Discontentment of the Soul

Discontentment of the Soul

Romans 12:1-2

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, [which is] your reasonable service And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what [is] that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

               How many of us like to have fun?  We love what entertains us and provides us with external stimuli that excites our senses and appetites.  Sometimes we think and we do what is in our natural desires to do.  If we are “in Christ” we begin to feel convictions from His Spirit within us.  We might ask, “Why doesn’t God want me to have a good time?”  God does want us to a have a good time in the things that pertain to life and godliness.  There is no joy on earth that is greater than the joy of the Lord and truly experiencing His awesome presence.  Our joy comes from our relationship, but our relationship often becomes stale and unexciting. 

               We can liken it to many of our marriages.  We married that person because at one time they were fun to be with.  They were exciting and they were everything that we desired and wanted.  What happens as we go down the road of life and the honeymoon is over?  What happened to those feelings we used to have and the passion we felt?  Hopefully it is still there, but for many it fades as the demands of life take over.  Our weaknesses surface and seem to be glaring blights to our partner who once never even noticed or seemed to care about the faults, perhaps now that is all that they see or all that we see in them. 

Our relationship with God can be a burden to us as well when our hearts are drawn to the glitter and the romance of the world.  We, as people, tend to get into ruts and routines with our religion and our relationships.  In that place we start growing often discontent, disconnected and disinterested in that one which we once loved and cherished.  That can happen to us spiritually as well as in our natural relationships. 

               It is said that ‘one thing is certain and that is nothing ever stays the same.”  Many of us have had those times when we had wonderful experiences and feelings and somehow we were under the illusion that this would go on into happily ever after and nothing would change.  “Boy, did we buy into the lie on that one.”  We have found that things do change, circumstances, feeling, attitudes, desires, priorities and a number of other variables have come in to change the dynamics of our relationship with God and with our spouse.  Even God doesn’t always meet our expectations. 

               What do we do when we find ourselves struggling in our relationship with God or with our spouse?  Funny how there is often a correlation between those two relationships. 

               Life and long term relationships are not about an experience or a feeling that we once had, they are a journey.  On a journey the terrain and surroundings are always changing.  The climate is changing.  Those changes are sometimes good and sometimes bad, but never the less, they are changes.  The important part of a journey is that we aren’t aimlessly wandering the countryside, looking for the best place, the best climate or just the good times.  It is important in a journey that we have a fixed destination and a course that we are following to get there.  A lot of things will happen between where we started and where we end up, but it is important that our commitment is to our destination and that everything else becomes secondary to where we are headed.  There will be many other paths to follow in life that will lead us away from our destination and occasionally we take a wrong turn and get off on these, but what do we do when we are traveling on a trip and take a wrong turn?  When we discover it and acknowledge It, we repent and turn around so that we can get back to the road that will lead us to our destination. 

               We are going to face some hard times both in our marriages and in our relationship with God, that is part of the journey, but we can’t quit, we have come too far.  We must make the adjustments in our hearts and attitudes to find joy even in those hard places.  Often our failing relationships are the result of our own hardened heart.  We would like to blame the other, but restoration begins with us.  It is us that we are wholly responsible and accountable for.  Our reward doesn’t come from how well we were able to conform someone else to our will or God’s will, but on how well we were able to offer our will as a living sacrifice to the Lord.  He is our destination and our joy and contentment come in fulfilling the calling He has placed upon our lives.   We can’t be moved by the natural man, that’s a wrong road, we must move according the direction of God’s Word and how the Holy Spirit makes that personal and alive to each one of us.

Blessings,

#kent