Live Free with Josh Howerton - The Secret Of Contentment | Ep. 66 | Monday May 8, 2023

Episode Date: May 8, 2023

The blessings and gifts of God are abundant, but many of us simply don’t notice all the ways God is caring for us. How would your perspective change if you made a list of all your blessings? Tune in to today’s episode as Pastor Mike wraps up his series in Philippians with a powerful teaching on contentment. For more information, visit lakepointe.church/dailydrive

Thanks for tuning in to today's Daily Drive with Lake Point Church, a daily dose of God's Word for your morning drive. When the word, not the world, becomes the majority of your week, your life will start to change. For that reason, our prayer is that God will speak to you through today's devotional. For more digital content to feed your faith, visit lakepoint.comit.church slash daily drive. And now let's dive in to today's devotional. Hey, what's up, everybody? Hope you're having a great day. Thanks for joining us today

as we spend a few minutes getting to know God a little better. Man, I'm grateful for the faith journey that you're on. Some of us have been walking with God for a long time, some of us just getting started. Super grateful for all of you and just know that God's walking with you

no matter what mile marker you might be at these days. And we've just been walking through a little book called Philippians, and we are at the very end today in chapter four. So if it got a Bible, you got an app, you can follow along. Now, I want to remind you, this is a letter.

written by a guy named Paul, and he's writing from prison. This guy was chosen by God to spread the good news of Jesus Christ around the known world, and as a result, he gets locked up for unjustly for simply his faith in Jesus Christ. And it's an amazing letter full of joy and hope and humility and gratitude and peace and challenge and encouragement and comfort. At the very close of the letter, you can once again see how personally he is with these people and how much he loves them. He once again thanks them for their concern, their prior support,

and you can read all that on your own. It's really cool. It really makes it come alive as a letter. But I want to focus today on one of the richest pastures of Scripture in the Bible. This is what Paul writes today. He says, I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation,

whether it's with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little, for I can do everything through Christ who gives me strength. man I want to learn that too don't you I want to learn how to be content with whatever I have you ought to read those verses again today and go back and circle or highlight any key words or thoughts probably be different for all of us but the key word that jumped out to me at least is that word I have learned I have learned how to be content I have learned the secret of living in every situation some of you heard me say this before but how do you learn anything You practice, right?

It is like the old story about the guy in New York City who stops a guy on the street and says, excuse me, sir, how do you get to Carnegie Hall? The old guy says, practice, practice, practice. Same guy stops another person in Nashville, Tennessee. Hey, excuse me, how do you get to the Grand Ole Opry? Learn three chords and sing through your nose. Sorry for all you country music fans, of which I am a big one. But you see a guy like Steph Curry shoot a basketball, and you think,

you know what, he must practice. You watch someone like a Jimmy Hendricks or Eric Clapton or Chris Stapleton or Keith Urban or Brad Paisley play guitar and you go, they must practice. You listen to a guy like me, do a podcast, and you think, that dude needs to practice. But you learn anything by practicing. And I'm starting to figure out that you learn contentment by practicing gratitude. I mean, neuroscience shows that gratitude releases toxic emotions. It lowers your blood pressure. It increases your lung function.

Can reduce inflammation at a cellular level? I mean, a ton of health benefits. And the research over the years have established the fact that practicing gratitude significantly reduces symptoms of depression and anxiety at the neurochemical level in the brain. In other words, scientific research concludes, as Thanksgiving goes up, anxiety goes down. It goes back to what we talked about just a few episodes ago,

making a list of things you're grateful for. We got a lot of kids. Little kids run around our house, and some of them are learning to count. It's so cute. You know, one, two, seven, three, eight, one, you know, or who knows no, straight. Well, the first thing kids learn how to do is how to count.

I mean, every band will tell you. Counting really matters. When you're a musician and you stop counting, you're totally lost. In fact, if one person in the band stops counting, the whole band is affected, and the song loses its rhythm and its focus and its harmony. And when you and I fail to keep counting our blessings,

man, our life loses the song. So I'm learning that if you want to discover or rediscover the rhythms of grace and joy and peace and contentment, start counting the gifts that God has given you. Write them down, like, whatever comes to your mind. Just get a piece of paper or laptop or whatever, just write down good things like pepperoni, puppies, putting your underwear on, straight out of the dryer. Whatever pops your mind, just start counting them up. We have a little needlepoint piece of art in our kitchen that says contentment is not the achievement of all that we want, is the realization of all that we already have.

So Paul is saying, listen, I have learned. I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. I know how to live on almost nothing and everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether so the full stomach or empty with plenty or little, for I can do everything through Christ who gives me strength. Remember back in chapter 3 he said his goal in life? Was the know Christ? And gang, as you get to know him, you know that you can trust him. And you know that he is enough.

And when you know you have enough, you're content. I can do all things because of the one that I'm getting to know. Hey, we're going to jump into something brand new next time. But I hope you'll go back today and just read this letter. in its entirety. It won't take you more than 15 minutes. But I'm praying you'll read it like a letter that was written not to a group of people in first century Philippi, but to you. Because it was. And I pray that you will find God speaking personally and tenderly to you, and it would fill your heart with hope and with joy. See you next time. Thanks for tuning in today. For more biblical teaching

and worship, join us for our church online live weekend services on Saturday. at 6 p.m. and Sundays at 9.30 and 11 a.m. Central Standard Time. Also, if this podcast was helpful to you, would you be sure to rate, review, and share this podcast to help get the word out? For more information about all digital ministries of Lake Point, visit lakepoint.compt.combe.combe.combe.