Lack of Contentment

Hey, this is Tim Pratt Jr. and I want to welcome you to the podcast Student of Life. I pray that you hear something that will add value, shape, develop, and cultivate your faith in order to be the person that God desires you to be, as well as the application to see it through. Enjoy. What's up? So everybody, so this is episode 2 of season 3, Lack of Contentment. So in the first episode of season 3, we talked about what season of life and its primarily dealing with harvest, like why we don't see results or receive the results that we want to. And in this one, I want to kind of talk about another thing that keeps us from that. And just really, I mean, I really feel like this can be another transferable truth throughout life, and it's basically lack of contentment. And I want to bring some things to content— to content— like bring some things to context as we dive and navigate throughout scripture, but as well as, like I say, just the everyday today lessons of life. And so with that being said, let's start with our foundational text, the foundational scripture. And of course, like I always do, for the most part, we'll get into some supporting verses. But like I say, one of my biggest things that as I to continue to study God's word and apply it for myself is that we have to keep things in this proper context Like I say, one of the main reasons that we don't see results is because we like to isolate scriptures and only live by what we feel is right according to the word. But you got to read the whole Bible. You just can't pick out and say, oh, you know, well, this makes sense to me in the context of my life. But is that in the context of the way God was communicating that scripture, if that makes sense? And so that's another reason why we don't see results in life. And you can look at that throughout books and all that type of stuff. We can't pick and choose. You have to live the complete thing. So that being said, let's jump into it. Matthew 6:25. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothes? What is Jesus saying? My wife told me to work on like bringing scriptures to life. This was a little bit challenging, so I'm gonna have to kind of go like bullet point style on you. But once again, what Jesus is telling us is to be content with what we have because he doesn't want us to worry about the things of this world. When you're going on down in that passage, basically what he's calling us, if not commanding us, to seek first the kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things. So all these stuff and things, they'll be given to us, they'll be added to us as well. But we would often— what we do is that we started to seek the world, the things of this world, versus seeing like— so we're basically seeking this, for lack of better terms, kingdom versus the kingdom of God. And so that's how we basically start losing our contentment, because we're not keeping our mind on the things above. It's not saying that walk around and just like don't have a concern or things like that, but it's like we can't— and I'm getting a little bit of head because you're gonna hear this again— but we can't be planted too deep here. We have to keep our mind on the things above, his kingdom and his righteousness. As we walk according to that, man, everything else, it, it'll take care of itself. That's how these things are added to us, by doing the will of our Father. And so in essence, what this whole entire passage is saying, if you, you know, start at 25 or just read all the way from, I believe, Matthew 6, it says down 33. It isn't saying that we shouldn't have anything more than food and clothing and the basic needs, because the focus on scripture is basically, is dealing with our spirit. Like, what is the condition of our spirit as we basically try to achieve things? Yes, thank you, God. That's what it's saying, the condition of our heart, the condition of our spirit. I can be in achievement mode all day and be like, man, I'm trying to achieve this, I'm trying to accomplish this, I'm on my grind, or whatever you want to say. But what is the condition of my heart? Am I doing it because I'm caught up in this world, or am I doing it because I have that zeal, but at the same time it's about God, it's about his kingdom, advancing the kingdom, it's about his righteousness? So for instance, with me, like, I, I, I like wealth. I, I like wealth. I like having money. I like, um, certain things, you know, and stuff like that. I like time. I mean, you know, having my time. But what I'm— what I'm trying to make is this: money gives you options. And so to me, you know, I used to want to be financially free for so many things, like cars, money, sex, just straight up with you. I mean, just that life. But now it's more so just having it to, to serve, man, to, to help, to touch, to just do the will of— do the will of my Father, do the will of God. And you know, it might sound like whatever, man, that's the easy cop-out, but it's true. Like, I love time with my wife, my boys, you know, my parents, my in-laws. I mean just my family, my brothers, my sisters, like, you know, just people. I, I just want to touch them. And so yes, I'm working, I'm grinding, I'm, you know, trying to, you know, build things by the grace of God and through just seeking and understanding and wisdom. But it's the content of my spirit, my heart. I have to make sure that I be on guard and to basically make sure that I'm not motivated by stuff and things, if that makes sense. And so let's get into, like I say, you know, a few reasons why we lack contentment. We got— first thing, we got to understand that contentment is not a destination, it's a journey, especially within this world. Look, if you got a— I tell people all the time, and if you have a destination mindset, like you are going to arrive long as you here in this fleshly body, you, you're gonna have to really do some groundwork. I did. I mean, you know, I was so— I mean, once I get here, I'm good. Once I get this— I mean, I started out working at grocery store, uh, pizza place, you know, went to school, went to college, read entrepreneurial books. And every single time, man, once I hit $50,000, once I hit $100,000 in my, you know, 401 and investments. And just once I get this, or once I get this salary, I was always motivated by something else. It was never enough. So that's why it's not a destination, it's a journey. Contentment, like I say, goes down to the intent of your heart, the condition of your spirit, man. So now it's like, yes, it's certain things that I'm still striving for, you know. Like, I don't know, I don't know where the Lord's going to take me. I just, I'm just called to be obedient to what he's told me to do. Where he's taking me, I don't know unless he shows it to me and reveals it. But as in my obedience, you know, do I still have aspirations to be a director, uh, an executive? You know, I'm a, I'm a, I'm in senior level management, a senior technical project manager now. And not to boast on myself, but 6 years ago when I first even got into the profession, just the understanding— well, I got into the profession of project management 3 years ago, but before then I, I had aspirations to be one. And so like I said, well, when the opportunity came, you can go back to engineering and all of that. I, once I made it, you know, yeah, I'm happy, this is in that and all of that. But then it's like it went from, okay, what's next, what's next, what's the next accomplishment? And so a lot of times too, we miss out on all the lessons we can be learning because we can't be present. We don't have enough present in our life. So it's like, that's why you see people that's not content, they live in the past. You living like, I just, I just wish I would have, wish I would have. Nothing wrong with that in proper improper context, or you don't have enough future. So it's like, I mean, you don't have, uh, you have too much future, so you're just always like, well, if I can just, if I, if I can just— if nothing wrong with that in proper context, but what are you missing out on now? Like, my wife has just told me yesterday, the other, uh, yesterday, that, you know, in the context of this episode, because I don't know when I'm gonna release it, but she had just told me about— we were talking about parenting And she was like, you know, Matthew Stevenson has said that, uh, you're not just parenting a child, you're parenting purpose. That's deep. I mean, to me it's like, so having two boys, you know, and the dynamics and their personality, you know, the similarities that they have as well as like the things that they are different. I'm not going to try to make my youngest son like my older one. I'm not going to try to make my older doing like my youngest. Now, it is values and lessons that they're going to learn and do the same, but it's father-wise. Their purpose is different, you know. But at the end of the day, you know, we all have a common purpose, and that's to basically follow God, to be obedient to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And so, you know, but how we get there— I'm not saying there's more than one ways to get to God. I'm not— that's not what I'm saying. That's totally against scripture. But it is different callings on our life. One body, many members. So it's a journey. How do we stop that again? The second thing, comparing, keeping up. Look, the Joneses are broke. We gotta stop comparing ourselves. When I was on my social media fast, I mean, I think the longest I've ever been on social media, and it was some years ago, was like almost a year and a half or two. And then we just recently went off for like 2 months. And like I said, once again, not saying social media is a bad thing, it's in proper context. But what it does when we get into the comparing— so you see somebody post a trip, you don't know, they could be lying, they could be safe, and they could be full out wealthy, they could be on they stuff, they could have planned this 2 years ago and now went through 2 years of life and didn't take no trips and say, okay, I'm getting this, this, and that. So they're gonna take it, you You get what I'm saying? You don't know the full story behind the scene, or they could be paycheck to paycheck. But just because we see it now, we ready to go there. So we have to just celebrate them, man, and pray to God that they're truly living what they're posting. But we got to stop the comparing, because comparing, man, it's, it's a thief. It's the thief, and it's the context of when we basically go missing when we compare When we treat our anointing casual and we strive to be like somebody else, we go missing. And what I mean by that— God created us, God created you to be you, he created me to be me. When we treat our anointing casually, who we were called to be goes missing because we're comparing and we're trying to make ourselves like that person. Can you glean? Yes, there's nothing wrong with gleaning, there's nothing wrong with learning things, but at the end of the day, it's just like Kobe Bryant said with Michael Jordan and all these people in the greats he studied. I studied them, I mimicked them, but eventually I made them mine. I made them my own. I did them in my own way. Like I said earlier, you know, we're just gonna get ahead of ourselves. We're planning too deep here. We think that this is our— we act like this is our final destination. We're like, we're gonna be here forever. That is no afterlife. Now, I don't know what you subscribe to, but like I said, I'm a person of faith. I believe in God. I believe that Jesus died. I truly do. I believe that he was raised and he died for our sins and he was raised, uh, from the dead with all power. I do. I truly believe that in my heart. And with God, you know, it's Jesus and Holy Spirit. When he left to go be back, to go return to be with the Father, he left us an advocate, which is the Holy Spirit, to empower us, to help us overcome and just basically do what we're supposed to do according to the will of God. And so in that, the more and more that I dig into the word and I come into the understanding and wisdom and just, just learn, just the Holy Spirit, just the discerning of God's just his spirit. It's like I was talking to my dad the other day with all this stuff going on, man. It's, it's, it's like I'm concerned. You use wisdom and I'm cautious, but I'm not scared. My wife said it best, like, let's be cautious but not scared. So because it's just the Bible, it's prophecy fulfilling itself, so what am I going to worry about when I don't even subscribe to this world anyway. But we just talked about seeking first the kingdom of God, keeping our mind on God and just his righteousness. The kingdom— like, do we use that too loosely now? So why are we all worked up about, you know, everything that's going on in this world? Like I said, that doesn't excuse not to use the wisdom that he gives us, but at the same time, we can't be planted too deep here. And that's basically like just however you want to look at it, man. I mean, it's like we orchestrate our lives around just— we love the world, as my dad say. We, we love the world collectively. And if you do, I mean, it's time to re-examine yourself and stuff, as well as myself. Like I said, man, it's all inclusive, you know. But those are a few reasons why we lack contentment. You know, and even kind of just moving along of when I was Real Deal, like back into the whole personal finance and coaching, you know, starting with myself, how I could sit with a, just using two numbers for just example purpose, but these are more realistic. The, the, just the, the context of the story is what's important. I would sit with a person or a family that would make $50,000 a year. And they would be living great. I mean, you know, primarily debt-free, probably most times, exception of the house, driving cars that's paid for, you know, trying to invest in 401, um, and striving to grow that number. But then I go talk with a family that literally at that time was making way more than me, $100K or a person, and they were miserable. They had a lot of stuff, you know, and things, but they were in debt up to their eyeballs, man, or if they weren't in so much deep debt, they just didn't know how to stop spending. It's just a spending issue. And so when I broke it all down, it was just really primarily either a compulsive spending problem or just debt. They were always looking for more. They weren't content. I need this, I need that. Oh, this is cool. Boom, I need to move on to this. And that's a lot of times with get this, and I can, you know, expound on that a lot more when you get into like how their finances was constructed, but that's not the primary point that I'm trying to make today. The point that I want to drive home is that it was just a lack of contentment, because if they would have been content like the one— the family was making $50,000 a year— the family that was making $100,000 a year, man, like, think about just the impact you can have, the greater impact you can have just on people financially. And then as you continue to strive and make ways and invest and stuff just to reach and help and advance the kingdom of God, think about— they were just like-minded, man. But it's like I say, so it's not saying that, oh, everybody make $100,000, they just money hungry. No, they're not, because you have billionaires that's very faith-driven and content. So what I'm basically saying is it doesn't really matter, man. It's a— all goes to the condition of the heart. Your spiritual condition. That's what contentment is. That's what we stated earlier. Contentment isn't a lack of ambition or action or intensity. It's the condition of the heart while we are pursuing those things. Think about Paul, for example, when he said, I can do all things through Christ that strengthens me in Philippians 4. He was basically saying that regardless of where we are on the spectrum of life, he, he could be content whether he was poor or wealthy, whether I was, you know, I have a lot or I don't. I've learned the secret. I can do this through Christ. I've seen that verse so much, but in the passage of that scripture, he was just talking about contentment. He wasn't— you know, we, we used that to just— we use that verse out of context so much, man, because— and I'm not saying there's nothing wrong with it. I feel like a lot of people have been pure in heart, you know, with sports. It's primarily used in sports a lot, you know, we're going through sickness and things like that, and that's fine. But the context of that verse, when I read it for myself and truly studied, Paul was talking about contentment. So as we come to a close, man, the lack of contentment, as we talked about in episode 1 of this season 3, it has a direct effect on your harvest as well. This does not mean don't work. Well, I'm content in what I do, so I shouldn't have any aspirations or nothing. I shouldn't work my but, uh, no, whatever you do, work it with all your heart as you are working for the Lord. That's in Colossians 3:23. You know, just to finish on that, it say, not for your human master, since you know that you will receive an inheritance. So I mean, once again, that's a principle. It's a principle that we have to learn, we have to, and we have to apply. Paul was very motivated before he met Jesus, before and after, but the key difference was the intent of his heart. He persecuted Christians. He had a zeal. He was, man, I'm talking about doing it with a gazelle intensity, as Dave Ramsey says. But after he met Jesus, he had to encounter with Jesus, and you know, he went through that transition. He had that same zeal. But this time it was about souls for God. He didn't have an encounter with Jesus and say, oh well, you know, no more out here in the field, no more out here in the, in the just the day-to-day grind. Now a lot of stuff was the same as far as the energy and the, the will and the drive that he had, but like I say, it was the intent of his heart the condition of his spirit. So think about that. What are you doing? Are you using faith as basically an excuse to sit down and be a weak-willed Christian, a weak-willed person of faith, just lying to yourself and taking scriptures to, you know, mean what you want them to mean? Or, you know, are you working and you have aspirations? Do you want to just grind so much to the point you don't even know what you're grinding for? It's like you're just running on a treadmill, just running, running. Every time I look up, you know, I know, I know it's, it's the culture now, you know, grind, grind, grind. I'm not knocking the motivational content and people that do that. I mean, that's what they do, that's what they sell, and it's a time for that. It is a time for it because some people can be— some of us can be slothful. Like I said, it's all inclusive, but at the same time, we have to keep everything in proper context. So what's the condition of your heart? That's the question you have to ask. Do you have contentment? It's not for me. It's just like God in the Bible. And I'm not saying I'm God and I'm all-knowing, but a lot of times God asks people questions. It was for them to truly answer. So do you lack contentment? Hey, so I want to thank you for taking the time to listen to this content today. If it has impacted you in any kind of way, I want to encourage you to share it on your social media feed with family and friends. And if you desire to connect with me on a more deeper level, go to www.timothyprattjr.org where you'll get more information on how to do that. With that being said, continue to have a blessed day, and Lord's will, I'll see you next time.