my eyes are always scanning

Working Your Way Up

Why do we all seem to want more?

Why is it so hard for us to accept less?

Why do we get haunted by bigger and better?

Why is it so difficult to be satisfied?

Why it is so hard to be content?

Maybe it's a better job, maybe it's a more succulent steak, maybe it's a nicer boss, maybe it's a better spouse, maybe it's a nicer car, maybe it's a more luxurious condo, maybe it's a better vacation than last year, or maybe it is as little as a better cup of coffee than yesterday's, but the spiritual energies of your life can be consumed by working your way up. What do I mean by working your way up? I mean that, in reality, you are living in a state of constant discontent. Yes, you are thankful for the joy of the moment, but you do not have your head down in prayerful thanks. No, your head is up and your eyes are scanning for the next bigger, better, more satisfying thing. When you are discontent, you are always in someway working your way up the ladder of personally satisfying delights. You're not really thankful for or committed to what you have because in your heart you think that there must be something better out there and so you are on the hunt.

What is the solution to the "working your way up the ladder" hunt all about? It is about IDENTITY and WORSHIP. When I begin to humbly accept who I am as a sinner (unbelief), when I honestly face the fact that my deepest problem in life exists inside of me and not outside of me, and when I begin to grasp the reality that God sent his Son to free me from my biggest problem - me - then I will quit working my way up. Why? Because I will be so filled with gratitude that the one thing I desperately needed, God freely gave me in his Son, Christ Jesus. What is this one thing? It is the thing in life that I could not do for myself, yet I cannot live without. By an act of his grace, God has freed me from my bondage to me (unbelief). He has freed me from my addiction to having me at the center of my universe. He has freed me from the ravenous and unsatisfiable appetite of sin, so that I may begin to experience true personal satisfaction where it can only be found - in worship of him. He has broken the power of this addiction over me so that I can be increasingly free where I live everyday.

The key to getting off the ladder and experiencing true contentment is not having more or learning to live with less. The key to contentment is worship. It is only when my heart is satisfied because of what I have been given in Christ and so much more delighted with God's glory than in the possibility of possessing the next glorious physical thing, that I will leave the hunt.     Paul David Tripp

For your journal...

1. Where do you struggle with discontent? (doesn't have to be a material thing)

2. Where do you tend to reach for the next best thing?

3. What are you telling yourself that you need? 

4. Do you daily remind yourself of who you really are?
    State who you are...

5. Do you constantly remember your deepest need?   What is that?

6. Are you increasingly satisfied because you have begun to grasp that you have been given everything you need? I Peter 1:3,4

7. And have you realized that "everything" is in HIM? Nothing in your life is outside of His realm.   Pray in this moment and recommit your heart and mind to Colossians 1:16-23

¹⁶ For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. ¹⁷ He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸ And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. ¹⁹ For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, ²⁰ and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

²¹ Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. ²² But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation — ²³ if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.


~One more thing~ In light of marriage, and how our spouses will never fill the gap, please watch this and ponder.  We all have disabilities/ailments...although different, we are the same at the root and need Jesus much more than we do each other.


http://vimeo.com/38033654