November 6 Daily Devotional

I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased and I know how to abound; everywhere and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need

(Philippians 4:11–12)

There are two big principles here. The first of course is the condition at which the Apostle had arrived. The second is the way in which he had arrived at that condition.... Let us first look at the condition to which the Apostle had attained. He describes it by the word that is translated here as ‘content’.... But ... the word ‘content’ does not fully explain it; it really means that he is ‘self-sufficient’, independent of circumstances or conditions or surroundings, ‘having sufficiency in oneself.... The affirmation made by the Apostle is that he has arrived at a state in which he can say quite honestly and truthfully that he is independent of his position ... and of everything that is happening to him. Now that that was no mere rhetorical statement on the part of the Apostle is made very clear in the records that we have of this man and of his life in different parts of the New Testament.... You remember how he and Silas were arrested [at Philippi] and beaten and thrown into prison with their feet made fast in the stocks. Their physical conditions could not very well have been worse, yet so little effect did that have upon Paul and Silas that ‘at midnight [they] prayed and sang praises unto God’ (Acts 16:25). Independent of circumstances, ‘content in whatsoever state I am’, to be self-satisfied, independent of surroundings. That is what you find also in the famous passage in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter twelve, where Paul tells us how he learned to be independent of ‘the thorn in the flesh’, self-sufficient in spite of it. You remember also how he exhorts Timothy to take hold of this principle by saying: ‘Godliness with contentment is great gain’ (1 Timothy 6:6). There is nothing like it, he says in effect; if you have that you have everything.

Spiritual Depression, pp. 277–8