Main Idea: You learn to be satisfied with life as your live your life depending on God.

This morning we conclude our series called "Your Best Life Anyhow" taken from Paul’s letter to the Philippians. In this series we have discovered that God desires for us to experience our best life in spite of our adversity, challenges, crisis or problems. We have seen how that this comes from a choice that involves a determination to be positive, that there are certain actions that are required on our part and last week we explained how we can have peace, God’s peace, in our difficulties. Today we want to talk about being satisfied with our life—where we are and even in the middle of real concerns about our life. What I want us to see is that we learn to be satisfied with life as we live our life in dependence on God.

Two years ago late-night TV talk host David Letterman interviewed an extreme mountaineer named Aron Ralston. According to the Chicago Tribune, Ralston used a pocketknife to sever his lower right arm, which had been pinned beneath an 800-pound boulder in a remote Utah canyon for five days. After rappelling down, he walked three hours, was spotted by a helicopter, and three months later was on national TV explaining all of this to a profoundly moved TV host. With the interview wrapping up, Letterman wondered, "Could everybody have done this?" Ralston, 27, replied, "If you had a choice to go through an hour of pain to live another 60 years, you’d do the same thing."

Letterman didn’t even bother to respond with a quip, the usual antidote to an interview that’s suddenly veered into uncertain terrain. He instead leaned on his elbow, settled himself into his chair, peered at Ralston through those primly professional spectacles, and asked: "Is that what you know about life that I don’t know necessarily?" It was as if Letterman was saying, "You have some answers, Aron? You’ve been to the brink and back, so lemme have ‘em." Aron Ralston made a decision that life didn’t have to be perfect for him to be satisfied. (Verne Gay, Lights out on ‘Late Show’" Chicago Tribune (9/1/030).

What about you? What does it take for you to be satisfied with life? Does it have to be perfect? The perfect family, the perfect job, the perfect home, perfect income, perfect school, perfect church—what does it take? Your satisfaction in life or with life may have taken a serious hit lately because things have happened that have distorted your perception of your perfect life. Alan Jackson has a song called "Remember When." It’s about a couple going through life and when the children finally move away they say, "Remember when…." That may be where you are today, remembering when life wasn’t so crazy, so painful, so hard, so hopeless, so lonely. You wonder, "How can I ever be satisfied with my life again? Will I ever be satisfied with my life?"

Is it possible to be satisfied with life? The answer is "yes" and Paul shows us how in these last lines from his letter to the Philippian church. Paul taught the Philippians that he had learned that it is possible to be satisfied with life by living life depending on God. He knew what it was to live his best life anyhow!

Before we dig into the text I want us to remind ourselves of a little background about the verses we have just read. One thing you need to remember was that throughout his ministry while Paul was physically dependent in his ministry on the gifts of people, he was fiercely independent of people and totally dependent on God. He worked often to support himself as he preached and wanted to be free from having to need anyone else’s support other than God’s. However, he knew that it was right that people give to support his ministry and that God used people to do that. That’s what prompted the letter to the Philippians and that’s what he’s talking about in verse 10 of chapter 4. They had sent him money and the letter is somewhat like a receipt for their help.

Now he tells them that while he is grateful for the money, he is more excited about what God is going to do for them because they sent the money. He tells them in verse 17, "I don't say this because I want a gift from you. What I want is for you to receive a well-earned reward because of your kindness." How could he say this? He could say this because of what he has learned about being satisfied with life! He says in verse 11, "I have learned how to get along happily…." Other translations use the word "content" or "satisfied." The word meant or described a person who through discipline had become independent of external circumstances and discovered within themselves resources that were more than adequate for any situation that might arise. That’s a very powerful statement; yet Paul is saying he has arrived at that place. He’s satisfied with his life because he knows God’s strength and supply within.

Let me say some things about what contentment or satisfaction is not. Being satisfied or content with your life is not blocking out all the negative and deluding yourself that things are really great when they are not. It isn’t liking everything that is happening in our life. It also isn’t settling for those things in your life that are less than they should be. In fact, if there is not some dissatisfaction or discontentment in our life we will never mature or grow.

Being satisfied with life isn’t denial of reality; liking what is happening or tossing in the towel that this is just the way it is. Being satisfied with life is saying that even though I am being tested, I am confident that I can cope because God, through the strength of Christ, makes me sufficient. It’s understanding that, "I may not like what’s happening but I can cope with it because I am depending on Christ, who will enable me to measure up to it."

Okay, how do you get there? How can I be satisfied with my life? One way is by accepting that being satisfied with my life is something that I learn (v. 11). Paul tells the Philippians that while he was glad they sent him money, he was never really in need. Did he mean that he had a secret supply of cash and they didn’t need to help him? No, what he says is, "I have learned…." how to be satisfied with life regardless of my external circumstances. When he says "I," he means it as if saying, "Even if no one else gets this, I do!" He has reached a place where he was free from worry, untroubled by outward events and was totally independent of people and things. How did this happen? He learned it by living life!

Being satisfied with life is something that you learn by living life. God will use life, if we will be willing to be taught, to teach us how to live and especially how to live a life that is satisfied with life as it is. It is taking the cards you are dealt and deciding this is the only hand I can play. This is where I learn to cope, to depend on God, to be satisfied. I can’t run from it, deny it, avoid it. Instead I accept it and decide I will learn from it.

I heard a story about a man who lived with his wife, two small children, and his elderly parents in a tiny hut. He tried to be patient and gracious, but the noise and crowded conditions wore him down. In desperation, he consulted the village wise man. "Do you have a rooster?" asked the wise man. "Yes," he replied. "Keep the rooster in the hut with your family, and come see me again next week."

The next week, the man returned and told the wise elder that living conditions were worse than ever, the rooster crowing and making a mess of the hut. "Do you have a cow?" asked the wise elder. The man nodded fearfully. "Take your cow into the hut as well, and come see me in a week."

Over the next several weeks, the man—on the advice of the wise elder—made room for a goat, two dogs, and his brother’s children. Finally, he could take no more, and in a fit of anger, kicked out all the animals and guests, leaving only his wife, his children, and his parents. The home suddenly became spacious and quiet, and everyone lived happily ever after.

What happened? He learned to be satisfied with life! Whatever has happened or is happening to you this is the place where you learn to be satisfied. God in his providence is offering you and me the chance to learn what nothing else can teach us. If we accept that being satisfied with life is something that only living life will teach us then we will be able to say with Paul, "I—even if no one else knows—know what it is to be satisfied."

Being satisfied with life is a process that we learn as God teaches us. We also become satisfied with life by discovering the disciplines of extremes (v. 12). Paul describes in detail what he has learned in life about being satisfied by defining the extremes that life has presented him. He says he has learned how to live on "almost nothing" or "with everything." Then he says that he has learned "the secret of living in every situation" regardless of what life had thrown at him. He says there is no extreme of life—good or bad—that he has not experienced but that through those extremes he was disciplined to learn to be satisfied with life. Real life forced him to learn things that few people ever discover.

Have you discovered through the extremes of life—the good, the bad, the wonderful, the horrible, the rich, the poor, the hard, the easy, the perfect, the painful—what no one else seems to know, that you can be satisfied with life? Let’s be honest—as good as it is now, it hasn’t always been this good. As bad as it is now, it hasn’t always been this bad. You have experienced the extremes of life. But, and this is the hard part, did you learn the key to being satisfied regardless of the extremes? Were you as satisfied without a job as you were with a job? Were you coping with life with your spouse as without them? There is a constant that God wants us to reach that only the extremes of life can teach us.

Last week as Kathy and I went to bed, she was just lying there and she said, "I’m thanking God for the moment." I said, "What do you mean?" She said, "I am thanking God that our kids are good, my Mom is good, life is good. It hasn’t always been this way and may not be tomorrow but today life is good." That’s discovering the discipline of extremes. That’s something that God teaches us regardless of the pluses or the minuses, I’m okay and life is good.

There is a great deal of our choosing what we will learn from life about being satisfied with life and coping with life. Yet Paul doesn’t want anyone to misunderstand that he was able to be satisfied with life by relying on One source of strength (Phil. 4:13). He says, "For I can do everything with the help of Christ who gives me the strength I need." How many of you and how many times have you come to this verse and clung to it knowing that it was your only hope? Do you realize this verse was forged on the anvil of pain and persecution? Do you realize that this verse was shaped by the brightness of joy and love? Paul says that he can do "everything" or "all things." That doesn’t mean "anything" that he would choose to do. No, it specifically applies to the hard and abundant circumstances of life. He is saying that when life has been good or bad he has relied on one source of strength—Christ and Christ alone.

He says, "I can do…" Those words mean that he has mastered life’s realities, whatever they might be, with the help of Christ. This mastery was based on a dependence on "the One who continually infuses power." In other words, the secret of his independence was really a dependence on the person and presence of Christ within him. No matter what he learned in life, it was because Christ had sustained him so only through Christ was satisfaction with life even a possibility!

These amazing words gather in a scope of life for Paul that is astounding! That word "everything" was filled with so much success and failure, strength and weakness, joy and sorrow and everything in between. Yet, regardless of the extremes and especially in the hard times, Paul never allowed his difficulty to be an excuse for inactivity. He surrendered each one of them to Jesus and they were transformed into strength. He relied on One source of strength to bring him satisfaction with life.

The question is: What is your one source of strength on which you are relying? You may have tried a lot of things and some were helpful but others almost ruined you. You may have gone from one thing to another when there is only One source of strength that will infuse you to handle life: the very person of Jesus Christ. Have you learned this one truth: "Life can’t hurt me where Christ won’t help me"? That’s what Phil. 4:13 is really saying. Christ and Christ alone is your one source of strength on which you must rely.

How can you be satisfied with life? I can be satisfied with life by accepting that it is something I learn, by letting the extremes of life discipline me and by relying on One source of strength to help me. There’s one last thing that Paul says and that is that we are satisfied with life by trusting in God’s never ending supply (v. 19). From verse 14 to verse 18 Paul has been expressing his gratitude for the gift that the Philippians had sent him. He is, however, more excited about how God is going to bless them because of what they had invested in his ministry. He concludes with one great statement of affirmation and praise, " And this same God who takes care of me will supply all your needs from his glorious riches, which have been given to us in Christ Jesus." (v. 19)

Again this verse, along with Phil 4:13, has been a treasured verse for so many here. We have found ourselves in "need"—physically, materially, spiritually, emotionally, and claimed this verse as a hope of unending supply. It tells us that God is the ultimate source of the supply of all the needs that I may have. It tells us that this supply is from his glorious, magnificent, renowned riches that are found in Christ Jesus. It tells us that this supply is limitless and it is, therefore, impossible to ever exhaust it by all the needs combined! It tells us that in all of life there is one constant, never-ending supply for all my needs.

There is only one problem with a verse like this—we have to trust God to supply what we need. Life has a way, though, of whittling down what we really need from what we think we need. In her book All Is Calm Donna Schaper tells about a hiking trip she and her husband look to the Grand Canyon on New Year’s Eve. She writes, "There we were, two twenty-eight-year-olds in love, on the rim of the Grand Canyon on New Year’s Eve. As we watched the sun go down, we remembered the hotel was full and we needed a place to stay. My husband had a brainstorm. ‘I’ll bet the ranger in the bottom of the canyon is lonely, especially tonight. Let’s call him and see how he would feel about having some guests."

"The ranger’s telephone number was in the book. We dialed, explained our situation, and offered to bring groceries down. Gary, the ranger, said he and his wife, Gina, would love company. A half hour after dusk we were on our way down. After an uneventful passage down the curving canyon, we arrived at the bottom. We were invited into their large cabin and they served us a nice dinner. Then they showed us their ‘sports room.’ It was fully of abandoned sports equipment—high-class hiking boots, expensive backpacks, fancy hats, and even fancier walking sticks. ‘People can walk in easily enough with all of this stuff,’ he said, ‘they just can’t walk out.’" (Donna Schaper, All Is Calm (St. Mary’s Press, 1999)

What you had when you walked into the life situation you are now facing is not what you will walk out with. What you walk out with will be exactly what you need if you trust in God’s never ending supply. Then and only then will you be satisfied with life.

So where are you today with your life? Is it your best life anyhow? Are you satisfied, content that you can cope with whatever the "anyhow" brings because you know Christ is within you and all the resources are available to you? It is ultimately your choice. You can because of Christ. Let God make this your best life anyhow. You can choose to allow the adversity, problems, tragedies and crisis to steal the best of life from you. It is your choice. It’s not a question of his ability. It’s a question of our faith.

Father and son Dick and Ricky Hoyt have run together in numerous Ironman races (which include swimming, biking, and running). But the son, Ricky, was born with cerebral palsy. To race, he must be pulled, pushed, and carried by his father. There is a part of us that might jump to the conclusion that Ricky does not race at all, but that his father does all the work.

But tens of thousands of TV viewers saw the son’s role in 1999, when wind, cold, and an equipment failure made progress hard on Ricky, even though his father was the one pedaling the modified tandem bike, Dick knelt down to his son, contorted and trembling in the cold, as the two were still facing many more miles of race on the defective bike. He said to the child belted to the bicycle seat, "Do you want to keep going, Son?" The father would be the one enabling and providing the means to overcome, but the son still had to have the heart to finish. (Bryan Chapell, Holiness By grace, (Crossway Books, 2001)

That’s the question the Father is asking you today: "Do you want to keep going? My strength is endless. My power is tireless. My grace is limitless. Do you have the heart to finish?" Your best life anyhow is waiting. Will you have the heart to finish?

(Resource not cited: "Insights From the Valley," a Sermon by Howard Vanderwall, Preaching Today Tape #29.)

Sunday, October 23, 2005 a.m.

Dr. Bruce Tippit, Pastor

First Baptist Church

Jonesboro, Arkansas

btippit@fbcjonesboro.org