Finding Contentment and Joy in the Christian Life

For years, I struggled with finding contentment and joy as a Christian. I felt purposeless, unfulfilled, and often found myself fighting with depression. To me, it seemed like contentment was some mystical state of being that eluded me. I would re-read Paul’s New Testament letters trying to decipher how he found contentment as an apostle who was beaten, shipwrecked, and imprisoned. I would ask God to help me find contentment in prayer. Eventually, God helped me to understand the secret to contentment and how to find joy in my walk of faith.

The Secret to Contentment and Joy

So where does contentment come from? Here’s the secret—contentment comes from knowing that you can trust God, His timing, and His planning for your life. It is a mindset that allows us to stop worrying and start trusting God completely. It’s not that our lives have suddenly become perfect or devoid of suffering but that we know God has a plan for even the hard parts of life. We know that we can trust Him. When we are content, we know that God loves us, He has good plans for us, and He will meet our needs.

Joy, on the other hand, is a stable, long lasting feeling of happiness that comes from being content. We are able to trust God, have a sense of peace, and a grateful attitude. Just like contentment, having joy doesn’t mean our lives are perfect. Instead, it means that we choose to trust God for what we don’t have and be thankful for what He has already provided.

Example of Finding Contentment While Suffering in the Bible

In the Bible, you’ll find examples of finding content even while suffering from the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Jeremiah, and Daniel. In the book of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 29:1-14), we see God calling for His people to find contentment in a difficult circumstance in the future. They were to “seek the welfare of [a] city” while being exiled for seventy years as a punishment for sin. After seventy years, God promised that a remnant of the Israelites would return to Israel (Jeremiah 29:14). 

Through the stories of Esther, Daniel, and Nehemiah, we find that the Israelites did honor God’s request to be good citizens in the city of their captivity. Esther and her uncle Mordecai stopped a murder plot against a king (Esther 2:19-23), Daniel became a royal advisor, (Daniel 2:48-49; Daniel 6:1-3), and Nehemiah dutifully served as a cup bearer (Nehemiah 1:11). 

Something to keep in mind about the people mentioned above is that they were not adults at the time of the exile and were not among the Israelites whose sin led to God’s punishment. In short, it was their ancestors who committed the sins that led to their captivity. Yet, they still fulfilled God’s request to seek the welfare of a foreign city while practicing their faith because it was part of God’s plan for their lives. Despite the suffering they experienced, they trusted God’s love for them, God’s vision for them, and God’s promise to hear their prayers and meet their need (Daniel 9: 1-2; Ezra 1:1). 

I wish I could explore more details of the stories of these amazing people in the Bible! Their stories show us that contentment doesn’t mean everything is perfect and that contentment is ultimately found in trusting God.

Going Deeper

So how can we be like Esther, Daniel, and Nehemiah and find contentment and joy even in suffering? Well, there are three key ways that we need to trust God if we want to find contentment. I’ve mentioned them above, but I’ll mention them again. We need to trust God’s love for us, trust His plans for us, and trust that He can meet our needs.

Trusting God’s Love

This sounds so simple but the truth is we don’t always trust that God loves us. We sometimes see God as this distant being somewhere in the sky instead of a loving Heavenly Father who is near to us. When we doubt God’s love, it’s easy for us to doubt God’s intentions towards us and feel as if He can’t be trusted with our lives. We try to keep God at a distance instead of bringing our pain and disappointment to Him. We try to keep parts of our lives to ourselves instead of seeking His plan or vision. 

The truth is God cares about what happens to us. 1 Peter 5:7 says “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” God wants us to bring our hurts and fears to Him. He loves us deeply and desires to comfort us.

Romans 8:31-39 reminds us that nothing can separate us from God’s love. God deeply cares for us. He even sent His own son to die on the cross so that we can be His children. Once we begin to truly accept God’s love, we can find contentment because we can trust that He has our best interest in mind. 

Trusting God’s Plan

When we don’t trust God’s plan for us, we often start making our own plans for our lives. This ultimately leads to disillusionment when our vision for our lives and reality are out of sync. We blame God because we feel like He’s not doing what He’s supposed to do. However, the truth is that God’s plan for us may be very different from our own. Proverbs 16:9 says “in their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps.” We can plan all we want, but it is God who is ultimately in control. 

So what should we do? Well, instead of trying to be in control of our lives, we need to submit full control to God. According to Proverbs 3:5-6, we should “trust in the LORD with all [our] heart and lean not on [our] own understanding; in all [our] ways submit to him, and he will make [our] paths straight.” 

When we submit to God, we can be sure that we’re walking in obedience to His plans for us, and we will receive God’s guidance, power, and blessings to fulfill God’s vision for us. That doesn’t mean everything will be easy. It does mean that we can find peace and contentment because we are no longer—knowingly or unknowingly—fighting against God’s vision for our lives. 

Trusting God Will Meet Our Needs

Lastly, we need to trust that God will meet our needs. This doesn’t mean that we will have everything we want, but it does mean that we can rely on God to provide for us. Psalm 145:15-16 says “the eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time.You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing.” God will provide for our needs in the right time as we patiently wait on Him.

One of the hardest things we have to do as Christians is learn to wait on God. Waiting on God means that we are not in control of everything that happens in our lives. We have to come to a place in our faith where we realize that God may have a good reason for denying or delaying us from having something we desire. We may never understand why God makes certain decisions. As Christians, we do have to trust Him. This is one of the hardest parts of faith. However, we can find contentment in knowing that God will be with us even in our suffering. Philippians 4:13 says “I can do all this through Him who gives me strength.” Our circumstances may not be ideal, but God will walk through them with us while providing the resources, grace, or strength we need.

Looking for more articles to help you grow in your walk of faith? Check out my other blogposts about prayer, finding your calling, reading the Bible, hearing God’s voice, and more.