Greg Ford - Contentment
I'm gonna define contentment this way. And this is not Webster, this is me making this up for this message. I think it's gonna, at least this is what I'm aiming at. So, see if you wanna aim at it too. Contentment is living at the intersection of peace and passion. Living at the intersection of peace and passion. How could I possess peace and passion? So, I don't want peace without passion. Peace without passion might be apathy, it might be complacency. I have no motivation, but I'm at peace. But of course if I have passion and no peace I might be compulsive. Always trying to go a little bit more, destination addiction.
How do I possess both peace and passion simultaneously? Alright, start with this. Everybody in this room, every human being is designed with two desires, security and fulfillment. Alright, we all want security and fulfillment, every single one of us. Security, you wanna be safe, fulfilled, you wanna be fulfilled. Every single pitch, every sales pitch all revolves around this. This is why you get married, by the way. Why would you ever get married? Well, 'cause this, security and fulfillment. In fact, when you get married, you sign a legal document and these are the vows. In the vows, we paint the edges of security, "I'll be with you for better or worse. In sickness and health. How long? Till death, would do us part".
That's a ultimate security. 'Cause I don't wanna know that other people are gonna come and go outta my life, but there's one person that's gonna be there. I wanna know if I get cancer, I'm gonna look up, you are gonna be right there. And if you do, you can count on me, I'll be there too. And if everybody turns on me, I know there's at least one, there's some security in that, that person's gonna be there and they're gonna create safety in my life. There's one person I can speak my heart and my mind to. There's one person I can be intimate with, into me see. You're gonna see into me, and you're not gonna leave me, security. Promise? "Sign here. If not, I'm taking half".
You see what I'm talking about? Fulfillment. Beyond that, just security is fulfillment. "Man, I got sunshine on a cloudy day. When it snow outside I got the month of may. This is the cream in my coffee". This is the person you make I mean, the sunshine a little bit brighter. This is the person I wanna die spooning with in a nursing home. You see what I'm saying? You saw, "The notebook," you know what I'm talking about. This is like, "You make life better. I wanna take road trips with you, okay. I'll stay in a camper with you. I'll sleep in a tent with you, okay".
You get the idea, you make life better. How do people fall in love? They fall in love because you make me safe, and I feel fulfilled. How do they break down? I don't feel safe anymore and I'm not feeling any fulfillment. I don't feel safe anymore. You might feel physically unsafe. You might feel emotionally unsafe.
"Actually, I let you see into me and you take all of my vulnerabilities and you beat me up with them. When we get in a fight you take my vulnerabilities and you use them against me. I don't trust you anymore, I'm putting up walls. Now, we share the same house, sleep in the same bed, but I feel totally alone. I don't know if I wanna keep doing this," insecure, "And also, not fulfilling anymore. You know, honestly, I don't like seeing you. I don't think you like seeing me. We've tried to figure it out. Let's just call it irreconcilable differences while we're old enough or young enough to find somebody new. I'mma move on".
This is how you get in love and then we call it, "Falling out of love". But the bottom line is, you don't feel safe and I'm not enjoying this and you aren't either, let's go. Now, if God made you that way, how sick would he be to make you to need security and fulfillment and give you no way to have it? It'll be weird. That would be sinister, but God is not sinister, God is good. He's designed us to have security and fulfillment, to live in that way. But how do we get there? The problem isn't with him, there's a problem with how we try to get it. So, I'mma go fast, okay. Here we go. How do I get security? Well, first two things starts with the word, "Loved," right.
In Matthew 3, we have this powerful text where Jesus is getting ready to begin his career. Getting ready to begin his ministry, and a voice from heaven, from God the Father says, "This is my dearly love son who brings me great joy". The power of that text is in the context. What had Jesus accomplished or done up to this point in Matthew 3? Nothing. He had not turn water into wine. He had not walked on water. He had not done the sermon on the mount. He had not died on the cross for anyone's sin. He hadn't done anything. And having done nothing, God said, "There he is, there's my dearly loved son who brings me great joy".
And that's powerful, because God gave it to him, why? Because he's my son. And as joint heirs with Jesus, you gotta understand that your life, your security is built on something no one can take away. And it's the love of the father. That you're his dearly loved daughter who brings him great joy, whether you're magna cum laude, summa cum laude or finish at the bottom of your class. Whether the business works out or doesn't work out. Whether you go bankrupt or you're wealthy and affluent. Whether everybody thinks you're awesome or you become a pariah, whatever you do. Even if screw your own life up, you're his dearly loved daughter who brings him great joy in the whole process. And God's saying this, God, the father is saying this to Jesus, the son 'cause Jesus was gonna have high highs and low lows and something's gotta keep you here.
And so, we build our security on love, that we're loved. The second is that we're anointed. Anointed. The word anointed is really the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit in a person. So, we see it in the Old Testament, not everybody had the presence of the Holy Spirit in their life. It was only prophets, priests and kings. So, the average joes like me and you walked around, we didn't have the power of the Holy Spirit, we had to work through middle men. But there was some foreshadowing of what everybody would have looking at these prophets, priests and kings.
So, you see in 1 Samuel 10:6, when Saul was anointed king. It said, "At that time the spirit of the Lord will come powerfully upon you and you will prophecy with them," look at this, "And you'll be changed into a different person". So, this is even, eventually where we'll get the concept of being born again. Jesus said, "Unless you're born again of spirit and of water". Like yeah, at one point you're born into the world as a human, but then you're born again and the power of the Holy Spirit lives inside of you.
Paul says, "The spirit that raised Jesus from the dead lives in you". So, anointing is like your spiritual DNA. It's like your spiritual last name. I'm in this family, that's where I get my DNA. My deoxyribonucleic acid that gives my genetic code, my hair color, my arm length, okay, my body shape, my skin tone. All of this comes from my DNA. Well, in the spirit, when you are now born of the spirit, you now have DNA, and Paul says in Galatians 5 that your DNA looks like this, "Love, joy, peace, patience, kind", these are the DNA and the traits of the spirit. Patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. "Oh, but I come from a long line of", no, you're love. "Oh, but no, I have anxiety". No, you're peace.
This is the DNA of the spirit. So, what is this? This is now how I see myself. I no longer define myself by my family of origin, or by my DNA, or all of this. I do by my spiritual DNA. I am God's son. You're God's daughter, that's how you see yourself. So, my security comes from that. Regardless of what you think about me, how you grade me, where you categorize me. Whether you value me or not, I value myself. My security comes from being his dearly loved son who brings him great joy. I'm God's son. His spirit lives inside of me. Why would I walk around sheepish, intimidated, afraid? No, I have the spirit that raise Jesus from the dead that lives in me. Alright, that's where we find our security. Fulfillment. First word is gifted. You're gifted.
It says in Romans 12, "In his grace," verse 6, "In his grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well". In his grace, God has given us the ability to do certain things well. So, think of it like this, anointed is your last name, gifted is your first name. In the ford family we're all ford, but we're all different in our first name. There's Greg, Shaylyn, Ella, Hudson and miles. All of us are unique in our first name. We're unique in the gifts that God's given us. So, everyone, there's not a human being alive who doesn't have a gift given to them by God. The ability to do certain things well. There's a bunch of things you don't do well. That's fine, other people do them well.
There's some things you do well, people do it more well than you. There's some people that they're just really good. But if you get focused on who does the same well thing I do, they just do it more well, or the things I don't do well, then you don't have any fulfillment to stop and go, "What do I do well? And I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna take my gift and turn it into a skill, and I'm gonna use it for the glory of God". Here's a big problem that people make this mistake, and I see this all the time, and I stand with you as someone who has done this many times myself, and still struggles with it to this day, but one of the common mistakes is to take your gift, whenever you do well, might show up in your career or your endeavors, the things you do, your skills. To take your gift and instead of allowing it to be part of your fulfillment, you use your gift to try to get security.
"This is how I'm gonna validate myself in the world. This is how I'm gonna be secure. This is how am gonna show my value and my worth. It's gonna be through my gift". And that is a catastrophic error, big mistake. Allow the Lord to show that to you and calibrate you back, because here's the sad thing. If you do that, your gift is not designed to bear the weight of your security. Your security comes in the fact that you're loved and anointed. No matter what you do, this is where you're at. God loves you, he's given you his spirit, whether you win or lose. And when I do that, now I can actually enjoy my gift.
I see people all the time, it's tragic, who are so gifted, and they have no joy in their gift. They're so stressed out, there's so much pressure around that gift. They can't even enjoy being good at stuff. And if I can move it out of my security and I find my security in which no one can take away from me. I get in the car by myself, I'm like, "I don't have to wonder if God's happy with me. I don't have to wonder if God loves me. I don't have to wonder any of that".
Now, I can get up and just rip it. I can get up and give my best. And if it falls short, it falls short, that's cool. I'm gonna enjoy being good at what I'm good at. And you should enjoy being, it's a gift. Imagine giving a gift to a kid and they just now stress out about it. You're like, "Play with it man, have some fun with that thing". God's given you gifts and people try to make them their security, and they end up having no fulfillment in those things. God made you to do certain things well. The last one is then, called. Called.
1 Corinthians 12 says this, "There are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but the same spirit is the source of them all. There are different kinds of service, but we serve the same Lord. God works in different ways, but it is the same God who does the work in all of us". Watch this, verse 7, "A spiritual gift is given to each of us so that we can help each other". That right there describes the purpose, the use of your gift. It describes your purpose and your calling. Your calling is to use your God-given gifts to serve him by serving people. People are your calling. Often times people get confused too, I think they think calling is an assignment. And yes, God will give you different assignments.
I believe God's given me the assignment to do this job for this season of time. I'm stewarding this as long as God has me here. At some point, for one reason or another God will move me outta the way, he'll bring somebody else in. My assignment will change, but my calling will not change. My calling will still be with people. Whether I'm a retired man or not, God's about to put me in a retirement home, there's my calling. Put me in a nursing home, there's my calling. As long as I have breath in my lungs, I'm gonna use the gifts God's given me to serve him by serving people. And yeah, we look for a assignments, and sometimes God will guide us in that way. But don't mix up your assignment with your calling, your calling is always people.
"Who, I don't know what I'm called to do". You see people, yeah, there you go. What are your gifts? Use those for your calling. This is massive, it's also another mistake people often make, is they think that their gift is their calling. So, they say, "I'm called to preach". No, you're not, you're gifted to preach, you're called to people. "I'm gifted or I'm called to lead". No, you're gifted to lead, you're called to people. And so, when we do this now, we get these things in order. Not just all four, but all four in the right place.
My fulfillment comes from using my gifts to glorify God, to serve God and serve people. And now my security comes from what you can't take away from me, regardless of how all this goes. Whether I hit the note or miss the note. Whether it goes good or bad, or what emerges, right. What emerges from all this? What emerges here is peace. And what emerges here is passion, right. I have peace because even if the relationship is going terrible, and you might leave me I don't find my security based on my spouse, based on my employer, based on my 401(k). Ultimately, yeah, I might feel anxiety 'cause those things hurt. I'm a human being I have emotions, so do you.
So, I'm gonna feel that, but what do I do in my quiet place? In my quiet moments? I find my peace in the fact that ultimately, I find my security and that I'm loved and anointed. That will naturally come to the surface when I find my security here. Fulfillment, when I get my security here and now, I find my fulfillment in using my God-given gifts at whatever capacity to serve him and serve people. What happens? Now, I become very passionate about the work that I'm doing because it has a greater purpose. Are you getting this? And so, what is contentment?
Contentment is at the intersection of peace and passion. It's not, here's how I could mess this message up. If I didn't preach any of this and I only preach this, you might feel bad about your ambition, or you might never look ahead. I gotta be able to look ahead, at this same time I have to have peace in my present. I need to have passion about my future. Not be so future-oriented that I buy into the destination addiction lie that my peace is there, but I should be able to have peace here. The top part here allows me to sit down and rest. "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures".
There's some people who can't. If you were to lie down in a green pasture, you'd be twitching, you know. You would have an allergic reaction and you're not even allergic to grass. But you'd be down there having allergic reaction 'cause you'd be trying to think about everything you've got to do. And, "I'm falling behind," you have no peace. And finding my security where I'm supposed to find it, allows me to lie down in the green pasture. Allows me to take a seat, sit down. It allows me to celebrate what is. It allows me to not beat myself up when I gave my best and did my best.
At some point, of course it could have been better, of course it could have been bigger. Of course, it could have been more excellent, okay. But at some point, you have to go, "You know what? I did my best in that project. I threw my full weight into it. I prepared my heart out. I gave all of me. And you what, someday, I'm gonna get a little better, and all of me is gonna be a little bit more. I'mma keep developing and using the gift God has. But today, right here, right now, that was good enough. It was good enough and I'm gonna sit down". And peace allows me to sit down and not shred myself for what I could have done. But passion will pretty soon say, "Okay, get up we got a new hill to take. We have a new level to take. We gotta get a little, but we're gonna develop a little more. Not in a compulsive way, in a passionate way".
I was thinking about, "Okay, how do we illustrate this"? I'm gonna use this sort of as a metaphor. But I want you to imagine you were a soccer player, okay, you played soccer, you were awesome. Okay, you were really good, you know, you're a student of the game. And you get outta college and you decide, "I'm going to coach third grade soccer". And you're coaching third grade soccer and there's something in you. I see people shaking their heads like, "Never will I do that. I'll never do that, okay". And I get it, that ain't for you, right, that's not your calling. But for third grade soccer and you get out there and you absolutely love it. Like, "This is amazing. I'm getting to help shape the lives of these young third graders and I'm helping the parents. And I just, I absolutely, I don't know why, I just love coaching third grade soccer".
Now, let's say you have all the ability and the talent, you could coach professional soccer. "To be honest with you, the idea of dealing with professional divas and doing all that, I don't really want to do that. I swear I really wanna do this". Would it be wrong for you to coach professional soccer? Well, for you to go, "Now,i gotta coach fourth grade. Now, I gotta coach junior high. Now, I gotta get high school. Now, I gotta get college. Now, I gotta get pro". 'Cause you might get to coaching pro and you go, "I don't even like my life. Why am I doing this? I only did this because I had external pressure. 'Cause I was hoping that if I got there I'd be more secure or have more respect or whatever it might be".
So, for one person, to coach pro soccer might be wrong. To another person maybe they're coaching third grade soccer, and there's something in them going, "You know, I honestly think I'm made for that". But maybe the fear of missing it, the fear of embarrassing yourself, the insecurity around, you know, "Maybe I'm not good enough". But there's something pulling you that way. Some people coach third grade soccer because they're really passionate about third grade soccer. Some people coach third grade soccer because they're afraid that I'll be worthless if I fail at what I really feel like I'm supposed to do.
So, I can't tell you today if you should coach third grade soccer, I'm telling you pray about it. You gotta put this on the board and you gotta go "What is pulling me in that direction"? What I found generally is God does tend to line up people's assignments with their giftings. So, I do think a huge part of our lives is, where we'll find a lot of fulfillment both in the present and passion for the future, is really growing an awareness around, "What has God made me to do well"? And working to develop that. I've seen it. And this is a tough conversation but, you know, I'm a church planter. Shaylyn and I planted this church in 2011 with a group of people. And after we planted the church I would go around and train church planters around the country.
And I would have people who would come, and they wanted to start a new church. And I'd sit and have lunch with them or meet with them, and I would go like, "Is this something you're gifted for"? "I don't know". "So, why have you ever started anything before"? "No". Okay, so you may or may not, but looks like so far there's no evidence you have an entrepreneurial gift. So, if you don't have an entrepreneurial gift the first thing that you start probably wouldn't be a church. But they're like, "But Greg I sat in a sermon, and I heard the preacher said, 'God doesn't call the qualified he qualifies the called.'" I'm like, "Maybe". "But I listen to a message where the preacher said, 'it's not about ability it's about availability'".
Maybe, kinda. But yeah, there are times that God might do some total miracle where he takes somebody who isn't been gifted to do certain things well and then makes them do that thing well. There are times, like there's a story in the Bible God made a donkey talk. But there's another story where Moses goes, "I don't talk well". And God says, "Okay, cool can you just repeat after me. 'let my people go. Can you say four words? Yeah, okay, that's all you need to say. Now, everything else I don't want you to talk. Aaron. Aaron, come here. Alright, this guy's gonna do all the talking, 'cause I gifted him to do that well. You don't do it well, so just memorize four words. And then lead people like you did the sheep. But he's gonna be the talker".
So, when I'm going, "Where am I supposed to go"? My passion and my peace. Number one, you should be able to have peace even when you feel turmoil, why? Cause when I get quiet with the Lord and I recalibrate and I step away, and the dust settles, and I step away from the chaos. Then I pray and I look at God's word, what do I find? I find that my peace and my security comes from the fact that you're his dearly loved daughter who brings him great joy. And you're God's son, and you're God's daughter, and that's your last name.
And you got this DNA of the spirit inside of you no matter what you, I'm peace, I'm joy, I'm patience, that's in you. But as I'm trying to find then my passion, what do I do? What's my gift? Where's God gifting me? And then what is the assignment God's leading me to? For what purpose? So that I can serve him by serving people. I end with this, Philippians 4:11-13 the apostle Paul says, "I've learned how to be content with whatever I have. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything".
It's an interesting guy because the apostle Paul, we have a lot of information about him. We have the narrative, the historical narrative in the Book of Acts where we see that Paul at times was so empowered he did miracles. And other times he was going through, in Corinthians he talks about all the catastrophes. And he talks about his worst moments of his life, where he was essentially powerless. And he said, "Man, I've been really powerful and I've been powerless," he said, "But I've learned how to live with almost nothing. I've learned how to live clipping coupons, and I've learned how to live eating at Ruth Chris. I've learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it was with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. For I can do everything through Christ who gives me strength".
The same guy in another verse said, "Godliness with contentment is itself great gain". And so, today I want to give you an opportunity to take a moment to allow God to speak to you personally about your life. It's not that you're unaware of the future. It's not that you don't have a vision for a future. In fact, that vision for the future is gonna be what gets you up from your season of rest to pursue what's next. But I believe that for some today, God wants to bring us to his word, to help us live at that intersection between peace and passion.