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Loading 1 Timothy 6:6-8…
Paul calls contentment gain, which reverses the usual accounting. He also sets the bar startlingly low: food and clothing. Contentment in the New Testament is learned rather than inherited, and it is learned by knowing that Christ Himself is the wealth.
A prayer from this passage
Father, teach me contentment, because I do not have it naturally. Loosen my grip on what I do not need, and let godliness with contentment be the gain I pursue.
Key truth
Contentment is a learned confidence that God with us is enough, and Scripture counts it as real gain.
Related Scriptures
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Questions people are asking
Scripture treats money as a real good that God provides and as a rival master that can own a person. It never calls money evil; it calls the love of money a root of all kinds of evil, warns that no one can serve both God and wealth, and directs the rich to generosity and everyone to contentment. Its main question about money is not how much you have but who you are serving with it.
Scripture presents work as something given before sin entered the world, made harder by the curse, and redeemed in Christ so that ordinary labour is done for the Lord rather than for people. It commands diligence, honest dealing, rest, and provision for one's household, and it refuses to make a person's worth depend on their job.
Scripture says yes, and it is careful about the word need. God promises to supply what his people need, often daily rather than in advance, and he does not promise surplus, comfort or the removal of hard seasons. Paul, who wrote that God will supply every need, also wrote that he had learned to be hungry.
Scripture presents contentment as something learned rather than felt, grounded in a promise rather than in circumstances. Paul says he learned it in plenty and in hunger, Hebrews grounds it in God's word that he will never forsake us, and 1 Timothy calls godliness with contentment great gain while naming food and clothing as enough.
Jesus forbids worry about food, drink and clothing, and he argues rather than scolds: your Father knows what you need, he feeds the birds, worry adds nothing to your life. Scripture then gives the worrier something to do, prayer with thanksgiving and casting the burden on God, and it limits the horizon to one day at a time.
A single morning's reading, if you would rather not begin a whole plan.
Daily reading · 30 Days in the Psalms · Contentment
David names God as his chosen portion, the thing he has decided to build his life around rather than wealth, status or comfort. A portion is what you actually live off, so this is a statement about where his contentment comes from, not merely a nice phrase.
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