Last week – courtesy of Jeremiah Burroughs’ The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment – we saw the first reason why discontent is foolish for the Christian believer, and even sinful. Here’s the second: 

2. By all your discontent you cannot help yourselves, you cannot get anything by it.

Who by taking care can add one cubit to his stature, or make one hair that is white to be black? You may vex and trouble yourselves but you can get nothing by it.

Do you think that the Lord will come in mercy a whit the sooner because of the murmuring of your spirits? Oh, no, but mercy will be rather deferred the longer for it; though the Lord was about to send mercy before, yet this disorder of your hearts is enough to put him out of his course of mercy, and though he had thoughts that you should have the thing before, yet now you shall not have it. If you had a mind to give something to your child, yet if you see him in a discontented, fretting mood you will not give it him.

And this is the very reason why many mercies are denied to you, because of your discontent. You are discontented for want of them, and therefore you do not get them. You deprive yourselves of the enjoyment of your own desires, because of the discontent of your hearts, because you do not get your desires – and is not this a foolish thing?

Tune in next week for reason number three. (And remember you can get the Kindle version of this excellent book for only 77p).