Contentment in Waiting

I am so glad to finally be posting this! It is a post that I have been working on and thinking about for quite sometime now. I pray that it may encourage and/or bless some of you that read it.

"Now godliness with contentment is great gain." -1 Timothy 6:6

When looking at the context in which the above verse is set, you will know that "contentment" in that verse is being used in regards to being content when it comes to riches or wanting more. However, I want to use that verse in regards to having contentment in waiting. Not having contentment in such things as money, clothes, books, etc., but rather the contentment that we, as Christians, need to find in waiting. Finding contentment in waiting has been one very hard and very long lesson for me to learn (and I am not done learning it). By God's grace, I have been able to be more content this past year of my life than I ever have been before. Yet there is still a restless feeling that I have about me; a longing and a want to do what God has been calling me to do for years: foreign missions. For well around 6 years now, I have felt the call to be a foreign missionary, and I have always taken that call very seriously. As the years have gone by, and as my desire for the mission field has grown, the harder and harder it has been for me to remain content in waiting. I always felt that I needed to go and be a missionary right then, and if I couldn't, then everything else was just miserable for me. That was literally what it was like at times. I let my discontentment in waiting in that area affect almost every single area of my life. That is not how a child of God should handle discontentment; a child of God should find and strive for contentment in Him. And through Him, we should be content in every area of our life, because He put us there. See, I was so focused on going and being that missionary; fulfilling that calling, that I was letting things go by in my life that I should have been cherishing and finding contentment in. Again, that is not how a child of God should have handled discontentment.

The calling that God has given us (whether that be a calling to the mission field, a calling to be a wife/husband, or a calling to be both, etc.) is a wonderful thing, and we should have a great passion and longing to pursue it and do what He has called each one of us to do in life. But it seems that too many of us (myself included) are often times so easily brought to discontentment when we are not able to pursue our God-given calling quick enough. One thought that I've always had in regards to that was that it's not wrong for me, in any way, to be discontent in not being able to pursue the calling that God gave me. My discontentment in wanting to pursue my calling was not selfish; I wanted to do it because I love my God and I wanted to give Him the glory through the fulfilling of my calling. I want others to know and love Him and give Him the glory that He so undoubtedly deserves! While there is nothing wrong with that pure desire, there is something wrong with why I was discontent. I was failing to look at the bigger picture in regards to that. Yes, my motives were good, but the results were not. Being discontent with having to wait to fulfill the calling God gave was not glorifying to Him. I'm pretty sure there's a reason why I haven't set one foot on a foreign mission field by now. Do I want it? Absolutely. Actually, not to sound too extreme, but my heart is not here; it is in whichever country God places me in. I have such a passion and such a longing for that foreign mission field that I undoubtedly know God has called me to, but God has not blessed me with the fulfilling of my calling as of yet. I handled that with immersing myself in discontentment. What does that say about what I think about God's sovereignty, and about His perfect timing? Is our God not all-sovereign? Does He not have perfect timing for everything? Will He not bless each one of us with the fulfilling of our calling in His own perfect way, and in His own perfect timing? You bet He will! I have been able to find so much contentment in just asking myself those questions and knowing Who my God is and that He knows what is best for me. In that I have found contentment. Trusting in the fact that our all-sovereign God has a reason (and a very good reason) why we must wait, has given me much contentment, and in doing so, handling it in such a way that glorifies Him.

There's yet another valid question to ask ourselves in regards to this, though: what can we be doing with our time now, while we're waiting, to help prepare ourselves to fulfill our God-given calling? I can't fully explain to all of you that might be reading this how God has so greatly used that one, simple question to help me. He has used it so much to help me in regards to finding contentment in every day life while I'm waiting. All I have to do is look around me and see the things and people that God has placed in my life to prepare me for the fulfilling of the calling that He has given me. I've just had to look. That's it. I've just had to look and see with the eyes of someone fully content in Him and His timing for everything. Perhaps another thing that has made me wake up to the horridness of discontentment is the fact that time flies by. Our lives on this earth are very short. We shouldn't be spending it in discontentment in waiting for something; we should take the time while we're waiting and use it; make the absolute most of it for God's glory. When the time comes for us to really fulfill the calling that God has placed on each one of our hearts, we will be able to take what we learned from the time we waited and apply it to our calling. I will never know for sure how exactly God plans to use all of the things in my life now, during this time while I'm waiting, for when I am serving Him on the mission field. I can take a few guesses, but only He really knows, and I do know one thing for certain: He will use them.

Let us all have a zeal and a passion towards doing and fulfilling what God has called us to do in life; but let us also be content in waiting for it to come; content in knowing that God will make it come when He wills it to. And while we're waiting, let us all gain from what we have now; let us not overlook it in discontentment, but let us all learn from and truly cherish all of those simple day-to-day things with the knowledge that God will use them for His glory and our good. Let us be fully content in Him.