Peace & Contentment In Your Childs Heart

The hardest thing to teach a child is contentment. We don't want to kill their curiosity, but a failure to learn contentment is destructive. We are living in a world that tries to lure our discontentment into dissent, and if left unchecked it destroys us. Today we discuss the issue of contentment and peace and the how understanding Jesus, and ourself is required to building a heart of gratitude. 

Transcript

Ethan: 0:01

Raising joyful children in an angry world, a podcast dedicated to faithful parents navigating their families through a stormy culture

0:09

This is raising joyful children in an angry world. I'm your host, Paul Osborne. Today I want to talk about contentment. One of the hardest things to learn that St. Paul called I've learned to be content in all things. You know, I just spent, oh, probably a week and a half with my grandkids and had a number of them here at the house, couple of the grandsons. And the, and the thing about raising kids, it's, it's not like a cheesecake recipe, right? Where you just follow these ingredients, bake it the right amount of time, at the right temperature, and it comes out just right. No. When you're with kids, these lessons, they gotta be repeated and repeated and repeated. And one of the hardest things to teach is contentment. And yet it is the most super valuable thing in the kingdom. In Dante's Divine Comedy where he is speaking about the inferno section, his poet poem, we could call it on, on what hell is, he reserves the worst part. He describes the worst part for the dissenters. Why? Well, it has to do with his personal loss. In the Civil War of Florence where he was exiled and the blood that came on the streets from that almost every revolution that you look at that's destructive to society. I just came back from Panama. You see it, you start with the fields of discontent and then. You build that into the rebellious descent. I'm reading a book called Oath Breakers. It's about all of the families, the brothers, the sons of King Charlemagne in the eighth century, and they get into this bloody civil war as. All of the sons are discontent with their role and they want the throne. This is, this is something that starts in this issue of contentment because discontent is vulnerable to the indoctrination of the dissenters that are constantly sending their messages of dissension, which often leads to chaos and wreckage of lives in the world that's out there. You you often see it. Not just in a child, but you'll see this in an adult, right? The child that's given something and then they're suddenly discontent with it and they wanna know what the next thing is. The next thing is, and the next thing is just went through this and you see this, if you don't learn it, all of a sudden you're that man, right? You, you got this great job. And then after you're there a couple of years. Eh, I'm not content. I'm not happy here. And you go to the next one and the next one, and then it becomes the next wife or the next husband, and then it's the next family. This issue of of not being able to find contentment and peace, it's not just in the bloody divisive civil wars and the collapses of empires, but it also is. Collapses of family and even destructive in our personal life. And so I, I wanna point this out'cause I think this is something that is so important and yet we, we tend not to get there. We, we tend to miss this other than our frustration of, well, I just gave you this thing to do and all, you're already bored with it. Well, how do we, how do we instruct this? Where does, where do we get the wisdom to try and pass this down? And I would point you to the catechism, particularly to Heidelberg, where it says the three things that I must know that I am a great sinner, that Christ is a great savior, and that I must live now in gratitude to him. There's no way to get the attitude of gratitude that many people talk about without having a savior to be grateful to a reason, a, a and awareness, a recognition of what the Savior did. And why you needed the savior to do it. In other words, you just can't have this, like, we, we were on this boat and they were singing this song. I'm blessed. I am blessed. From the time I wake up, till I lay my head down at rest, I am blessed. It's just sort of ambiguous, fuzzy, good feeling. I'm grateful for all the things that I have. That isn't gonna get you there. That's a worldly understanding. No. The thing that we need to teach is we have to help kids understand what is sin, what is human failure to live up to just simple things like kindness and sharing and being content, and then discover why we can't do it because of our sinful nature. That's why we need Jesus to forgive us and then restore in us and come live in us and start building in us and in our heart. This issue of gratitude and love towards him. And it takes the Holy Spirit. Don't get me wrong, the Holy Spirit and God has to do this work, but we have a responsibility to teach it. So it starts with something in most catechisms, whether. You know, you wanna talk about the Heidelberg, Westminster Luther Shorter Catechism. Those catechisms teach this concept. The gratitude is based on recognition of, of our human failure, our human sinfulness, and the great savior of who Jesus is. Now we have a person. That we're gonna be grateful to a God that we can thank. This is why the practice of prayer and the practice of these things that we say are important. When we see our sin and God's provision of grace, we get a different view then of the world and of providence. We now have an idea. Well, if God provided me the grace of, forgive me my sins. He's now providing everything else, and now I've gotta have this attitude towards gratitude because I see it's all of life is on the providence of God. Yes. I still have to work hard and try to achieve. Yes. I still have to want to get better grades to improve whatever sport I'm chasing or music, whatever it is that you're doing. But lots of people work hard and don't get a blessing. So the first part of the answer, I think in teaching this has to be helping our kids see this. And this is, this is one of the things I think we have to point out. When you aren't being grateful, when you're just, this discontent is coming up, you have to see this and say, look, this is a sin. This is displeasing to God, and you need to confess this, and you need to ask God to help you with it. See it isn't, it isn't condemning the child, but it is helping the child realize you need somebody outside of you to help you achieve this thing of gratitude. You can't do this on your own. The law is there to drive us to the savior, but we're in a culture and sometimes, frankly in a church in which we, we really just sort of skip over this. It's like some annuity. Oh yeah, it's all gonna be washed away. And when you die, you go to heaven. Now let's get in and talk about your best life now, and we don't get into this issue of I'm a great sinner. Christ is a great savior. Now I live in gratitude. The second thing I would suggest is, is some stories. I'm a big believer that stories in help us see the world better. God is a God of words. He's also a God who has story after story. The Prodigal Son is a story of wanting my treasure now a lack of contentment. The story of the Hebrews complaining in the desert after being set free from their slavery in Egypt. Is a story about a lack of contentment. Then there's stories like The Alchemist. These are outside the scripture, but they align with the scripture. You may not be familiar with it, it's an old story, but Santiago is a Spanish Shepherd builds up this huge herd of sheep. He has this prosperous, sheep and herding business, and he's selling the wool. And then he hears about an alchemist, a way that you can make gold from like common materials like sand and rocks, sells all the sheep, starts his journey to find his personal legend. And he's, and it's filled with robbery and betrayal and, you know, just one thing after the other gets, gets messed up as he finally, eventually meets an alchemist Won't even tell him the secret to making gold, because why should I, I know how to do it. Why should I tell you? It's sort of a strange story, but, but the point of it is, is that his discontent eventually leads him all the way back to Spain, and he goes right back to finally. Building the herd and going back to what he should have been content with in the first place. These are the kind of stories we have to bring to life, help our kids see this and to picture this. And these are also the stories of the scripture. If, if you don't learn contentment, if you don't even have the concept of what it is and you reach into an adulthood, you're gonna become that person that's always chasing the next, the next, the next, the next. And, and it leaves a, a whirlwind of often broken relationships and destructive patterns behind it. And that's what we're trying to avoid. Teach your kids to pray, to give thanks for things, to be thankful for people that are in their lives. And it's not just saying thank you and please as a way to get stuff, but it's actually a heart thing to actually work with the Holy Spirit to get that heart to a place of gratitude. And frankly, no matter how old you are, you, you never really learn this. But hopefully, hopefully you get better and better and you see it and you recognize it because contentment when mixed with, with providence leads to peace and discontent mixed with dissent. Leads to war.

Paul: 10:39

The ultimate battle for the heart and soul is a fight for identity. Our king invites our kids to know who they are, what to believe, and where they belong.

Paul (2): 10:52

Until next time, let's remember the words for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.