How to be truly content

How to be truly content

By Oluwatoyosi Adegunle 

Edited by Bibi Babatunde-Ikotun 

Hello everyone, welcome back to bibilamour04.com. This is an amazing faith and lifestyle blog that transforms lives and edifies God's people. You're in the right place! This is my second post on this blog and I'm super thankful for all the love shown on my last post. If you didn't get a chance to read it, you can check it out here. I love you all! 

Today, Bibi has been gracious enough to let me talk about my experience with being content, here we go.

For the past three months, I've been praying, more like pleading to God for a laptop. A laptop is super helpful for work, my content creation and other stuff. Most importantly, I wanted to relieve my phone from all the workload I put on it. Very recently, in a manner I choose to address as divine, I got my laptop. It is really cute and the exact size I’ve always wanted. The moment I realized I was getting one soon, you needed to have seen my victory dance. I was more than excited. My spirit, soul and body was grateful to God for His provision and grace for me to own a laptop this season.

Fast forward to the next day after I got the laptop, which was Sunday. I was in church and had to use a church laptop to do some work. Almost immediately, I started to mentally compare and contrast my laptop with the one from church that I was using at that moment. In less than 24 hours, I had absolutely forgotten how to love my own.  I was beginning to crave for this model of laptop and wished it could be mine. Then and there, I knew that I had to snap out of it. I still can't fathom how I went from loving on my laptop to coveting someone else's. It's a funny situation, but a lot of us go through this almost every day.

After this incredible experience, I remember the scripture that says godliness with contentment is great gain - 1Timothy 6:6, which means that it is possible for you to be godly but lack contentment, but you need contentment to actually, get by. This is not to say that you cannot desire good and better things for yourself, but it's a matter of the state of your heart.

True contentment

This is the ability to trust and have confidence in the current and lifelong sustenance and provision of God for your life, even as you pray or desire for more, in a manner that is null and void of jealousy, envy, pain and regrets.

One of the major causes of this feeling or attitude is the unnecessary pressing need to always catch up with trends, be updated, meet up with several standards, possess it all, handle it, fix the mess, take control and just generally be in charge of things, which is not even a bad thing in itself, but can slowly take you away from trusting God, and become what you look unto for confidence, and provision.  You need to let go of the pressure to 'BECOME' and 'HAVE' at all cost - godly or not, and stop being hard on yourself. Relax!

I know a friend that says to people- 'Rest in peace", and a lot of people will cringe and say 'God forbid ' because it's mostly used for dead people. I used to be like that too, but when you think about it, you really should rest in peace- the absolute peace of God and stop getting all worked up by the pressures of life, career, marriage and a host of other things.

Let the eyes of your understanding be enlightened to see how God wants you to come into his rest and trust him for absolutely everything, even as you work. You need to understand that your work or business is not your sustenance, else it will take the place of trusting God.

Pressure can come as a result of the ungodly standards and desires you have set up for yourself, or from family, friends, social media and other factors. When you realize that you feel so much pressure to do things outside the will of God for your life, you need to pray about it, study the word of God because it serves as a constant assurance of God's promises to us, meditate on the words and commune with God.

Remember, 2 Corinthians 1:20(NIV) For no matter how many promises God has made, they are "Yes" in Christ. And so through him the "Amen" is spoken by us to the glory of God.

What is true contentment?

• Resting in the peace and promises of God
• Trusting God
• Having full confidence in God's provision and sustenance
• Seeking God daily
• Asking and desiring for things without an iota of envy, jealousy, hurt and regret.

 What to do when you feel pressured?

• Relax
• Take a possible break from whatever seems to be pressurizing you
• Seek God
• Study, Pray, and converse with God

You are a believer! You live by faith! You abide in Christ! He abides in you! He loves you! He wants the best for you!

Even in your faith walk, there is no pressure whatsoever. The pressure is on God, read more here.

Shalom!

Here is the audio version by bibilmaour04