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True Contentment: In a Living Faith
Pastor Rollan Fisher
Focus:
True contentment is found when leave dead religion and develop a living faith in Jesus
There’s a big difference between mere inherited religion and a living faith in God.
“Then he returned to the man of God, he and all his company, and he came and stood before him. And he said, “Behold, I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel; so accept now a present from your servant.” But he said, “As the Lord lives, before whom I stand, I will receive none.”
And he urged him to take it, but he refused. Then Naaman said, “If not, please let there be given to your servant two mule loads of earth, for from now on your servant will not offer burnt offering or sacrifice to any god but the Lord. In this matter may the Lord pardon your servant: when my master goes into the house of Rimmon to worship there, leaning on my arm, and I bow myself in the house of Rimmon, when I bow myself in the house of Rimmon, the Lord pardon your servant in this matter.”
He said to him, “Go in peace.” But when Naaman had gone from him a short distance, Gehazi, the servant of Elisha the man of God, said, “See, my master has spared this Naaman the Syrian, in not accepting from his hand what he brought. As the Lord lives, I will run after him and get something from him.” So Gehazi followed Naaman. And when Naaman saw someone running after him, he got down from the chariot to meet him and said, “Is all well?”
And he said, “All is well. My master has sent me to say, ‘There have just now come to me from the hill country of Ephraim two young men of the sons of the prophets. Please give them a talent of silver and two changes of clothing.’” And Naaman said, “Be pleased to accept two talents.” And he urged him and tied up two talents of silver in two bags, with two changes of clothing, and laid them on two of his servants.
And they carried them before Gehazi. And when he came to the hill, he took them from their hand and put them in the house, and he sent the men away, and they departed. He went in and stood before his master, and Elisha said to him, “Where have you been, Gehazi?” And he said, “Your servant went nowhere.”
But he said to him, “Did not my heart go when the man turned from his chariot to meet you? Was it a time to accept money and garments, olive orchards and vineyards, sheep and oxen, male servants and female servants? Therefore the leprosy of Naaman shall cling to you and to your descendants forever.” So he went out from his presence a leper, like snow.
2 Kings 5:15-27
What we immediately learn about God is that he is a supernatural healer and that he uses miraculous encounters throughout history to bring people into relationship with himself.
The primary purpose of the gifts of God operating through Elisha, the prophets of Israel and the ministers of New Testament times was this - to turn the Israelites back to the Law of God and to bring those who were previously uninitiated into saving faith.
As we head towards Pentecost Sunday next week, it is good for modern believers to remember this.
It is also good for us to heed the admonition of the apostle Paul to the Corinthian church when he said...
Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed.
1 Corinthians 12:1
and
Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.
1 Corinthians 14:1
As was the goal, Naaman’s response to his supernatural healing was repentance (meaning a change of mind) and trust in the living God.
He now declared “that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel” (2 Kings 5:15).
It did not mean that this God had to be worshiped in Israel, but that the God of Israel was the one true God.
Naaman had a history with the worship of false deities in the land of Syria who had been previously unable to help him.
Thus Naaman left these former foundations in search of real hope.
This is the same reason why many people today choose to leave their faiths, cultural paradigms, ethnic and geographic norms because they fail to see the pragmatic benefits.
So this brings up the discussion of inherited religion vs. a living faith.
What God desires is true worship through a living faith.
You may have heard the thought that as people become more educated and the world becomes more globally connected, conservative faith would inevitably be on the decline.
Yet sociologists are finding the opposite to be true.
What is on the decline throughout the world today is inherited religion, where people ascribe to a certain faith simply because it what was passed down to them.
What is on the rise is chosen faith, based on people’s encounters, like Naaman’s, with the living God.
This is why we’re calling it a living faith.
For example, in a study found in the 2015 book From Every Tribe and Nation: A Historian’s Study of the Global Christian Story, Notre Dame professor Mark Noll reported that there were more Christians attending church in China (a nation having traditionally Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian, folk and non-religious influences) at that time than were in all of historically, culturally “Christian Europe”.
Another study from Gordon Conwell Seminary’s Center for the study of Global Christianity reported that:
“By 2020 Christianity will have grown from 11.4 million Christians in East Asia (China, Korea, Japan) in 1970 and 1.2 percent of the population, to 171.1 million and 10.5 percent of the population.
In 1910 only 12 million people, or 9 percent of Africa’s population, were Christians, but they will number 630 million, or 49.3 percent of the populace, by 2020.”
When the study was released, it was reported that, “Last Sunday, in each of the nations of Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and South Africa there were more Anglicans in church than there were Anglicans and Episcopalians in all of Britain and the United States combined.”
Why is this happening?
My testimony has been like Naaman’s.
My faith is not the result of global imperialism, but was one that I came into while studying at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
I have been throughout my lifetime surrounded continually by various worldviews and religions.
Yet through perpetual research and encounters with the power of God, Jesus’ claims have over and over again proven themselves to be true.
In my research, every claim that Jesus has made about his identity and divinity has been substantiated.
In my personhood, every promise that he has made in Scripture has been effective to positively transform all areas of my life by the love of God.
I’ve found that the Biblical worldview is not separated from the situations of the day, but instead rightly interprets them.
It is the only worldview that answers questions of origin (how things are made), ontology (how they were designed to function) and epistemology (how you know what you know) in a scientifically consistent and historically faithful manner.
At the same time, with brutal honesty, it deals with the realities of sin in the world while still providing a hope found in the redemptive work of Jesus at the cross.
A modern scholar and dissector of popular philosophy, Ravi Zacharias summarizes it this way:
Faith in the biblical sense is substantive, based on the knowledge that the One in whom that faith is placed has proven that He is worthy of that trust. In its essence, faith is a confidence in the person of Jesus Christ and in His power, so that even when His power does not serve my end, my confidence in Him remains because of who He is.
- Ravi Zacharias, Jesus Among Other Gods: The Absolute Claims of the Christian Message
The lesson here:
Like Naaman, to truly be content, you must have a time of reckoning with God to serve him because the identity and claims of Jesus are true, not just convenient.
You must come to a moment where you transition from inherited religion to a living faith in Christ.
We urge you to pursue this as your eternal destiny depends on it.
We have resources on our website that can assist you on this journey.
We would love to help you walk through any obstacles or questions should you choose to contact us.
We do this simply as a service.
Elisha refused the gift from Naaman at the inception of his faith to ensure that he knew that it was God, and not Elisha, that had brought about the healing.
As Naaman chose to worship the God of Israel, he could learn later through the Scripture about giving to the Lord and his work in tithes and offerings, yet this was not the moment for that.
Naaman was learning who God is and how to worship him.
Naaman said in right response that he would no longer offer sacrifices to any god but the Lord, the God of Israel.
Naaman asked for the two mule loads of earth to be able to build a mud-brick altar that we see prescribed in Old Testament times.
An altar of earth you shall make for me and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen. In every place where I cause my name to be remembered I will come to you and bless you.
Exodus 20:24
In our lives, the question becomes:
To what are we building altars?
How are you building your altar to the Lord today, even when you are separated from the place of worship as Naaman would be?
How is your home becoming a place for an altar to the Lord?
We all need to build altars in our homes as we wait for the regathering of the church.
This is where you will find true contentment.
Even so, Naaman had concerns.
Naaman was asking to be pardoned when he had to go into the house of Rimmon in service of the king of Syria.
Rimmon was the storm god also known as Baal-hadad, a false deity worshiped in Syria at that time.
Naaman’s heart was intent on solely serving the one true God of Israel.
Elisha said to go in peace which meant that God would be looking at the worship of Naaman’s heart and would not be judging Naaman by his environment.
This is good news because you can be in a family, a friendship group and a workplace where people do not honor God, yet still be a worshiper of God in Spirit and in truth.
What Naaman would come to learn is just as he was helped by the Israeli servant girl, he would now be placed back in his original environment to be a witness to the King of Syria.
This is God’s methodology for outreach and discipleship.
We should never long for a Christian ghetto.
We should be rooted in a local church.
Yet we should also understand that simultaneous to God working to cleanse us of our sin, he puts us back into contact with other sinners so that they too can come to a living faith in Jesus.
When we see this as the framework of our lives, this then is when we will be truly contentment.
So the question is, whatever happened to Gehazi?
It seems that Gehazi was a man of discontent.
Gehazi showed us that we can be surrounded by the things of God, but lack a demonstrable love for God.
This is a warning to us all.
As opposed to Naaman’s living faith, Gehazi is an example of one who ended up in the displeasure of the Lord because he exemplified the symptoms of a mere inherited religion.
Gehazi seemed to have simply lived off of the second hand smoke of Elisha without having depth of conviction in his own relationship with God.
This is common for people who have grown up around ministry and the church but have never come to Jesus in repentance of their own sin to be born again.
You must understand that just as in Gehazi’s case, God will judge those who are wicked in the name of religion.
The caricatures that you see of hardened, hypocritical religious zealots without compassion are not modeling Jesus nor do they represent his word when they act in this manner.
Our appeal is that you not walk away from the faith because of them.
At the same time, you need to test yourself...
In what ways are you living on second hand smoke and the trappings of mere inherited religion?
We can find clues in the discontent that shaped Gehazi’s actions.
Gehazi was driven by greed.
Rather than being content in the Lord, he lied, using his privileged position for untimely financial gain and was judged by the Lord as a result.
Gehazi could be a metaphor for what I’ll call a “greater high syndrome”.
What do I mean by this?
The “greater high syndrome” is what equates to a lack of contentment.
It is when someone lacks a general gratitude in life.
Gehazi was surrounded by the miracles of God but felt like he needed more.
Enough was never enough for him.
You may be able to recognize the “greater high syndrome”.
You see this when people are trapped in certain addictions always needing a greater high to feel the same rush they did in a previous hit.
It is when you see someone with overstimulation attached to entertainment and dulled sensitivities in the dopamine zone.
You may see this in adrenaline junkies.
You may see this in kids and their poor responses when they are told to turn off video games or various forms of media because their reward sensors have been overloaded.
Or in couples lacking satisfying physical intimacy when pornography is their standard.
You know that the “greater high mentality” has taken hold if:
You’re always looking for the next entertainment opportunity to feel alive.
You feel like you need to eat out or order in with alacrity to finally “be free”.
You must have a certain type and number of vacations in a year to feel truly be at rest.
Now none of these things in moderation is a problem.
In fact, they are a blessing and can be therapeutic.
Yet if they become the foundation of your happiness, there is an issue.
This was at the heart of Gehazi’s sin.
Gehazi was in essence looking for “his best life now.”
Contentment is Illusive in this state of mind because if you’ve already been living in near vacation mode on a weekly basis - going to nice restaurants, being a foodie, etc. - then you’re not going to be satisfied with the likes of a stay-cation whenever something like a pandemic demands it.
Today, it’s almost expected that most upwardly mobile people are taking what our parents would have called “trips of a lifetime” - but annually.
The challenge is that if you live this way, you’ll need to take a trip to some exotic location every year to satisfy you and make you feel like you’ve actually done something.
A walk in a park won’t suffice because you do the over-the-top things all of the time.
And even these things gets old.
What is especially sinful is when you secretly disregard God’s edicts, mishandling your position, resources and opportunities in pursuit of these greater highs.
This is what Gehazi did.
What was going in Gehazi’s heart can also be in ours.
These mentalities cut against the very heart of godly contentment.
“The current understanding of happiness identifies it as a pleasurable feeling. Pleasant feelings are surely better than unpleasant ones, but the problem today is that people are obsessively concerned with feeling happiness; people are slaves to their feelings. Feelings are wonderful servants but terrible masters. When people make happiness their goal, they do not find it and, as a result, start living their lives vicariously through identification with celebrities.”
- J.P. Moreland, The Lost Virtue of Happiness: Discovering the Disciplines of the Good Life
This is why we must find true contentment in our lives.
When you live in the manner of mere inherited religion as Gehazi did, sadly the same issues that cling to the world begin to cling to you.
This is what happened as Gehazi was struck with Naaman’s previous leprosy.
What does all of this mean for us in regards to God, and specifically our relationship with Jesus Christ?
Jesus comes to heal us and set us free from a life of sin and discontent.
Rather than running after the next high, you can experience the same worldview shift as did Naaman.
You can honestly look to God to find the basis of your need for value and your foundation for that value in the world.
By God’s design and will, he grants you the necessary framework for your purpose in life.
When you serve him, he also empowers you to glorify his name by fulfilling that purpose.
Jesus helps you in your anxieties, comforts you in your fears, frees you from your resentments, stands in your place at the cross for your guilt and by his resurrection from the dead strengthens you through your discouragements.
He does so because he made you and understands you.
So for every one of these there is a Scripture that ushers you into the liberty and life of God!
When the Apostle Peter was speaking to a crowd after the Lord healed a man who had been crippled and was over forty years old (Acts 4:22), he spoke about how to come into this contentment.
First, like Elisha, Peter wanted to make sure that the people knew the one true source of the man’s healing, the one who could really help:
And when Peter saw it he addressed the people: “Men of Israel, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we have made him walk? The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered over and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release him. But you denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. And his name—by faith in his name—has made this man strong whom you see and know, and the faith that is through Jesus has given the man this perfect health in the presence of you all.
Acts 3:12-16
Next, Peter wanted the people to know what they should take from that healing for themselves:
“And now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers.
But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.”
Acts 3:17-21
So we see the good news that it’s never too early and it’s never too late to turn to Jesus!
Whether you started in ignorance or rebellion, your time is now!
Jesus is the one in whom we can find true contentment.
So what are we to do?
Altar - Like Naaman, begin to build an altar in your home to the one true God.
Alter - Both Naaman and Gehazi needed to repent.
So do we.
Identify the things outside of Christ that you have depended on to give you joy. Give thanks to God for what he has given you instead.
Alter the basis of your contentment to transition from a place of inherited religion to a living faith.
Alternate - Embrace the fact that there is no alternative to Jesus for salvation because of what had to happen on the cross to reconcile you to a holy and righteous God.
Having grown up in the pluralism and relativism of India, Ravi Zacharias goes on to say of his own epiphany in Christ:
“I came to Him because I did not know which way to turn. I remained with Him because there is no other way I wish to turn. I came to Him longing for something I did not have. I remain with Him because I have something I will not trade. I came to Him as a stranger. I remain with Him in the most intimate of friendships. I came to Him unsure about the future. I remain with Him certain about my destiny. I came amid the thunderous cries of a culture that has 330 million deities. I remain with Him knowing that truth cannot be all-inclusive.”
- Ravi Zacharias, Jesus Among Other Gods: The Absolute Claims of the Christian Message
This is what contentment looks like because as the Apostle Peter proclaimed,
“...there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
Acts 4:12
Jesus went to the cross to take your punishment for sin.
In love, Christ endured the justice of God for you so that you might become clean.
Because he was himself sinless, Jesus rose from the dead three days later to provide forgiveness of sins and eternal life to those who would believe.
Like Naaman, you can turn away from empty philosophies unable to truly heal you and turn in living faith to the one that can make you truly content both now and forevermore.
Study
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Second City Church - True Contentment - Pastor Rollan Fisher 2020