Cultivating Contentment in Everyday Life

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Ann Voskamp
So, so, so good to be in a room full of sisters. Come on in, grab a seat, scooch in close. Okay, can I just start by like asking you all just like a quick question, and you have to be, you get to be honest, and nobody’s, nobody’s watching. Okay, okay, maybe there are some people watching. Hi folks on the live stream, we’re so glad you’re with us. Okay, it’s still a safe place for you to be honest with a question. When you stood in front of the bathroom mirror this morning, were you content with what looked back at you? I hear someone laughing. There’s my people. Confession, I was not. What leads me to wondering, who of us really deeply in our bones, are actually content in our everyday lives? Aren’t we all kind of living in this whirly gig kind of world that is always trying to wring out more content out of every last moment. YouTube content creators, TikTok content creators, Instagram content creators, but who finds themselves wildly wholly content in the one who is the creator. Amen. Maybe, maybe we keep producing content and consuming content, and still wondering why we are not content. Maybe we have become a culture drowning in content and starving for contentment, who is just bone weary of a world forever hunting for more shareable, more likable content, and is ready instead to live deeply content in the one who is their first love. Any takers in the room? There’s a few of us. Welcome. Okay. Full confession. When my eyes meet my eyes in the bathroom mirror. Oh, I can be about as far from content as a girl can get. I’m just going to be honest with you, what is a plain old farm girl supposed to do? I don’t even get a fanciful e at the end of a m, and in this forehead, this forehead is never seeing botox. Okay, so the strategy is bangs and bangs and more bangs, right? But I decided it was finally time to deal with a slightly straggling unibrow situation happening. So, in your honor, for the very first time ever I went to a young girl from church and asked her to like take care, wax a few hairs here, and the wax broke my face out. Yes, I get the irony content right in a red rash of such biblical proportions, I would totally forgive you for assuming it was kind of like a 10th plague, and frankly, I would have preferred fogs to the red rash that was happening on my forehead, except the bumps were more like connect the dots, spelling out one word for my forehead of discontent, repent. So, here I am, your humbled walking billboard, pointing to the one thing maybe all of us need to do to repent and come be deeply content, you know. We all talk about discontent like it’s a disease that of this particular moment that somehow crawled out of our phones, but the truth is, discontent didn’t crawl out of our phones, it crawled out of the Garden of Eden. Lack of real soul satisfying contentment is the oldest ache there is, beginning right there before a tree in the garden, and a piece of fruit, and a slithering snake, and there is old. King Solomon, who had it all in excess, every pleasure, every fortune, everything in the world that this world swears will bring contentment. King Solomon ran the whole experiment for us with an unlimited budget, and he came back to report it is all all vapor. Having everything in this world that this world has to offer will never be enough to fill the infinite hole in our hearts. The man who had everything is the one who picked up his pen and wrote the truth over all our secretly discontented souls. Ecclesiastes one eight, all things are wearisome. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear, it’s full of hearing. These human eyes always scanning our ordinary days, looking for enough, always struggling to look around and smile with satisfied contentment, looking at the laundry, teetering at an angle on a bedroom chair that would make the Tower of Pisses say okay, now you’re just showing off.

Ann Voskamp
Looking at your to-do list that’s kind of like a receipt from Target where you went in to buy four things and somehow it just keeps that receipt unspooling across the parking lot over and over again every morning, looking into your bathroom mirror that looks like someone in your household does not so much brush their teeth as load their toothbrush and sneeze with the velocity of a horse. Can I get an amen? Maybe it’s just my bathroom. And do you look at that one face staring back every morning from your bathroom mirror, your eyes looking deep into the eyes looking back at you, and are your eyes really full of genuine contentment because they know the one who is love, who made that face, calls you a masterpiece, his beloved, his delight. King Solomon rightly diagnosed our disease of discontent, and 1000 years later Augustine looked to Jesus and named the cure, quote, You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until we rest in you, because whatever finite content we look on will never fill the largest hole in the whole universe, that empty space in our own hearts, which is made for an infinite God to fill. We were made for the creator, so no earthly amount of content will ever make us content. So, will you turn your eyes with me to Him, our beloved Creator, and open His word to Psalm 73 Psalm 73 a psalm of Asaph, and it reads, written by Asaph, who says, Truly, God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. Verse two of Psalm 73 but as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped, for I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked, for they have no pangs until death. Their bodies are fat and sleek. They’re not in trouble as others are. They’re not stricken like the rest of mankind. You, me, we can be asap. Love, and know God is good to you. God is good to us. You can point to the cross as the place you were lifted off the enemy’s hook for everything you ever did that’s fallen short, and you can know that our only forever good is only God, amen. But you too, you too can nearly miss the very point that changes everything when you’re turned looking at the pixels and points on screens at all their lives glowing there on social media streams, all the people in renovated kitchens and mud rooms that have never seen a speck of dirt in all their gleaming lives. Exactly, when you’re looking at all their effortless bodies, the bodies that conceive so easily, the bodies that never carry the weight of real pain, like you and your people have known their close-knit families, their blissful marriages, or relationships that somehow feeling you leave you feeling lonely and somehow unseen, and here’s the thing, we get to turn and see, because it’s the real root underneath of our discontent and envy, it’s never really about them or about her, her marriage, her seemingly easy life. Listen to Asaph in Psalm 73 verse 1713, Verse 13 reads, all in vain have I kept my heart clean. See, that’s what he’s saying. That’s not just envy talking, that is entitlement talking, because here is the thing to see, envy is never really about anyone else’s good life. Envy really is a quarrel with God about your life underneath, I just want what she has is something far more like God, you owe me, you’re not paying, that’s what Asaph says in verse 13, all in vain have I kept my heart clean, the real ache is isn’t I want what she has. It’s God, I did my part. See, my clean heart, you’re not paying me what I think I’m owed. What others’ lives look like isn’t even really Asaph’s problem. Envy is just a symptom, the real sin disease is a quarrel with God over God’s proportioning of all the things, it’s not so much the heart in our lives that take us down, not the unexpected, not the slice that someone else got, it’s the entitlement that whispers, weren’t we promised easy, or at least easier than this.

Ann Voskamp
See what Asaph says back in verse 33 For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw, turn your eyes, that’s the thing, that’s the thing. Sisters, seeing is no small thing. What you keep looking at is what you end up longing for, the heart goes where the eyes have already gone, which is why C.S. Lewis says in The Great Divorce, looking comes first. That’s why Jesus points it out to us, the eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. See what Asaph is saying here. Verse two, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped. How you keep seeing is how your feet can slip. Your feet can slip in the walk of faith. If you let your eyes keep slipping a peek at how flawed. Listen, I’m blemished. Her family and her life, and yeah, maybe even her face looks, you know, what the number one song on country radio is right now? No country music. Last week it reached 31 point 9 million people, and here’s what 31 point 9 million people were crooning along to with Ella Langley, who has a better set of bangs. I don’t mean to sound jealous, and I’m not going to sing it for you, because that’s not why you’re here. I don’t mean to sound jealous, but what could I do, because I just want to be her so bad, it hurts so bad. I just want to be her. That’s more than a memorable ditty, it’s more like a soul diagnosis for all of us. 31 million people this week coming asaps verse three without even really knowing it. I was envious when I saw we just said it to a melody and we’re all crooning along with it on the radio. Can I ask you really quietly, I Who do you want to be so bad that it kind of hurts so bad? This is a breakout session, and this is where part of the breakout session where we get to break out our pens. If you haven’t already done so, can you just take that pen of yours, and can you write it down for me? I just want to be her so bad. You’ve written that down, you do not have to write her name down. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you may already know what her name is, so you’ve written down, I just want to be her so bad. Write it down, we’re just going to leave it there. We’re going to come back to it, and you’re going to want to written it down, because it’s going to make a lot of sense at the end. I just want to be her so bad. You don’t write down her name, you already know her name, and now see, see what does Asaph do. How does he reground those slipping feet of his first? He tries to think his way out of it. See what it says in verse 16 of Psalm 73 When I thought, how to understand this, it was a wearisome task. He reasons, he’s striving, and all that just wears him right out. Can anybody relate? A few of us. And then, then you see what happens. Drop down from verse 16 to verse 17. Will you read it with me until I went into the sanctuary of God. One word until contentment doesn’t come from changing your life, it comes from how you change where you turn your eyes. What does ASAP do? Just come into the presence of God and see Him. You don’t have to figure out all the things to reason your way in. You don’t have to fix yourself up first, or polish yourself up, or pull yourself up by your bootstraps to come in. You just get to come in into the smiling presence of God, who is love. Just that one verse, that one word in verse 17, until, until you simply come into the sanctuary of God, nothing changes the way you’re seeing your life until you come in and make God the content of your looking, what in this fleeting, vaporous world could ever make your heart content? Until we cease all the striving and simply come in and open our honest hearts to God.

Ann Voskamp
Only in the overcoming presence of God is there contentment for the overwhelm in the human heart, and there in the sanctuary. You before the smiling face of God, the presence of your loving Abba Father. Something shifts, and all of us envious, slipping, nearly stumbling Asaph souls sit with one of the most staggering confessions in all of scripture, Psalms 73 verses 21 to 23 When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant. Next verse gets me every time. I was like a beast toward you. Nevertheless, I am continually with you. You hold my right hand. Nevertheless, you see what’s happening here. Asa first repents. He doesn’t just see differently. He first opens up his heart honestly and confesses to God his realest, truest self that he sees his own entitlement. I was like a beast towards you, God. Look, the heart first has to gently open up and confess all our embittered complaints against God before any embodied contentment in God can fill our hearts, and yet verse 23 Nevertheless, though I have been a beast toward you, God, never bless, I am still beloved by you, God. How many of us, that is our testimony right there. Turn your eyes and see the face of the only one who has ever loved us to death at the cross of Calvary, and back to the realist life with a patient, tender, sacrificial love beyond comprehension. The person, the person, the one who confesses he, she has been a beast towards God, turns his eyes and looks full into his face and says, “What does it say in that verse? You hold my right hand. We have been a beast to him. Nevertheless, he holds our right hand. You don’t keep your grip on God. It’s God who’s keeping his grip on you that changes everything. The whole time our eyes were slipping sideways at everyone else’s curated life, growing the secret discontent and embitteredness, embitterment with God. God never once lets go of your hand, your heart, your life, your future, you and It, how can our hearts’ affections not be ignited with a deeper love for the one who holding us with love, even while we were holding on to all kinds of bitterness, and then Asaph asked the question, that is the beating heart of the whole psalm, and this whole room, Psalm 73 verse 25 But read the text together. Whom have I in heaven but you, and there is nothing on earth that I desire, besides you, my flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. My flesh and my heart may fail. The Hebrew word here for fail is kala, k a l a h, and it means to be spent, consumed, used up, and brought to an end. And Asof doesn’t say when your heart fails, doesn’t say if your heart will fail, he says when your heart will fail, when you fall short and break your own heart with your own sin again and again and again and When your heart fails because someone you love deeply fails you precisely at the point of your failure, what do you get? You get God as your portion, I don’t know about you, but doesn’t that give you great comfort? God isn’t your portion only when your heart is strong. God is your portion exactly when your failing heart is aching with pain, precisely at the point of your failure, God is your portion. God is our portion, the strength of our heart. In Hebrew, the word for strength is tour, t s u r, meaning rock boulder cliff a massive immovable foundation. When my actual heart is crumbling, there is a rock underneath it that does not crumble, that will not crumble, that can never crumble. When God is both your portion and your rock, the completely unshakable thing and the completely satisfying thing. How can we not begin to be completely content, and that word portion, you can underline that one, that word portion in Hebrew is Shelek, C H E L E Q, and this word not only holds a whole story, it holds all of us, God.

Ann Voskamp
When He was bringing His people out of bondage from Egypt and into bonding with Him in the Promised Land, He gives each tribe a portion of land, a shellac, Judah’s portion here, Benjamin’s portion there the Levites, the ones who served in God’s presence, they did not get a shellac, a portion of land, the ones who served in God’s presence. Why not? God says in Numbers 18, I am your portion, I am your inheritance. Every other tribe got a slice of land, the Levites got the whole of the Lord, everyone else got a piece of the pie, but the Levites got something that was never a piece at all. They got all of God. We get a shellac, we get all of God. We’re pretty calm bunch that should have us just jumping up and down in the aisles here. I mean, seriously, we get all of God. God is your portion. Can I, can I confess something to you about how my own eyes can lie, and I know, like, you all made really good life decisions by being in this room, because this table looks like we’re about to have a cooking show, doesn’t it? But you’re really blessed. There’s a reason why I have never had a cooking show, but to confess to you that my eyes can see my life as a pie, and some days it looks like everyone else is getting sweeter pieces of the pie, and I just, I just want to be her, I want to be her, that it hurt so bad. And then there are other days where my pie, it’s got a slice of loss, and, and, and then there’s this. Messy relationship, and and I’m a slice for family I’m worried sick about, and a slice for anxiety over all the unknown, and and a slice for for my daughter with half of a heart, who will someday need a heart transplant, Lord willing, and maybe a slice for an unspoken, broken, that I don’t even know how to put into words and tell anybody about, and then, and then maybe just over here, there’s just this teeny tiny little slice, and, and here is God, God is my portion, and how can you be content when it feels like God is the smallest portion in a full pie? When we think God is just one slice among many, we take on this exhausting fuel tile fleshy work of trying to somehow make God’s portion be bigger in our pie full of pain, so then I preach gospel back to my soul. There’s no such thing as a small amount of God, even what seems like the smallest slice, the smallest taste of what we see, that just seems like a sliver of God, is still the whole indivisible, infinite, undivided God, the lying eye can see just this thin slice. Eyes of faith, though, know any portion of God is the whole feast. But can I confess to you, this sliced pie way of seeing still assumes a pious scarcity, and our God is competing for a bigger piece in our pie, and that has never been the gospel. Here is the gospel good news. The gospel good news is God is your whole portion, and God is not some slice of any pie. When you come into the sanctuary and say God is my portion, you get to stop playing the slice of pie game. Full stop. You get to turn your eyes and see God is not a piece of anything. God is the one in whom all the other pieces exist. Turn your eyes and see God. God is not competing for a piece of your life. He came to be the piece of your life. See, see God. God, God is not a pie at all. God is not in your pie at all. Your whole pie is in God. God is your portion, and God is not in your pie at all. Your whole pie is in God. Acts 1728 says we live and move and have our being in what? Oh, come on. Gospel Coalition sisters know this one in Him, Colossians 117 in Him all things hold together. Reformed theologian Herman Babnick quote says, God is not composed of parts, but is a simple, indivisible whole.

Ann Voskamp
Our entire lives, every slice, the sweetest ones and the most painful ones, the battered and bruised plans, the diagnosis and the prognosis, the unspoken broken. You can’t put words around every iota of your whole pie is a held thing held in the unshakable hands of God, who is your portion, you we get to turn our eyes and see God is not in your pie at all. Your whole pie is in God, and that is not a mere slice of comfort. It’s the realest, wholeest comfort our souls need. He is what your strength and your portion. He is the rock underneath the pie. He is holding the whole thing unshakable. This is where we get to turn our eyes and see, and not miss. It’s not the size of your slice of life that makes you content. It’s only the content of your portion. That can make you content, and who is your portion? God is your portion. It’s not the content of your bank account, the content of your health record, not the content of your family story. No content in your life gets to control how content you are in your heart, only the content of your portion can, but but I’m with you, and I can confess, I forget that God is the, my, is my portion, that Christ in you, dwelling in you, moved right into you, so you are no longer in you alone. That Jesus is with you, and in you, and within you, that you have a ground of being now, because He’s in you, so your lonely, discontented restlessness can rest in the ground of Jesus. I can forget this. You can believe your whole pie is held in the hands of God, and still wake up Tuesday morning with disordered seeing, counting your painful slices, slipping sidewalk eyes at everybody else’s slice of the pie. And Paul said it himself, Philippians 411 What does he say? I have learned to be content. Learned that Greek word is amazon, e m a t h o n, means I was schooled in it. See, Paul wasn’t born content in Christ Paul trained, so how do you train yourself to be content in God as your whole glorious, beloved, soul-fulfilling portion, especially on the days when the content of your life feels like straight uphill. Okay, so story, this past week our son and his bride, they, they hauled themselves out of bed at 430 in the morning, 430 the hour, apparently designed just for newborn babies and very loud, belligerent roosters, and they scooped up one of our other sons at Bleary Eyed O’Clock, and they drove for about 25 minutes and parked at the bottom of that one of the steepest, most leg-crushing hills in our whole county, the kind you’d normally drive up in second gear, and kind of pray that you get to the top, if you know what I mean, and and they pulled on their running shoes, and they, they ran up that monster hill, and then, and then, yeah, stay with me, they went down, and they, they went back down the bottom, and they ran up that hill again, and I’m sorry, Why would you do that on purpose, like, like in the dark, because every runner knows if you train uphill, you’re ready on race day for whatever goes down. The Olympic champion, Frank Shorter, he said it best: quote, ‘Hills are speed work in disguise. You got some hills in front of you. So, later on, our farm stoops, I stopped her six foot five son, and I said, ‘Wait, you went to that steepest hill on purpose? And he grinned a mile wide. You just see Malachi smile, and he said, ‘Oh yeah, we had a hill party. We ran that hill so hard our hearts about exploded, and it felt so good. Mom, I stopped shaking my head and thought, huh, what if we daily threw our own hill party, because, because contentment is a muscle, and and the muscle begins with our eyes, the eye untrained, it slips downhill toward wanting to be her, toward everyone else’s slice of high, towards embitterment and entitlement against God, and you don’t accidentally turn your eyes to seeing your portion is the whole portion of very God, you have to keep asking the spirit to train your eyes to turn and see.

Ann Voskamp
So, here is the practice, the means of grace that the spirit moves through to keep turning our eyes to our portion. It was the wonder and glory of God Himself. It’s simple. Are you ready? You just start a text thread with a few friends, you can call it a gratitude party, you can call it potluck praise. I’m just going to call it a hill party, and it’s just a text a day to your hill party people, but here’s. Rule, every text has to be about turning your eyes to see him, so you don’t just text, ‘Hey, I’m thankful for coffee today. You text thankful for good coffee, and God felt near before my day even started, not just thankful for tonight’s pretty sunset, you text your hill party people thankful for the sky going gold, and God was so gracious today in the midst of a very hard day for your hill party people, you text more than what is your gift, you text who is your giver, that’s the rule of the Hill Party. How you see God in the sanctuary of the steep hills. So I grabbed my phone and I texted Hill party. I took our daughter to the cardiologist this week, half a heart, no cure, someday a transplant, but God thankful that right there in the waiting room, she and I prayed the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed, and His nearness was more than enough, not because the hill is gone, but because our eyes were trained to find him right there on the hill, a text hill party, our son and his wife, they lost everything in a house fire, no insurance, not getting it back, but God thankful that our son Levi keeps praying exactly what he prayed the day the house burnt down. Lord Aurora and I may not have really one iota left in this world, but you’ve given us the gift of seeing that all we have that will ever last forever is you, God. that that right there, our contentment can last through our worst nightmares, because the portion we have lasts forever, and it is God Himself. So, maybe now with your phone in hand, if you want to, and come on, you know you really want to go to your texts, okay? And just find one person there in your texts that you really love, and I just want you to go to the comment box, and you tap out. I’m not going to ask you to send anything, so don’t worry. This isn’t a trick. Just text, type it out: Hill party, remind me to tell you about us in a Hill party. And then you don’t have to send it right now, you can just let the word sit there, and the next time you come back to text that person that you love, you’ll see the word sitting there in the text box, and then you get to ask the Lord, “Lord, do you want me to send this text? Because if you do the practice of the hill party, here’s what the Holy Spirit works in your life: two things. Number one, when the hill comes, and the heart will fail, and hills will come. The unexpected diagnosis, the hard 3am call, the bend in the road you never saw coming. The spirit will have trained your eyes, ready to know where to look. Turn your eyes upon Jesus. And number two, on the days when you can’t see him at all when your hill feels too steep, and your heart and your feet feel exhausted and done. It’s your hill party people who can text you where they see him, and you don’t have to feel lonely out here all alone trying to turn your eyes to see God all by yourself. Your hill party people can help you tune your eyes and see him. Nobody, nobody has to see in the dark alone. A little girl, she kept waking up in the night, terrified of the dark, and the only thing that eased her overwhelm was climbing into her mama’s bed and curling in right next beside her, and her mama gently kissed her forehead, and she whispered, “Oh, honey, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Honestly, it’s just as dark in this room as it is in your room.

Ann Voskamp
And the little girl pulled in closer, and she whispered, “But but Mama, you’re in this dark room, you’re in this dark room. God, you see, there is nothing, nothing that can bring contentment. And to your hard hills to your dark rooms, like knowing your father is right there in the room with you. The overwhelm and the angst isn’t cured by the darkness going away, it’s changed simply by the deep contentment of your father being in the room with you. Nevertheless Nevertheless, I am continually with you. You hold my right hand. Contentment, contentment is not a bigger piece of the pie or a pie with fewer slices of pain. Contentment is not flattening out all of our hills into easy roads. Contentment is not figuring out how to live your whole life in brightly lit rooms with no darkened shadows. Contentment is this, though the room is dark and the road is uphill, though my flesh and my heart may fail. God is with me, Christ is in me, the Spirit is moving through me, and God is my portion and my strength forever, and that is more than enough. The last verse we see of Psalm 50, Psalm 73 we see Asaph in his own dark room, and he whispers the closing verse of the psalm, verse 28 But for me it is good to be near God. I have made the Lord my refuge. You and I are never owed a better slice because we were given the whole of God, and here only here the soul can find rest. Because it was never the content of your life that could make you content, it was always only ever him. So, you know, how you broke your pen out and you wrote down, I just want to be her so bad. Can you find that in your notes, and take that very same pen, and I want you to scratch that whole line out, and you get to boldly, with deep soul contentment, write one word: His. I’m His. his, because what cures discontent is not getting what she has. What cures discontent is turning to see the face of the one we already have, and who already has us. We are his, that’s the answer to all of our discontent. We don’t want to be her. You are his, and he is your portion forever. You are not alone. You belong. He is yours and you are his. He is the strength of your heart and your portion forever. So, soul, be content and let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Might we close in prayer. Abba Father, O Lord, we repent, we confess. There are secret places in our hearts that we wanted other stories, secret discontentment, secret entitlement, secret places in our heart where we thought we weren’t getting big enough slices of the pie. Forgive us, Lord, for seeing that we thought you were, you were a portion, but you were a small portion of a much bigger pie full of pain. We thank you, Lord, that because of Jesus, you are not just a small slice of a pie, you’re not any piece of the pie at all, but you came to give us peace. We just thank you, Lord, that God, you are not part of a pie, but our whole pie is in you, God, and you are the rock underneath the pie, the unshakable one. There are women sitting in this room who are carrying brutally hard stories, Lord, and they are struggling to find contentment in every day, and they’re trying to turn their eyes to see you, and it feels straight uphill, and the room feels dark. Thank you, Lord, that you brought them into this room, and that you see their heart, and you see their battle, and you see how steep and hard in. Klein is, and you meet every woman and tilt their chin towards you, and say, “Turn your eyes upon me, I’m with you in the dark room.

Ann Voskamp
We thank you, Lord, that you are our portion and our strength forever. We thank you, Lord, that you have loved us to death on that cross and loved us back to the realest life. We want to be a people not consuming content but being deeply content in our Creator, nevertheless, whom have I in heaven, but you, O Lord, our heart is sole content in you, and all God’s daughters said, Amen.