Contentment

I once heard a well-known tele-evangelist comment on the need for some "retail therapy." She'd had a busy few days, she said, hadn't had a chance to go shopping for a while (at least a week or two), and so she told her husband that she really needed to stop by a favorite store on the way home from the conference where she was speaking, just to buy a little something to perk herself up. There was a definite sense of entitlement hanging in the air as she shared the details of her exhilarating drive-by shopping trip. I don't remember her story having any point other than that God wants to indulge all of His children with nice baubles and beautiful things -- that after all, as as children of the King, we should be cloaked in nothing less than the finest of royal robes, with our jewel-encrusted signet rings firmly in place (my words, not hers, but that was the drift).

Except for the attempted spiritual spin, isn't that the same message we're bombarded with daily from the Madison Avenue marketing crowd?

You know you want it. You need it. And, heck!
You've earned it, and you deserve it! (Oh, and if
you haven't yet earned it, you can always get it
on credit! You know, "Fake it 'til you make it!")

And when that kind of message comes from those who are supposedly on our team, is it any wonder that many of us who are called to be the set-apart ones end up acting not a whole lot different from the rest of the world? Is it any wonder that we, too, begin to develop our own sense of entitlement? That we, too, buy into the idea of purchasing power -- the idea that if we can buy sex appeal, status, and significan stuff, then surely financing a little contentment ought to be a drop in the bucket.

But we are called to be the set-apart ones -- those who live differently because of who we are in Christ. And how we use the resources we're given -- whether we use them to garner the things we think will bring us contentment or whether we trust God for our contentment and allow Him to direct how we use our resources -- is one of the greatest indicators of whether we're living the set-apart life.

Financial guru Dave Ramsey puts it this way: We are to "live like no one else so that we can live like no one else." I can't think of a better way to describe every aspect of the set-apart life we are called to.