Testimony
23:49
Learning to be Content
Learning to be Content
In the 1980s I was doing a job I didn't really like, I was thinking there is surely something better for me in life. Physically is was very hard, and many times bad conditions. One day I went to work and it was drizzling....I had to put some fence and gate posts up on a bypass. The location was difficult to get to with a car and I had to walk with my tools etc with a wheel barrow. The bypass had heavy earth moving machines and very big trucks - the ones that are as big as a house and the tyres are massive. The only way I could walk was in the tracks those trucks had left behind to get to the place I was to work. But the mud really hampered the wheel on my puny wheel barrow and I had to stop often to scrape it off just to get it to push along. It must have been a strange sight with all this heavy earth-moving equipment and me with my wheel barrow struggling along in the mud Eventually I reached my destination - it was under the main electric pylons for Buildwas power station. And you could hear the rain sizzling as it fell on the wires above - A bit of back ground hum!. And so here I was on a hillside in the drizzling rain already exhausted from the trek through the mud - and it was deep. It was there underneath those sizzling pylons the Lord helped me to lay to rest the dislike and discontentment I had for the job. Somehow I thought about what the Apostle Paul said about being content in all circumstances:
"I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength. Philippians 4:11-13
Somehow - I dont remember everything, possibly I prayed ....but the Lord I can remember helped me to accept His Word and my lot in life that day with grace. It helped to change my attitude to work, I started to enjoy it......and take pride in doing a good job. It was no longer boring or monotonous. And I stuck with that job for years until I eventually became a missionary. I learned to enjoy work. The Bible says to enjoy ones work is a gift from God - Ecclesiastes 5:19 I can certainly say I agree with that.....God in His goodness gave me joy in my work. And He chose to give it in a place of great difficulty and mud under a bleak and rainy sky. I share this because I can rejoice in the goodness of God. Gods ways are not our ways......His ways are better.
