When it’s okay to be discontent

Mar 15, 2013Find joy today, Kingdom Uncaged

discontent

Of course there’s a place for contentment and counting your gifts.

We should be the most gratitude-based folks on this planet, we who love Jesus and are loved by Him.

But there is a time to shrug off contentment. And that’s when you have a holy ache for the things of God, and things on this earth are not as they should be.

I felt holy discontent rise up within me when I wrote that letter to the boys who molested me. Perhaps you felt that angst when I wrote, “We stand for healing. We stand in Jesus’ strength for the sake of future radically saved lives. We who know redemption are tired of miring ourselves in the painful past. Instead we will STAND. We will dance. We will give our healed lives to rescue souls from the darkness. (Click to tweet).

What makes me discontent?

  1. The devastation of poverty in this world. (Walking through the streets of Port au Prince, Haiti showed me just how insulated and removed I am from actual poverty).
  2. Human trafficking makes my blood boil.
  3. The sheer amount of sexual assault in the world makes me deliriously angry. Especially when it happens by trusted folks (clergy, teachers, people in authority) and other authorities cover it up.
  4. Cancer. I have friends battling it. I’m grateful for researchers who have a holy discontent for that awful, awful disease and work toward a cure.
  5. Women being marginalized in many parts of the world, who don’t have a voice, who live in fear and victimhood.
  6. Preventable disease, like Malaria. A friend of my son Aidan died a few years ago, a victim of malaria.
  7. Pornography in any awful form. It’s tearing apart families, ruining those participating in it, and dehumanizes what God has deemed a beautiful act.
  8. That the gospel of Jesus Christ is maligned because those who say they are following Him don’t give an accurate picture of Him. Hypocrisy makes me mad (and I hate it in myself).

There are more things that make me mad, I’m sure. But I wanted to give you a chance to share what makes you mad. In the comment section, share your holy discontent, and what you’d like to do to remedy the situation.

 

 

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