Quotes about Contentment

The point is that an $80,000 or a $180,000 salary does not have to be accompanied by an $80,000 or a $180,000 lifestyle. God is calling us to be conduits of his grace, not cul-de-sacs. Our great danger today is thinking that the conduit should be lined with gold. It shouldn't. Copper will do. No matter how grateful we are, gold will not make the world think that our God is good; it will make people think that our god is gold. That is no honor to the supremacy of his worth.

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

The world is not impressed when Christians get rich and say thanks to God. They are impressed when God is so satisfying that we give our riches away for Christ's sake and count it gain.

We make a god out of whatever we find most joy in. So, find your joy in God and be done with all idolatry."-John Piper

By nature, we get more pleasure from God's gifts then from Himself.

He once said that "there are but two lessons for Christians to learn: the one is, to enjoy God in everything; the other is, to enjoy everything in God.

In other words, in all my rejoicing over all the good things that God has made, God himself is the heart of my joy, the gladness of my joy. In all my rejoicing in everything, there is a central rejoicing in God. Every joy that does not have God as its central gladness is a hollow joy and in the end will burst like a bubble. This is what led Augustine to pray, "He loves thee too little who loves anything together with Thee, which he loves not for thy sake."2

Sin is what you do when your heart is not satisfied with God.

The really wonderful moments of joy in this world are not the moments of self-satisfaction, but self-forgetfulness.

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.5

It is not a bad thing to desire our own good. In fact, the great problem of human beings is that they are far too easily pleased. They don't seek pleasure with nearly the resolve and passion that they should. And so they settle for mud pies of appetite instead of infinite delight.

Our mistake lies not in the intensity of our desire for happiness, but in the weakness of it.