Contentment of mind is a quality a Christian experiences as a saved soul. Gill points out that a Christian hasn't inderivative sufficiency in himself for contentment, yet the saving grace provided by the Lord does present sufficient reason for contentment and assurance in-itself.
Considering that American business economy that ought implicitly have an inderivative contentment or ecospheric sustainability without lusting for distant foreign sources of potential quantifiable opulence, it is easy to see that the unregenerate man or woman unsaved and without faith or other saving graces is reflected in the greater social assembly of the unsaved and lost lusting after externalities of others with envy and pride forever leaving them unsatisfied and in dire need of more in unquenchable avarice. That is the fuel of discontentment in unregenerate man’s consumption of externalities assaulting environmental health and national security locks out of sight in fogs of maya and evolutionary biological imperatives thought of transcendent God.
Contentment in the Lord is assurance that God not only provides worldly needs, it is a view to Jehovah through the Lord that is as a light in temporal darkness. The Lord covers sparrows in marvelous fashion and will provide for humanity too. Concatenated social strivings for material resources work more toward the ends of death than life.
The Lord is a transcending God penetrating through the temporal mist of quantum field entanglements to illuminate with love and godly peace the path of salvation and eternal bliss. With joy Christians receive the pardon of God for their original sin as temporal consumers driven by reptilian devils of corrupt power and tyranny, through the atoning, innocent blood of Christ who was resurrected from the grave. A Christian is content even to rest in a Christian grave if need be rather than to submit to worldly obsessions of the unregenerate and lost whims of the damned.
Christians may work and invent in the world improving their lot so far as is necessary impelled with practical reason. When it is time to serve the purposes of the Lord to invent interstellar power linkages between stars then, and not before, the evident tools of dialectical quantum reconfiguration arise as veritable apparitions of thought that are new phenomenally. Nonetheless Christians are content with things as they are even while in the process of manufacturing change. The end is the means in itself when the means and end is God through the Lord Jesus Christ and the saving grace brought with the Holy Spirit of Jehovah. Even a Christian society may make more with less, for the material allocation of resources have elements of grace about them to serve the purposes of God for humanity in history. Inventive and creative distros of ideas and events processes have coefficients in teleology as well as the character of people involved as producers and receivers of product.
Gill in writing about Christian contentment with what one has (God), wrote (page 154 of Practical Divinity) "it is enough (Hab. 2:5; Prov. 30:16), for though the world is set in their hearts and they have all that is in it, "the lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life," they are not content; as it is reported of Alexander, when he had conquered the whole world as he thought, sat down and cried because there was not another world to conquer; so boundless were his pride and ambition, and so little contentment had he in his acquisitions."
While humanity has stalled a little on the horizon of space exploration to other worlds and star systems it is a kind of grace to consider contentment with what one has, and to use those resources one has in the most optimal way of creative efficiency and packing of fabrications in accord with the grace of the Lord; with contentment in what one has, and trust in God to deliver sentient elements of constructive instructions for order while time's penultimate space expands. If one optimizes resource use through contentment with what one has before engulfing new exterior resources the development or aggregation of advanced implicit utilization infrastructures would be better than with expansion by unregenerate mankind. The Kingdom of God is within, and with that one finds contentment.
Quoting further from John Gill page 141; "1b1a. Be they more or less, whether a man has a larger or a lesser share of the things of this world, whether riches or poverty, a man should be content; it was a wise petition of Agur, “Give me neither riches nor poverty; feed me with food convenient for me,” or that which is sufficient and enough (Prov. 30:8), but be it either, a man should be satisfied with what God gives"
"1b1b. Men should be content, as with present advantages and growing profit, so with present losses, which might have been greater; as Job was with the loss of his substance, his children, and his health, and perhaps all in one day; saying, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord!” (Job 1:21); for let the saint lose what he may, he cannot lose his God, his portion, and his all, his Redeemer and Saviour, his better and more enduring substance, his inheritance reserved in the heavens; and therefore takes joyfully the spoiling of his goods, and is content with the loss of earthly things.
1b1c. With present reproaches, indignities, and ill usage from men, on account of religion; like Moses, esteeming reproach for Christ’s sake greater riches than all the treasures in Egypt; yea, our Lord pleased not himself, but was content to bear all the reproaches of the people on him; and who for the encouragement of his followers, pronounces them blessed when reviled and reproached (Heb. 11:25; 2 Sam. 16:10-12; Rom. 15:1-3; Matthew 5:11).
1b1d. With present afflictions of whatsoever kind, whether from God or men; for in whatsoever way, they rise not out of the dust, nor come by chance; but according to the will and appointment of God; and though not joyous, but grievous, yet sanctified, yield good fruit, and work together for good; and are the means of making men more partakers of divine holiness; and those light present afflictions, which are but for a moment, work a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."-end quote
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