Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the Erickson Covenant Podcast. We are so glad that you've joined us today.
We confess that we don't have all the answers, but as a community, we seek to find and follow Jesus and to discover daily the life he has always wanted for us.
We hope this message will be encouraging and will inspire you to take the next steps on your spiritual journey.
If we can help you in any way, please connect with us. The easiest way is through our website at Erickson Covenant ca.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Let's get started Good morning. Good morning.
I'm Chase Hynes and I'm going to be continuing our series on When God Speaks.
I will be sharing a verse which has spoken to me and continues to speak to me each and every day of my life, no matter what situation I am in.
To understand how this verse spoke to me, you first must understand where I was so I grew up quite comfortable.
We always had food on the table and we'd often enjoy meals together as a family.
I had friends at school and bullying was not a huge issue in my childhood, I would say I was comfortable.
My family didn't push me hard into places I didn't like, and I grew up with things that I knew were comfortable, I was comfortable with.
I avoided being vulnerable with friends and settled for being friendly with everyone.
Everything around me was comfortable.
I had friends. I wasn't bullied, I didn't struggle in school, yet I was discontent.
Something in me knew that there was a hole, there was something not quite right which was not being filled properly.
In high school, this became especially prominent where things I had, things I once had or had experienced didn't quite quench this feeling of discontent.
I was surrounded by good things.
I learned about God each Sunday as well as on my youth Bible study.
Yet somehow all of it remained still information to me and the discontent it stayed.
And searching for a job didn't fix this discontent.
Searching in a relationship with a girlfriend didn't fix this discontent.
When we moved out to B.C.
we moved out two and a.
Yeah, about two and a half years ago now.
When we moved out here, I thought things would change.
New place, place to start again.
I could be content, right?
But even after coming out here, everything I tried to fix this feeling never worked out.
I was still discontent.
It is here where I would share the verse.
In Philippians, the Apostle Paul writes to the church in Philippi, which he established about 10 years prior while in prison.
Paul writes in Philippians 4, verse 10 to 13 I rejoiced greatly in the Lord that at last you Renewed your concern for me.
Indeed, you were concerned, but you had no opportunity to show it.
I'm not saying this because I am in need. For I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.
I know what it is to be in need.
I know what it is to have plenty.
I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.
I can do all this through him who gives me strength.
Paul reveals the secret to Jesus Christ.
But what exactly is contentment?
And if we are discontent, how we know when we are finally content?
I felt that I had so much, so much stuff in the way of things, as well as good experiences.
But he doesn't quite look content.
That's not me, by the way.
But I felt like that.
Certainly contentment is not found in comfort.
Because I felt so comfortable. I didn't want to change where I was. That's how comfortable I felt.
But I still felt that there was something not right. I still felt that discontent.
Also, contentment isn't the absence of hardship, contentment.
It is a learned state, as Paul says, rather than instinct.
Contentment is the soul resting in Christ's sufficiency.
It is replacing the urge to have more with gratitude in Christ for what we do have now. I knew lots about God and even Jesus.
I had this wonderful Bible story Bible called the Brick Bible.
Pretty much what it was.
It was an Old Testament Bible with a bunch of stories in the Old Testament all recreated in Lego, which I loved and still love. Lego this Bible. I learned so many stories in. It was a way for me at a young age to engage with the Scripture.
And I really felt that I knew these stories. I knew about King David, I knew about Adam and Eve, I knew about Samson. I knew all these characters in the Bible and I could name them. And I. Even as I picture some of these stories, the first images that come to my mind are images from the Brick Bible.
But I was still missing him.
I still had a hole in me which was left unfilled as I was walking with Christ.
It took walking with Christ to begin to learn contentment.
It didn't just happen overnight and it's still a continuous effort. But it was almost two years ago now. Exactly. Which Peter brought up briefly before I went to the Headwaters Discipleship Program.
And it was here when I was placed in a deeply uncomfortable situation which I became where I came to a real relationship with Christ.
Previously, I knew him more. I knew about him.
I knew these stories and I knew of Jesus, but still I didn't know him as a person.
It's kind of. There's this metaphor that I've used and heard before and that's.
I could say I know a lot about Morgan Freeman.
He's an actor, he's this guy. I can state fact after fact after fact about Morgan Freeman, yet I have never met the guy.
I couldn't say who Morgan Freeman. Freeman, yeah. Is as a person, as a friend.
And Jesus was the same way, where I knew lots about him, but I still didn't know Him.
Now when I came into this uncomfortable situation in Headwaters, I continued to know him, I walked with him.
And this is where I began to experience the contentment in which Paul Describes in Philippians 4.
Now by no means did I have everything together, by no means do I now.
Yet I felt a peace rooted in Christ.
I began leaning on Jesus daily when I was successful in whatever I was doing that day, as well as when I was unsuccessful, I brought my struggles and circumstances before him and thus found contentment in Him.
This discontent that I had lived with had left and in its place was Christ, was Jesus.
Christ is the replacement for discontent not comfortable.
Christ is the replacement for discontent not comfort.
I'm sure some of you have heard the phrase that we have a God shaped hole in our heart that described my experience quite well.
And it was this phrase which came to me as I was preparing the sermon and I realized that I didn't know where it came from.
I'd heard it again and again, but who said it?
So I kind of dove into where this came from.
And apparently this idea of a God shaped hole was taken from a quote in the form of a question posed by the 17th century French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal.
Now listen to this.
What is it then that this desire and this inability proclaim to us that there was once in man a true happiness of which there now remained to him only the mark and an empty trace which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking things absent, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present.
But these are all inadequate because the infinite abyss, the infinite abyss inside of us can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only God himself.
Pascal describes an ache for the joy and communion with God. We are created for an infinite abyss which we try unsuccessfully to fill with the things around us.
He saw in his life the ineffectiveness of the worldly things to be the source of contentment.
He was highly successful in the world of mathematics, laying the foundation for the area of probability, as well as inventing instruments such as the syringe or the hydraulic press.
But if success and intellect, which Pascal certainly had, could not satisfy the soul, what could?
And if they could satisfy his soul, surely Pascal should have been satisfied.
But even he felt that there was something missing in life.
And he grew up in the Catholic Church. He knew about Jesus.
And maybe many of us feel that same way, an ache or a longing for something more, something that is beyond what we already have.
But why does this abyss exist?
Why can't we just be full and be content in that fullness?
Well, we were made for communion with our Creator.
The human soul was made for God.
And without him, something in us remains unsatisfied.
Sin disrupted the relationship between us and God, causing a rift between us.
We naturally try to fill this hole, to try to replace the hole that God left with things of this world.
Yet none of these created things can satisfy the place of the Creator in our souls.
Christ came to bridge that gap, reconciling us to God so that our restless souls could finally rest in Him.
Pascal knew about God intellectually, but Christ had not yet become deeply personal to him.
However, one night in November 1954, Pascal was struck by a vision.
Christ, something that he named His Night of Fire.
This vision transformed him from a nominal Catholic.
Just everyday, Joe Schmo would say he knew Jesus to someone who took joy in the Lord.
He even I find this part funny. That piece of paper up there is his recount of his night of fire.
He had this vision right around midnight. And afterwards he wrote it down.
And then he keeps the sheet of paper. He had it sewn into his jacket so that he could keep it on him always.
This encounter, this beautiful, encompassing encounter with Christ.
I'm going to read a part of Pascal's experience from that night.
And it begins like fire.
God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and of the learned.
Certitude, certitude, feeling, joy, peace.
God of Jesus Christ, my God.
And your God.
Your God will be my. My God.
God has become known personally.
He says, my God, and he's referencing the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, not just of people who have spoken about God, but of God himself.
That is what we seek. That is who we seek.
Not intellectual knowledge, but knowing Christ intimately.
He goes on, and this is a beautiful piece. I would encourage you to read it on your own time.
Pascal's Night of Fire. And this is how he ends.
Let me never Be separated from him.
He is only kept securely by the ways taught in the Gospel.
Renunciation, total and sweet.
Complete submission to Jesus Christ and to my director, eternally in joy for a day's exercise on the earth.
May I not forget your words.
Amen.
Notice what overwhelms Pascal here.
It's not success, it's not comfort, it's not achievement, but it is Christ himself.
Complete submission, not to some faraway entity, but to the living Christ who draws near to us.
Pascal begins to glimpse what Paul calls the secret of being content in any and every situation.
That is Jesus, who is the one who brings contentment.
Paul learned how to be content in many ways.
This contentment can be compared to patience in the sense that often, like I'm sure you guys have heard this or even done this yourselves, you've prayed for patience.
God, give me patience.
This person is testing me. The situation is testing me. God give me patience.
And as well, when you ask for patience, what does God do?
He puts you in a situation that you must be patient.
He puts people who test you, who test your patience in your life.
And through these, you can learn patience.
And this is how I mean contentedness is like patience.
It is learned.
It must be practiced.
Contentment is often learned in situations and in circumstances where contentment would not naturally exist.
Contentment is formed in seasons of our lives where we are forced to depend more deeply on Christ.
Paul learned this through uncomfortable situations resting in Christ to know what truly matters.
When Paul says that I have learned the secret to being content in any and every situation, we must remember what his circumstances really were.
In Second Corinthians, the apostle Paul lists many ways that he has been uncomfortable.
Now I use that word lightly, as Paul was not merely inconvenienced, he suffered deeply.
He was imprisoned repeatedly.
He was flogged, beaten with rods.
He was shipwrecked and exposed to death again and again, time after time.
He was hungry, he was sleepless, he was cold and constantly under pressure.
He spent 24 hours at sea after a shipwreck.
This is not a man speaking about contentment from comfort.
Paul had every earthly reason to be bitter, but he wasn't.
How can someone who has suffered so much and so deeply still pursue Christ so passionately?
How can one who has suffered so much still be content?
And perhaps an even harder question, how can Paul suffer so much and still be content, while many who suffer far less remain deeply discontent?
That's because Paul discovered something that the world cannot offer.
Contentment rooted not in circumstances, but in Christ.
That is what Paul is talking about in Philippians 4.
He is discovered a contentment that circumstances cannot touch.
We are made for God because sin disrupted our communion with Him.
The soul remains restless when it is apart from Him.
The created things of this world cannot quench this restlessness.
Only the Creator can fill what is incomplete without him and thus bring contentment.
And that raises the question, where am I actually looking for contentment?
Paul's answer is not that his circumstances improved.
If anything, they got worse.
His answer, however, is that Christ is enough.
Christ is enough.
That is what he means when he says, I can do all things through him who gives me strength.
He's not talking about achieving everything he wants.
He is talking about enduring everything he faces without losing Christ.
So as I look back on my own life, I realized I was searching for something I couldn't quite name.
I was comfortable.
I had good things around me, yet I still did not feel content.
The things that I tried to fill that hole with were things that would not last.
Maybe that is where some of you are too.
Pascal understood that feeling deeply.
He called it an infinite of abyss.
Infinite isn't just big.
It does not end this sense that there is something inside of us that is reaching, searching, longing for more than what this world can offer.
Even with all his intellect and accomplishments, he. He still had a sense of unfulfillment, of discontent, until he encountered Christ.
And Christ was no longer an idea to study, but he was a savior to know.
And we remember that. Paul didn't write about contentment from a place of peace.
He wrote it from prisons, from shipwrecks, from hunger, from suffering, from pressure on every side.
And yet he still says, I have learned the secret to contentment in any and in every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want, because Christ is enough.
Paul is not saying that life will be easy when he says, I can do all things through him who gives me strength.
But he is saying that Christ is enough no matter what comes.
And I'm sure that Paul, when he wrote this statement that he didn't know every situation he would be in.
But that didn't matter to him because he knew that there was no situation here on earth that could outweigh the contentment that he had that he has in Christ.
I'm going to go back just for a second to Psalm 131, which was read to us earlier.
And that is, my heart is not proud, Lord. My eyes are not haughty.
I do not concern myself with great matters. Or things too wonderful to me.
But I have calmed and quieted myself.
I am like a weaned child with its mother.
Like a weaned child, I am content.
Israel, put your hope in the Lord, both now and forevermore.
Like a weaned child, probably falling half asleep, knowing that it is in a safe place, it has everything it could ever want in that moment.
It is content.
Like that child.
Each time we come to Christ, we will be content.
And we should stay with Christ so we can keep this contentness, contentment throughout our life, no matter the situation.
Because Christ is enough.
The invitation today is simple.
It's not to try harder.
It's not to seek the next bigger job or accomplishment that will make us feel complete, but it is to return to Christ, to let him be enough.
Let us discover that contentment is not something to be gleaned from this world, but from Christ alone.
So let me end on this a simple question that I hope you will take with you this week.
Simple, but not necessarily easy.
Where have I been trying to find what only Christ can give?
Where have I been trying to find what only Christ can give?
Where have I been trying to fill this infinite abyss with things that cannot fill it?
I hope you take this and find an answer this week.
And if it is not Christ, that it may be Christ.
Let us pray.
Lord, we thank you for our presence, for creating us to be in constant connection with you.
We thank you for your blessings.
Lord. We repent of the times when we have turned away from you.
But Lord, we come humbly back.
You know us intimately and you desire us to know you. Likewise, let us rest in you, the only one who can bring true contentment, no matter the situation that we may find ourselves in in poverty, hunger, struggle.
Let us remember you, Jesus. You are the only thing that can satisfy in your blessings. We remember you in our hardships. We remember you.
Lord, I pray for those of us who do feel discontent.
Let us come to you and experience you so that we may know who you are and know you personally.
You are our God, our Savior, the One who calls us near to you.
You are our source of contentment.
We rest in you, Christ Jesus, in your name.
Amen.
[00:34:46] Speaker A: Thanks for listening in today.
We hope you feel encouraged and challenged.
If you know someone who would benefit from what you have heard today, please share this podcast.
For more information or if you have questions, you can connect with us through our website, Erickson Covenant ca.
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