This talk was originally given as part of the seminar on women’s ministry at Maximise 2025.
Introduction
In her book The Path of Loneliness, Elisabeth Elliot says this: ‘At age twenty-three, God gave me the gift of singleness. At age twenty-seven, the gift of marriage. At age twenty-nine, the gift of widowhood.’1 Of course, Elisabeth Elliot is talking about relationships. But I think she could have written something almost identical about ministry. Let me reframe it from my life for you. At age twenty-four, God gave me the gift of being a ministry trainee at a church in Cambridge. At age twenty-six, the gift of being a newcomer to a church in Manchester. At age twenty-eight, the gift of heading up children’s ministry in a church revitalisation. At age thirty, the gift of stepping back from public word ministry because of illness. And that last one is the season I’m still in.
The trajectory of your ministry may look very similar to mine. Or it may be utterly different. But, as the interviews have shown us, all of us will have something in common: our ministry will go through stages. Some stages will be very brief. Others will last for years. Some ministry stages will be primarily defined by our own personal situation. Other stages will be shaped more by the situation in the church or organisation where we’re serving. A church that’s thriving spiritually, for instance, will give you a very different season of ministry compared to a church where there’s extensive in-fighting or a culture of greed and ambition.
So my question for you and for me is this: how are we are going to ensure that we don’t spend all our ministry either wishing for a previous stage or looking forward to the next one? How are we going to help ourselves to thrive in ministry now? Or, to put it another way, how are we going to be content with our current ministry stage?
- What is biblical contentment?
The Greater Good Science Center at the University of California did a five-year study on human emotions.2 One of the emotions that was prized everywhere they went was contentment. One Himalayan tribe’s word for contentment roughly translates as ‘enough-ness’.3 The study authors found that that same concept was recognised by different communities across the globe, as well as by the writers of ancient literature. A quick Google search suggests that they’re right and we do all agree on the basics: the point of contentment is to be satisfied that what you’ve been given is enough, regardless of whether anything changes. I like the way one writer puts it: contentment means ‘to be at home with what you already contain’.4 Or if you’re into etymology, our modern verb ‘content’ comes from an older word which means ‘to rest satisfied’.5
There are certainly some caveats we would want to add to this from a biblical point of view. I’ll come to those in a moment. But the more general idea of contentment not being situation-specific is woven throughout Scripture. You can find it in Psalm 131, 1 Timothy 6 and Hebrews 13, as well as (most clearly) in Philippians 4. There, writing to the Philippian church about their financial support, Paul emphasises that his contentment doesn’t depend on whether he’s ‘well fed or hungry, whether [he’s] living in plenty or in want.’ For Paul, contentment didn’t wait on his circumstances changing. It wasn’t something stuck in the past or a vague potential waiting in the future. No, Paul’s contentment was a reality in his present – even though that present was in a Roman prison.
The big biblical caveat is this: true contentment is only possible through the Lord Jesus. I mean that in two ways.
First, the Bible doesn’t allow room for us to think that it’s possible to be content without being a Christian. Why? The Bible gives us plenty of reasons. I’ll touch on just one here – the fact that our God is the creator and we’re his creatures. Isaiah 43:7 says this: ‘Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth—everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.’ The reason we exist is to glorify our God by relating to him as he tells us to. That’s our purpose in life. That means that true contentment is only possible through Jesus.
Second, contentment is only possible with God’s ongoing help. There are certain wonderful blessings which are given to the children of God when they become Christians – justification, adoption, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit – I could go on and on. These are all things which the Lord gives us once and which we then keep forever. But contentment isn’t one of these things. Contentment is something that Christian must learn. It’s an ongoing process and, as Paul reminds us (again in Philippians 4), it’s something that’s only possible ‘through him who gives me strength’, v13.
- Finding contentment in ministry
So how do we find contentment in ministry?
Well, it starts with being honest about your current situation. I don’t mean that you need to let everyone know how you’re feeling – though I do recommend you find a trustworthy older Christian with whom you can be honest. But at a minimum, be absolutely honest with yourself and with the Lord.
Be honest about what you’re enjoying. Be honest about what’s driving you mad. Be as specific as you can about both the joys and the struggles. If you’re thankful because your vicar did your hoovering for you last Sunday, say so. If you’re still giggling over coming down the aisle in a box on the chair trolley on Christmas Day, say so. If you’re thankful for that conversation you had last Sunday about January blues, say so. And if you’re going crazy because you keep having to hoover up spaghetti from between the floorboards, admit it. If you feel like you’re going to scream because you’d really like a chance to do X and the person who’s been chosen to do it did a terrible job, admit it. If you spent ages preparing a talk and nobody said thank you, admit it. As the old hymn says, take it to the Lord in prayer. Take it all to the Lord in prayer. While biblical contentment doesn’t come from changing your situation, it’s also not based on denying your difficulties (e.g. Psalms 42 and 77). Biblical contentment is about learning to live in the midst of life’s challenges. So be real with yourself and with God.
Say thank you for what you’re enjoying. Confess those things you find hard and those areas where you’ve messed up. Ask the Lord to help you see difficult situation through his eyes. Ask him to help you realise the blessings and opportunities that you can’t yet see or appreciate – and spend some time reflecting on what they might be. Ask for courage and wisdom to make peace with anyone you’ve upset. And absolutely ask him to change what you’re struggling with. The point isn’t that it’s wrong to ask for or even work to make the situation to change. The point is for you to learn to trust God even if it doesn’t (2 Corinthians 12:7-10). So even as you ask and wait for him to improve your circumstances – even if you’re taking steps to sort out a situation that’s too serious to leave as it is – ask him to help you be contented in him now.
And be prepared to keep praying about these things. Even better, make it a habit to pray about these things. Keep on taking your struggles to the Lord every single day. Keep on looking for the blessings and opportunities in your current situation. I can’t guarantee you’ll see every difficult situation change, though some things undoubtedly will. Our God loves to give good gifts to his children after all (Luke 11:13)! But as you keep on taking your struggles to the Lord in prayer, I can guarantee that you will change as his heart rubs off on yours. Contentment is hard to learn, yes. But contentment is absolutely possible with Jesus. He gives us everything we need so that we can rest satisfied in him. All we need to do is ask.
1 Quoted by Linda Dillow in Calm My Anxious Heart (NavPress: 2007), p. 62. Original reference from Elisabeth Elliot, Loneliness (Nelson: 1988), pp. 33-39.
2 Daniel Cordaro, ‘What If You Pursued Contentment Rather Than Happiness’, Greater Good Magazine: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/what_if_you_pursued_contentment_rather_than_happiness (27 May 2020). Accessed 28 October 2024.
3 Ibid.
4 Robert A. Johnson, Contentment: A Way to True Happiness (HarperCollins: 1999), p. ix.
5 Merriam-Webster, ‘Content’, Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/content. Accessed 3 December 2024.
