Worshipping with contentment
In Hebrews 12:25ff, God commands us to “see to it” that we “do not refuse him who is speaking”. To do so is to put ourselves at risk of missing out on the “kingdom that cannot be shaken”. Rather, we are to “offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire”.
The writer then immediately goes on to explain some of the dimensions of this “acceptable worship”, one of which is ‘contentment’—keeping our lives free from the love of money (Heb 13:5).
In other words, when we are satisfied with what God has given us, whether little or plenty, then we are worshipping God.
How is your worship? Is it acceptable in this area?
Of course, this whole notion of contentment puts an end to the possibility of holding to a ‘prosperity gospel’. Even the more recent trend of a ‘modified prosperity teaching’, which says, “I want more money ... so that I can do good with it”—thus trying to cloak the desire for more wealth with sanctified motives—seems to me to be quashed by this injunction to be ‘content’. We should aim to “share what we have” (v. 16), not ‘what we wish we had’.
God is in control. We must be content. It is a dangerous game to wish that we had more so that we could do more good with it. It is dangerous for at least two reasons:
Firstly, the desire for more money is inherently dangerous to our souls: “[T]hose who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction” (1 Tim 6:9). The rationalization of that desire by hearts that are incomprehensively deceitful (Jer 17:9) is even more fraught with danger.
Secondly, such a desire potentially undermines our trust in God's sovereign purpose and timing. The prayer for more money in order to do more good could go very close to sounding something like this: “God, if you only knew the needs in our world that I could solve if you would just give me the money to do it ...”
Certainly, with what we have we are to be “rich in good deeds” and “generous and willing to share” (1 Tim 6:18), and the desire to share is indeed a proper motive for work (Eph 4:28). But these attitudes are not to override the need for contentment with what the Lord has provided.