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You are listening to the Ron Dunn Podcast.
Ron Dunn is a well-known author and was one of the most in-demand preachers during the
latter part of the 20th century.
He led Bible studies all over the United States, Europe, and South Africa.
For more information and resources from Ron Dunn, please visit rondunn.com.
Philippians chapter 4. I'm going to read verses 10 through 13.
Philippians chapter 4, verses 10 through 13.
Paul writes to this church at Philippi, a church which he founded and a church that he pastored.
And it was one of his favorite, if not his favorite church.
This is an unusual epistle in that the word sin doesn't occur even once.
As a matter of fact, Paul has very little rebuke at all to give to anybody.
He mentions in chapter 4, verse 2,
Eodia and Syntyche,
to be in harmony,
a couple of ladies in that church
were sort of having a little problem,
but that's the only indication
of rebuke, really, in this letter.
It's a letter of rejoicing,
a letter of joy.
And yet, Paul writing from a prison in Rome. And he's writing for basically two primary
reasons. Number one, to assure the Philippians that he's doing okay. They've heard about his
imprisonment and some of the rough things that he's gone through, and they have expressed a
genuine concern. And so Paul is writing this letter to them to tell them, don't worry about
me. Everything's going great.
As a matter of fact, God is using everything in my circumstances to further the kingdom of God.
So he says, you don't need to worry.
You just rejoice.
The second reason he's writing is to thank them for a gift that they have sent.
And he mentions later on that again and again these people have sent him offerings.
And I told the 830 crowd this morning that that would make Philippi Paul's favorite church.
Of course, since long after he left, they continue to send love offerings to him.
I mean, you know, long after he's gone, they just kept on sending it.
So he's thanking them for the gift.
So we'll begin reading in verse 10.
But I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at last you have revived your concern for me.
Indeed, you were concerned before, but you lacked opportunity. But not that I speak from want.
Dominated by want is a real literal translation of that.
For I have learned in whatsoever state I am therewith to be content.
I know how to get along with humble means and I also know how to live in prosperity.
In any and every circumstance,
I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry,
both of having abundance and suffering need.
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
I've always been a sucker for any word, any book that had the word secret in the title.
There's something intriguing to us about the word secret. We love to be let in on secrets.
When I first started preaching, I'd go to the Baptist bookstore and I'd get all the books, had the word secret in the title.
Secret of prayer, the secret of power, the secret of preaching,
the secret of building a great church.
And I thought, well, all these fellows that did these things,
they didn't do them because they had ability or worked hard,
they just knew a little secret.
And if I have their secret, I can do what they did.
And so it doesn't just have to do with religious things, though.
It has to do with everything.
I have a book by the name The Secret of Power Golf.
And I have one on the secret of better tennis.
And I had one once on the secret of making money in the stock market.
And so there is just something intriguing to us about the word secret.
We like to be let in on secrets.
I would never, of course, buy one of those magazines,
the National Enquirer or the Star or the Globe, you know.
But I read mighty fast while I'm standing in the checkout line.
And sometimes it's just, oh, more than I can bear not to turn the page, you know.
But they always say, but I remember seeing one on the front page.
It said, the secret diet of doctors.
Like they knew something they weren't telling us, you know.
Then there was one, the beauty secrets of the stars, and on and on and on we can go.
There's something about the word secret that fascinates us and intrigues us.
And I admit it's been overused in the pulpit
and in a lot of other places.
And I hesitate to preach on the secret of anything.
But Paul himself uses the word here
so I feel somewhat justified in doing it.
Most of the time when I bought those books
on the secret of this and the secret of that
I was disappointed when I opened them and read them because there was no really secret. I was looking for some kind of
magical shazam that I could just say a word or say a phrase or go through a one, two, three step
formula and everything work out all right. It didn't work that way in golf either. There was
no secret. I still had to work and practice.
Not any way of secret in tennis either.
Just work and practice.
I already knew that.
And I'm convinced that if I were to ever buy a copy of the National Enquirer,
I'd be disappointed when I looked in on the other side
because it probably wouldn't have much of a secret there either.
But this is one secret that I believe is a genuine secret,
not a closed secret actually, an open secret that
Paul reveals to all of us. But what he is basically saying is, I have learned in whatsoever state I am
therewith to be content. When Nelson Rockefeller died a few years ago, there was an article in
New York Times written by a longtime friend of Rockefeller's.
The name of that article was A Sense of Incompleteness. And in the article, this friend
told about all the frustrations in the life of Nelson Rockefeller, that in spite of all the
wealth that he possessed and all the things that he achieved, President, Vice President of the United States,
Governor of the state of New York,
he said that in spite of all of that,
there was about Rockefeller's life
a sense of frustration and incompleteness.
And that when he died, he died an incomplete man.
I thought, what a sad thing to have to say about a person.
What a surprising thing to know.
I mean, I think $700 million would go a long way
making me complete, folks,
and just about giving me a lot of contentment.
And yet here's a man who possessed more wealth
than he could ever spend, all of these high honors,
and yet there was
in his life a sense of incompleteness, a frustration, of dissatisfaction. And then I thought of what
the Genesis record says about Abraham. He died full of years and satisfied. What a beautiful statement he died full of years and satisfied
and I don't know of any other word or phrase
that better describes
our contemporary society
than the word discontent
or dissatisfied
we are a generation of discontented people
we're living longer than we've ever lived before in modern history We are a generation of discontented people.
We're living longer than we've ever lived before in modern history.
The height of the Roman Empire, the average man lived to be 25 years of age.
Only four out of a hundred ever reached the age of 50.
We're living longer than man has ever lived in modern history,
and yet we're worrying more about it and seem to be enjoying it less. It seems that
longer life has done very little for us except give us that much more time to be miserable
and to be incomplete. We have more today than we've ever had before. As one man has said,
we have more to live with and less to live for than ever in the generations of men. There is a discontentedness,
a dissatisfaction across the face of our country.
And it wouldn't be so disturbing if it was only lost people,
but it is Christians also who can be described in that way. Paul says, I have learned in whatsoever state I am
to be content. Regardless of outward circumstances, regardless of external happenings, I may be in prison,
and I may be facing death.
And he says in this letter,
I don't know whether I'm going to live or die.
He says, I'm ready to go on,
but I think maybe the Lord needs me to stay here for you a little while longer.
But he said,
whether or not I'm going to live or die is beside the point.
But here is a man who is living in the very shadow of death.
He said, I don't know what's going to happen to me. My circumstances are such. He's had colleagues
who've turned against him. He's been unfairly accused and unjustly imprisoned. And there he is
in that dark, damp cell, unfairly accused, unfairly in prison. And yet he's saying,
I have learned in whatsoever state I am therewith to be content.
Now that's a secret worth learning, folks.
Wouldn't it be a secret worth learning to be able to say amid any kind of situation,
I've learned to be content.
Now I want to just say three very simple things to you this morning about this. Number one,
there is a secret of contentment. Paul says, I have learned the secret. I've learned to be
content. Now, first of all, we need to understand what he means by this word content. I have an
idea that some of you right now, you're thinking about contentment in the way that,
well, you've just finished a big meal
and you're laying back, you know,
and have your hands across your chest
and you give a big sigh and you doze a little bit.
You've eaten all you can eat and you're just,
well, you're just contented like a contented cow,
like Borden's, just content.
That's not what Paul is talking about at all.
That's not what he's talking about at all.
The word translated content means self-sufficient.
What Paul is saying is not that he's contented
in the sense that you and I think about contentment,
of comfortable and convenience and at ease. He's saying, I have learned to be self-sufficient.
More accurately, the word is self-contained. I've learned to be self-contained. What are you saying,
Paul? Well, I'm saying that I have discovered that within the confines of my own life, within the boundaries of my own self,
I have all that I need to make my life what it ought to be.
I am self-contained, self-sufficiency,
needing no outside assistance,
needing no outside assistance,
that everything I need to face this is right here within me.
This was a very colorful word. It was used originally back in the days of Paul. It was
used to refer to a city that did not need to import anything into its city limits in order
to survive. I remember when I was growing up in Arkansas
that in grade school the teacher told us something about Arkansas.
I thought at the time I was really impressed,
but now I've heard every state make that same claim,
so I guess it's just Chamber of Commerce talk.
But anyway, she said Arkansas was the only state in the Union
in which you could build a fence around it,
shut it off from the outside world,
and it could still survive because it had so many natural resources. And like I say, I think
every state now makes that claim. Of course, there have been times I thought Arkansas had built a
wall around it and cut it off from the outside world. Some of you may have seen that movie,
TV movie some years ago called Masada. The reason those few Jews at Masada were able to
hold out so long against the Roman army was because they were self-contained, you see.
They had their own water supply. They had their own food supply. And this was used of a city that
did not need to import anything. Now, in those days when you laid siege to a city, what you did
was surround that city. You just surrounded
that city and you cut off all their supply routes and you starved them out, you see. And eventually
they'd have to give up. Why? Because that city was not contented. It was not self-sufficient. It was
not self-contained. I read something interesting just a few weeks ago on the latest issue of the biblical
archaeologist concerning Jericho. You may know that for years there have been a lot of Bible
scholars who have said that the walls did not come tumbling down like the Bible says, that they
didn't march around it for seven days and on the seventh day it come tumbling down. They said that's
not the way it could have happened at all because Jericho was a heavily fortified city
and it must have taken months and months and months
to bring it down.
But they've changed their mind now.
And do you know why they've changed their mind?
Because in excavating the site at Jericho,
they have discovered a huge, a huge supply of grain.
And they have said that evidently Jericho
must have fallen quickly
or else there wouldn't be that much food left.
If there had been a long siege,
there would be no food.
But they found all this food,
so they concluded that perhaps it is true
that the Bible does say that the walls of Jericho
came tumbling down after over seven days.
So I thought you might like to know
that you can now believe your Bible.
But that was interesting to me.
Jericho, the very fact that it had all that food
indicated that it must have fallen quickly.
A city that is self-contained.
Now, Paul says, I've learned the secret of being self-contained.
I've discovered that I have within myself, dwelling within my life,
everything I need to survive and to live and to be all that I need to be.
Now, folks, you and I probably do not have the slightest idea
how important that statement is that Paul makes.
Needing no outside assistance in the sense that
if we're shut off from all other things,
as Paul was shut off,
we have that inner resource,
inner reserve, emergency power.
There is something within us that continues to generate
even though you cut off all the outside power.
And to me, and I said earlier,
the thing that is so disturbing to me today
is not that lost people, non-Christians and atheists
are having a hard time living,
it's that Christians are having a difficult time at it.
T.S. Eliot, in one of his famous poems,
spoke of man as being hollow, that we are hollow
men. What a tremendously descriptive phrase, that we're all show, that we're all surface,
that we're really shallow, but inside we are hollow. We do not have resiliency. We don't have
inner strength. We collapse, we fold up,
we yield to everything that comes along.
And you can see this every day
in the lives of people you know,
even in your own life.
That as long as everything is running smoothly
and as long as things are going the way we want them to go,
we're wonderful, happy,
and we're praising the Lord.
But let something happen.
Let some crisis come into our life. Let some crisis come into our life.
Let some tragedy come into our life.
And suddenly we discover we have nothing to draw on.
We don't have any resources to draw on.
We are hollow people.
We've lost our resiliency.
We've lost our stamina to stand against these things.
I mentioned to the earlier crowd,
in the last 20 years,
there has been such a flood of new books
and seminars and courses and everything
on the home, happy homes,
and how a husband and wife should live together
and how you ought to raise your kids.
You can go to the bookstore, Christian bookstore,
and you'll find dozens and dozens and dozens of books written on things like that. We've never had such material like we have now.
And yet, I tell you the truth, I do not find that the home of the Christian average across
the country is one bit better than it was before. As a matter of fact, we are experiencing now among the lives of Christians
such an onslaught of immorality and infidelity and breaking up of homes
that I have never seen in my ministry before.
And I've been preaching for over 30 years.
I've never seen it like this before.
I've never seen Christian families as weak as they are now.
I've never seen Christians. And I'm speaking on the average.
I know they're exceptional, but I'm speaking on the average,
that every church has its tales of woe.
Every church has its people that you have seen
that have discovered themselves to be insufficient.
Insufficient for it. Hollow people.
Nothing really on the inside. Paul says, I have discovered that within myself,
if I'm cut off from all outside help, that I've found within myself everything I need to make my life happy and to give me joy and to give me strength and to give me peace. I have
learned to be content. Second, not only is contentment a secret, but it is a secret that must be learned.
It is a secret that must be learned.
Now, that may be a little disappointing to some of us
because learning indicates discipline,
and it indicates time.
It's going to take some time.
But Paul uses the word in verse 12 where he says,
King James, it reads, I am instructed,
but literally it is I have learned the secret,
but the word was used of a long and disciplined process
of coming to a truth.
It was used of a long disciplined process
of coming to a truth about something.
Paul says, I have learned the secret, and I didn't learn it overnight. It wasn't just quoted to me, and then I began to mouth it. It was not just a
formula that I put into effect, but he said, over a period of time, I have learned the secret.
It's a secret that must be learned. You have to go to school, and you'll notice some
of the courses you have to take. The King James reads like this, I've learned both how to be
abased and how to abound. That's just two of the courses you take when you go to school.
Abasement 101 and Abounding 101. Of course, hard to get in Abounding
because that class fills up first.
But listen, you can register six months late
and find plenty of room in Abasement,
being abased and having to do with nothing.
I like for the Lord to test me on Abounding.
I want the Lord to put me to the test.
Lord, just give me a whole bunch and see how I do.
And that's wonderful,
but you'll never learn the secret of self-sufficiency if all you ever have is much.
An unbalanced life will never discover the truth about Jesus Christ in its life.
It takes both and, both and. I've learned to be empty. I've learned to be full.
I've learned to have everything. I've learned to have nothing. It is a secret that is learned. Now,
how do you learn it? What is God trying to teach us? I believe that God above everything else is trying to teach me something. He's trying to teach me this, that having everything my heart's desire is not going to make my life one bit better,
not going to make my life one bit richer.
And losing everything is not going to make me one inch poorer than I am.
Having everything, Paul says, I discovered did not enhance me or increase me.
And losing everything,
I discovered did not diminish me.
And you see, the trouble is
that there are those of us this morning,
some of you sitting right here this morning,
who really, with all of your heart,
honestly now, honestly,
honest to God, you believe that if you could just make a little bit more money, if you just had a
better job, or if you had a larger house, or if you had this, or if you had that, then everything
would be all right. That just much more money, or a little bit more money, or a little bit more money or a little bit more of this,
boy, I tell you, it would be just all right.
And if when you believe that,
you are terribly, terribly deceived.
Rich people jump out of windows every day.
Having everything does not increase us.
You see, our trouble is we believe that having is being.
The more I have, the more I am.
We size people up.
When I was a teenager, I sold men's clothes and I sold men's shoes also,
but they taught us something about, they said that the real test of whether a man knows how to really dress or not,
you'll find in his shoes.
He said anybody can look into a good suit and a nice tie once in a while,
but he said the shoes is the last thing they've noticed.
And to this day, when I'm introduced to somebody, first thing I do is to look at their shoes.
And pretty good, pretty good shoes there. We size a person up by what he has.
We believe that if a man has more, he's worth more.
And we envy him.
Because we believe if we had more, we'd be worth more. I have a friend in Louisiana who lost
a lot of money in oil lately. I mean a lot of money. He said one of his friends asked him one
day, well, how much are you worth now? He said, oh, I'm worth the same as ever was. He said, I never did count up my worth in money.
I'm worth just as much now as I was then.
Now, God has to teach us this, and how does he teach it to us?
I believe God does it this way.
You see, I have so many things now.
I mean, really, I have so many things now.
I don't know which things are really necessary now.
I think I have to have all
this stuff to live. And I think, man, I've got to have all this stuff. God comes along and says,
you don't need all this. Oh, yes, I do, Lord. He said, no, you're plugged into so many sockets,
you don't even know which one's hot anymore. You think you need a lot of this stuff,
but I'm going to show you something. And he he said I'm going to unplug some of these plugs here
when we get to the hot one you'll know it
and he puts his hand on one plug
and I said no Lord no
now Lord I may not need everything I have
but I do need that
I mean Lord if you unplug that it'll kill me
I know it'll kill me
I can't survive if you unplug that
Lord don't unplug that and it'll kill me. I know it'll kill me. I can't survive if you unplug that. Lord, don't unplug that. And he does. And surprise, I don't die. Surprise, life goes on. You know, I'd have
sworn that I'd have died if I hadn't had that. I admit I was wrong about that one, Lord.
Yeah, I admit I was.
But now that next one you're looking at,
now, Lord, I know I'm right about this one.
And you know what the Lord does?
He just keeps unplugging them.
And friends, when he gets to the one that's hot,
you'll know it.
You see, God many times has to reduce us
down to the bare essential for us to ever discover
that the things we have
are not what make us real.
There's a little chorus that we sometimes sing,
Jesus is all I need.
He is all I need.
He has made unto me righteousness, peace, and faith.
He is all I need.
And that's true, but the fact of the matter is
you'll never know Jesus is all you need
until he's all you've got.
And then when he's all you have, you discover that He's all you need.
It's a secret that must be learned.
I think it sneaks up on you.
I think it surprises you.
I think what happens is one day there's some crisis in your life
and all of a sudden you realize, I'm not hysterical.
Well, I'll be.
Well, I can remember a year or two ago, five years ago,
if something like this would have happened, I'd have been out on the floor.
I wouldn't have been worth anything.
I would have come apart.
I'd have been hysterical.
You know what I'm discovering?
I'm discovering I handle things a lot better than I used to.
I don't panic as quickly as I once did.
I don't know, there is a sense even in the midst of crisis.
It's strange, you know, I'm right in the middle of this thing,
but I tell you the truth, there is such a sense of peace and contentment, I don't understand it. Do you know what I'm
talking about? That all of a sudden you begin to realize that there is something inside
of you that gives to you unknown reserves and strength, and it's amazing what you're able to handle
and amazing what you're able to bear.
What are you doing?
You are discovering the secret of being content,
whatever the circumstances.
Changing on the outside, unchanged on the inside,
stable, just the same, just the same.
Last of all, the secret is Christ.
The secret is Christ.
Oh, preacher, you've led us along here for 15, 25 minutes,
telling us you're going to give us some big secret.
And you come now to the end, and you tell us the secret is Christ.
I have been saved since I was a kid. I've had Christ all my life. But I tell you something,
I have lived in fear all my life, and I've lived in panic all my life, and I've lived in grasping and greed all my life.
And right now, I'm scared to death of things that may happen.
And you come along and say, Christ is the answer.
I've already got Him. I've had Him since I was a kid, and I'm not doing any better than ever did in living my life.
What we want is for somebody to give us a formula.
Step one, two, three.
I'm going to tell you something.
I have very little confidence in formulas.
There was a period of time in my life
when I really believed in formulas.
I mean, I had a formula for everything.
I know some people, I know some people,
I could call them up at three o'clock in the morning
and say, my wife and I are having a fight over television programs. And he'd say, hang on just a second,
I'll go look it up in my book. And he would thumb through it and there was the tab right there. And
he just sprang up. He said, yes, here's seven things to do when your wife and you are fighting
over the television set. So I had to think about it. I got it right here in my notebook you know what happens
we begin putting our confidence
in formulas
in the steps
rather than in the Lord
well say those formulas have worked so far
sure but they'll come a day when they won't
folks life is as sovereign as God is.
You cannot anticipate everything that's going to happen.
You just can't solve all the problems before they arise.
Christ, is it Christ?
Yes.
He is the secret of contentment.
Spiritual growth and maturity
is not God adding things to us,
but it's our discovering
what we already have in the first place.
When our children were born,
we've had three children.
When they were born, they were all normal when they were born.
I don't vouch for them
after they've lived with us for a while,
but they were all normal when they were born.
I guess every mother,
the first time she holds that newborn baby,
does what every other mother does,
count the toes and count the fingers
and so relieved when the baby is normal.
Have you ever thought about it
that God gives to that baby
everything it's ever going to
need to live its life physically? I mean, when the baby gets old enough to walk, you don't have to
take him down to the hospital and say, now put on the legs. He's old enough to walk. When he's old
enough to pick up things, you don't have to go down and say, now put on the hands. And when he's
old enough to talk, you don't have to go down and say, put in a tongue. Been a few times you might want to remove the tongue, but you don't have to go in and say that.
Why?
Because everything you received, you'd ever need to live your life, you received at birth.
You know what growth is?
Growth is discovering what you received at birth and learning how to use it.
And it's fascinating to watch that baby when it first discovers it has thumbs.
And it's fascinating to watch that baby when it discovers those two things it's been dragging around will stand him up.
And if he puts one in front of the other, they'll take him where mommy says not to go.
And life is never the same for that boy or for his mother again.
Because all of life is this.
It's discovering what you received at birth and learning to use it.
When I was saved,
God gave me everything he had to give me.
He gave me Jesus Christ.
He bankrupted heaven in order to save me.
He had only one son and he gave him me.
And I want to tell you some folks,
when I've been in heaven 10 million years,
I will not have one bit more of God than I have right
now.
Do you know what
spiritual growth is?
It's discovering
what we received at
birth and learning
how to use it
and to appropriate it.
Christ
is the secret of contentment.
Here's what Paul says, verse 13.
I can do all things through Him, Christ, who strengthens me.
Now look at the sequence of the verses.
First of all, he said,
I've learned not to speak in respect of want,
for I have learned in whatever state I am therewith to be content.
And here's the way I learned it.
I learned it by being abased and by being abounding. I learned it by having everything
and having nothing. And what I learned was this, verse 13, I can do all things through Christ who
strengthens me. I can handle poverty. I can handle prosperity. I can handle health. I can handle
sickness. This is the secret I learned. I learned that I can do all things through Christ who
strengthens me.
The declaration of verse 13 is a result of the experience of verse 12.
The New English Bible,
Revised English Bible,
I think has the best translation
of that phrase.
It says this,
I am able to face anything
through Christ who pours His strength into me.
The word means to be in full health or full vigor.
Some translations read like this,
I am ready for anything.
I'm ready for anything.
And that's the idea.
Paul is not saying I can go out here
and do miracles because He strengthened me. That's not the idea. Paul is not saying I can go out here and do miracles because he's strengthened me.
That's not the idea.
He's not saying I can do all things.
I can leap across the railroad track,
or I can in a single bound reach tall buildings,
or I can stop a steaming locomotive.
He's not saying that.
He's not saying God gives me miraculous power, I can do all these feats.
What he's saying is I am ready for anything.
I can face anything.
That's what contentment is, folks.
Contentment is knowing that whatever comes your way in your life,
Christ will make you able to face it.
You will be able to face it. That's contentment.
That's contentment. I know. He said, well, how do you know that he'll make you able? Well, because
he made me able last time and the time before that and the time before that. And those times,
I thought I would not make it. It was amazing how God saw me through. And I have come to the place
now where I know this much. I don't know what tomorrow holds for me.
I don't know what I'll have to face.
I don't know what difficulties or decisions
I'll have to face tomorrow.
And it scares me sometimes to think about it,
but I do know this.
I'll be able to face anything
because He gives His strength to me.
That's contentment.
A good friend of mine, George Duncan, who lives in Glasgow, Scotland,
told me stories of a man he knew a number of years ago in London, England, a very wealthy man
whose son, whose only son, was in the RAF and was shot down in the Battle of Britain and killed.
And so when the old man himself died a few years after the Second
World War, he had no heirs, no relatives whatsoever. And in his will, he stipulated that
his possessions, all his estate, were to be auctioned off and given to various charities and
settled in that way. A part of his wealth was a fabulous art collection,
and so that art collection was being auctioned off.
Sotheby's, I believe it was, in London that was doing it.
They had sent out the brochures to all the collectors
all over the United Kingdom and other places
and telling what was being offered,
and so on the day of the auction, of course,
the place was packed to bid on this fabulous art collection. The lawyer attorney for the estate
stood up and mentioned one thing at the beginning. He said, the will stipulates that before any of
these other pieces of art can be sold, this picture must first be sold. And it was a painting of the old
man's son. And of course, nobody there knew the boy, and it wasn't painted by any master painter,
and so nobody was really interested in it. But the will said, you have to sell this one before you
can sell the rest. Well, there happened to be in the audience that day a servant of the old man, and he had known that son from a child.
And he thought to himself, you know, it would be nice to have that as a memento.
And so he bid on that picture.
And, of course, nobody bid against him.
And he got it at a very cheap price.
And then when that was done, the lawyer stood up and said,
ladies and gentlemen, the auction is ended.
And everybody sat there stunned,
couldn't imagine what in the world was happening.
And the lawyer said,
the will stipulates that whoever gets his son
gets the whole lot.
I think that's what Paul
is saying.
Whoever gets the son
gets the whole lot.
God can't give you, friend, any more
than he's already given you
and that's Christ.
But you're
going to have to learn to
trust him
so that you can say with Paul,
I have learned,
whatever my circumstances,
I've learned to be content,
self-contained, sufficient.
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