center.  If you want to pay for it, you can drop $10 in the basket on the table.  Payment is not required.  Hamilton points out that we tend to be content with those things about which God doesn’t want us to be content – godliness, righteousness, and the love for others.  Then we turn around and are discontent with those things about which we ought to be content – homes, cars, gadgets, and clothes.  He further cautions that we do the same thing with relationships as we scrutinize and compare our parents, children, and our own marriage.  We say stuff like, “I wish I had parents like you have”, or, “I wish my kids were that focused,” or, “Why isn’t our marriage like that?”  Hamilton calls this the Restless Heart Syndrome that has as its primary symptom discontent.

Verse 7 reminds us that we brought nothing into the world and we take nothing out of it.  Donald Guthrie in his commentary on this passage wrote, “The folly of the constant quest to amass possessions must be left at the door. Real living is intimately more than the gaining of what is merely transitory.”

Hamilton recommends four ways to plant the seed of contentment:

·         Remember that it could be worse – Sometimes we focus on what is not perfect and lose sight of the excellence that is.  I have seen this on the figure skating coverage at the Olympics.  After Shen and Zhou came out of retirement and accomplished their dream of winning the gold medal Monday night, the commentator said, “The mistakes in that program will haunt them for the rest of their lives.”  I hope not – it could be worse.

·         Ask yourself, “How long will this make me happy?” – I have this George Foreman grill that is one of over 100 million sold.  That’s more profit than a heavy weight boxing match on pay-per-view.  I figured that 100 million people couldn’t be wrong.  I needed this.  It made me happy for about two days.

·         Develop a grateful heart – Recognize that all of life is a gift.  So instead of stressing over the imperfections of your marriage, your children, or even your church express gratitude for the blessing that they are to your life.  That’s why you were given a key tag earlier with a Prayer of Contentment.  I encourage you to use it as a frequent reminder to be grateful.  Lord, help me to be grateful for what I have, to remember that I don’t need most of what I want, and that joy is found in simplicity and generosity.  Amen.

·         Ask yourself, “Where does my soul find true satisfaction?” – Saint Augustine wrote years ago, “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.”

There is this wonderful verse in Hebrews 13:5 that I have quoted and offered in my prayers for most of my life.  The verse states regarding Christ, “He has said, ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.’”  Isn’t that a powerful promise?  It is so powerful that I have used it out of context for years.  The entire verse reads, “Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have; for he has said, “I will never leave you or forsake you.”

I think sometimes we plant the package that carried the seeds.  The blessings that God has given us carry the assurance of God’s presence and the importance of our relationship to God.  We are to plant contentment with what we have and hope to grow a life of who we are to be.  Instead, we sometimes plant the package of the blessings in hopes of a bumper crop of blessings.  In order to cultivate contentment we need to plant the seeds of contentment.  Let’s start a garden.  The first step in cultivating contentment is to prepare the soil and we do that with godliness, Christ-centered piety.  The second step is to plant the seed of contentment.
 

Step Three: Protect the Site

It is not enough to prepare the soil and plant the seed.  Those are essential first steps, but we have to be diligent to protect the site from disease and destruction.  Verse nine describe an enemy as the desire to be rich that leads many to temptations and traps that eventually destroy them.  That desire for more can seem as insignificant as an aphid on a rose bush.  Let it go unchecked and you have one ugly plant.

John Wesley preached quite a bit about money.  In fact, he had one sermon entitled, “The Use of Money,” that he preached at least 27 times in a 17 year span.  That is the sermon that has the famous formula recommended by the 18^th century founder of Methodism: “Gain all you can, save all you can, give all you can.”  He thought that Christians ought to gain all they can, that is, make as much money as they could.  He wrote, “There is no end to all that it can do.  In the hands of God’s children it is food for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, raiment for the naked.”  His teaching to save all you can is not for the benefit of the banks and stock-brokers.  In fact, Wesley is said to never have had more than 100 pounds at one time, even though he made 30,000 pounds in his lifetime.  His thoughts on saving is to save it from being ill spent.  He cautioned Christians about wasting their money for two reasons: 1) that money that could be used in more meaningful ways, and 2) it increases the desires of the spender.  He wrote, “When people spend money on things they do not really need, they begin to want more things they do not need.  Instead of satisfying their desires, they only increase them.”  Of course, give all you can is quite understandable.  But Wesley was so vigilant about protecting the site of his garden of contentment that he gave as quickly as possible.  One biographer, Charles Edward White, wrote, “He was afraid of laying treasures on earth, so that money went out in charity as quickly as it came in.”

I have been familiar with this expression, “Gain all you can, save all you can, and give all you can,” ever since I have been a Methodist.  However, it was just this week that I discovered how Wesley lived his life by this principle.  He made a lot of money.  His sermons were published and he had the Rick Warren kind of fame going on in the 1700’s.  In those days, 30 pounds could sustain a single man for a year.  That is what he made in 1731, at the age of 28.  He lived on 28 and gave 2 pounds away.  I figured this is close to what $30,000 will do in today’s economy.  The next year, Wesley made 60 pounds.  He lived on 28 and gave 32 away.  The next year he made 90 pounds.  He lived on 28 and gave 62 pounds away.  And the next year he got another raise – 120 pounds.  Any guesses on what he lived on?  That’s right – 28. He gave 92 away.  From the very beginning, he modeled his maxim, “Gain all you can, save all you can, give all you can.”  So when he died at the age of 87, after gaining 30,000 pounds (if my math is carried out that is about 30 million dollars today) he had a few coins in his dresser.  Everything else had been given away.  He told a friend, “I cannot help leaving my books behind me whenever God calls me hence, but in every other respect, my own hands will be my executors.”

Why was he so determined to give money away so quickly?  He warned, “If you set your heart on gold, it will burn your flesh like fire.”  He was protecting the site.

My friends have taught me a great deal about cultivating contentment.  We have friends visiting this weekend and it has been a blast to see them.  Donald Milton was the first person that I met when I came to Houston to visit a friend of mine 35 years ago.  We have been friends ever since.  He and Jeff and I attended the Southern Bible College along with our wives and then went to seminary together.  We have been there when each others’ children were born and our families have vacationed together.  Their visit is a short visit cut even more short for me because of three meetings that are scheduled for this afternoon and an early morning meeting in Dallas that will take me out of town early this evening.  Tammy explained the situation to Donald and Melody in an email and Donald wrote back, “We look forward to being with you guys. We realize schedules and prior commitments, no big deal. We just want to be with people who fill our bucket.”

This week I invite you to reflect on who and what fills your bucket.  Let’s start a garden.  Prepare the soil with godliness, plant the seed of contentment with gratitude for what you have, and protect the site from those temptations that can trap you and lead to your destruction.  Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment.  Amen.