Christian Contentment, Described [Rare Jewel ch. 1 Summary]

[This is the 1^st installment of Blake Johnson's walk-through of the book The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment by Jeremiah Burroughs.]

I’ve started rereading Jeremiah Burrough’s book, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment. It is a treasure, and an important read. Not wishing to serve as a replacement for your reading it, I thought it would be a helpful thing for me to put out little summaries of the chapters from week to week. I will work to include some of the more noteworthy or memorable quotations that he provides.

Chapter one, then: “Christian Contentment, Described.”

Christian contentment, Burroughs says, is more than a mere outward calm; it is a quiet, inward state of trust and submission to God. And it differs from two potential alternatives, though they can look just like it. Christian contentment is not seen in:

1.       Those who are outwardly calm but inwardly disturbed. “Many may sit silently, refraining from discontented expressions, yet inwardly they are bursting with discontent.”

2.       Those who seem patient, but only because of their natural temperament.  “Many men and women have such a natural quietness of spirit and such a bodily constitution that you seldom find them disquieted. Now, mark these people and you will see that they are likewise of a very dull spirit in any good matter; they have no quickness nor liveliness of spirit in such matters either… [What is more,] they are just as content when they commit sin against God. When they have outward crosses or when God is dishonoured, it is all one to them; whether they themselves are crossed or whether God is crossed. But a gracious heart that is contented with its own affliction, will rise up strongly when God is dishonoured.”

Furthermore, Christian contentment “is not opposed to” certain things that we may believe it to be.

• It is not opposed to our calling affliction, “affliction.” “Christ does not say, ‘Do not count as a cross what it a cross;’ he said, ‘Take up your cross daily.”

• It is not opposed to “making in an orderly manner our moan and complaint to God and to our friends. “He may without any breach of Christian contentment complain to God;” and “likewise he may communicate his sad condition to his Christian friends.”

• It is not opposed to seeking a “lawful” way out of the circumstances. “I may lay in provision for my deliverance and use God’s means, waiting on him because I do not know but that it may be his will to alter my condition.”

He concludes, then, with this definition: “Contentment is the inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit, freely submitting to and taking pleasure in God’s disposal in every condition.”