Contentment

Last night I began teaching through the life of David at Neighborhood Church. I started with 1 Samuel 16, which tells the story of the young shepherd boy being anointed king. Here's the jist of the story. David spends his days with sheep. Then one day, while he's minding his own business, the prophet Samuel shows up at his house, and to the surprise of everybody, anoints David as the next king of Israel. This part of the story ends with Samuel leaving and David is right back with the sheep. That's not right...is it?

The theme for the night was contentment. What do we do when God's plans are different than your plans? Or when His timetable is different from your timetable. David's heart was formed during this time with the sheep. As Paul reminded Timothy, "Godliness with contentment is great gain" (1 Timothy 6:6).

At the last minute, I decided to tell our story of moving to Memphis five years ago. It was such a hard time. We had taken a big step of faith and moved here with no jobs, no friends, and just a dream of what could be. Adam was six months old at the time, so we were new parents going through some rather big transitions all at one time.

Contentment did not come easy for me. I fought God a lot of the way, yet I knew that He had something in store for us here in Memphis. I found this post that I wrote during this time. It expresses much of the frustration but also a great deal of hope.