Contentment #4—Gracious Contentment

God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, that always having all sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance for every good deed. 2 Corinthians 9:7–8

Good deeds flow from contented hearts. Since God loves people who do good with joyful hearts, he goes out of his way to assure himself the pleasure of such love. For God himself is the most cheerful of all givers. Indeed, grace is the activity motivated by one’s own joy that is intended to produce a corresponding joy in someone else. Since God’s joy in himself is infinite, his cheerful intention is to satisfy our hearts so that we sense we have an abundance from which to draw. This sense of sufficiency, of satisfaction with the portion we have received, is part of the joyful response he desires to create. It is not an anxious sense of “can we make it?” It is a happy sense of “always enough.” The “always” is important. It is what enables our contentment. This is why Paul talks about “always having,” “all sufficiency” because “all grace” is available at “all times.” In this way sufficiency becomes abundance, the kind of abundance we need never worry will disintegrate or be stolen. With the confidence this promise generates, even if our abundance looks like poverty in the world’s eyes, we can joyfully beg God for opportunities to extend his goodness into the lives of people everywhere.

Lord Jesus, today, when I encounter an opportunity to give, cause me to remember this astounding promise, and fill my heart with joy in the abundance I have, until I overflow in graciousness, as you have done for me. Amen.