I needed this reminder today because I really need to get over myself and the way I think things should be. Please tell me I am not the only one who has their moments of wanting to stomp their foot or dig in their heels and say, “No!” or “It’s not fair!” when we don’t get what we want. Especially when we have prayed and waited and prayed and waited. Please tell me I am not the only one who finds sullen contentment in a good pity party? Please? Anyone else?

I am not proud of this in myself. This is my humanity. This is when emotion takes over and my heart runs away with my head, even though I know it isn’t right. I totally get what Paul was saying in Romans 7:15 “I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate.”

Today I needed a “thankful” reminder and God was only to happy to smack me upside the head with it as verse after verse flooded my thoughts replacing my pity party with feelings of humble graciousness. Even, and especially on the days I find myself falling short, God’s grace and mercy cover it all. He continues to bless me in ways that I don’t understand because of my short-sightedness. It’s so easy to lose sight of the haves in the face of the have-nots.

This life is not all about us and our comfort. (Hey me, get over yourself and your ideas of fairness! Yes, life sometimes stinks but you have so much to be thankful for.) God does not promise us contentment in the things of this world but in Him and Him alone.

“Christian contentment, therefore, is the direct fruit of having no higher ambition than to belong to the Lord and to be totally at His disposal in the place He appoints, at the time He chooses, with the provision He is pleased to make.

It was with mature wisdom, then, that the young Robert Murray McCheyne wrote, ‘It has always been my aim, and it is my prayer, to have no plans with regard to myself.’ ‘How unusual!’ we say. Yes, but what people noticed about McCheyne was how content he was to pursue one driving ambition: to know Christ (Phil. 3:10). It is not accidental that when we make Christ our ambition we discover that He becomes our sufficiency and we learn contentment in all circumstances.”
–In Christ Alone, by Sinclair B. Ferguson, pg. 190

Lord, help me keep my eyes on you and you alone.