Why You'll Never Be Content without God

God Brings Us Back to Himself

In the beginning of the Bible, in Genesis, we see that God created our first parents, Adam and Eve. He’s given them a beautiful garden, a beautiful life together, and every blessing we could imagine. And he gave them a command not to eat fruit from a particular tree. In one way, what he’s saying is, “Be content with me, rest in me, I’ve given you everything; don’t take anything else.”

At the beginning of the Bible, the sin that Adam and Eve committed in the garden of Eden was a sin of discontentment.

But, of course, they sin. And that first sin was a declaration, it was a referendum on their ability to be content in God. They appraised what God had given them and they wanted more.

At the beginning of the Bible, the sin that Adam and Eve committed in the garden of Eden was a sin of discontentment. And then in the rest of the Bible, you see God, in his work of redemption, bringing us back to himself. He’s bringing us back, through revelation of the Word of God and then, ultimately, Christ coming and saving us from our sins. He’s bringing us back to himself and is saying repeatedly to find our all in him, to be content in him.

Chasing Contentment

Erik Raymond

In this immensely practical and encouraging book, Erik Raymond establishes what contentment is and how to learn it, teaching us to trust in the God who keeps his promises rather than our changing circumstances.

Through the gospel, he’s brought us home to himself. But when we find God, we find a God who’s actually content in himself—a God who’s completely independent and satisfied in himself. God the Father finds his delight in Christ and we as believers are welcomed into this community of the Trinity, a fellowship of God, and we are able to find our contentment in him.

So if God is able to be content in himself, then we as Christians are able to be content in him as well. So contentment has everything to do with God and how he brings us home to the gospel.

Erik Raymond is the senior pastor at Redeemer Fellowship Church in Watertown, Massachusetts. He is the author of Chasing Contentment: Trusting God in a Discontented Age and a frequent contributor to many websites and periodicals. He blogs regularly at Ordinary Pastor, hosted by the Gospel Coalition.