Contentment, Prosperity, and God’s Glory

Book excerpt: Why is it difficult to be content when you have so much? On the surface, it seems unnecessary to instruct someone to be content in times of prosperity. However, times of prosperity and abundance provide some of the strongest temptations to pull our hearts away from God. Jeremiah Burroughs was keenly aware that the riches of this world compete for our affections and challenge our contentment in Christ. Originally prepared as an appendix to The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment , this book provides an important conclusion to Burroughs’s sermon series on Philippians 4:11–12: “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: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. Table of Contents: 1. Introduction 2. What Learning to Be Full Means 3. The Difficulty of Learning to Be Full 4. The Necessity of Learning to Be Full 5. The Excellency of Learning to Be Full 6. The Mystery of Learning to Be Full 7. Lessons for Learning to Be Full 8. Increasing the Guilt of Sins of Abundance 9. Applications for Improving Prosperous Conditions 10. Concluding Words on Contentment Series Description Interest in the Puritans continues to grow, but many people find reading these giants of the faith a bit unnerving. This series seeks to overcome that barrier by presenting Puritan books that are convenient in size and unintimidating in length. Each book is carefully edited with modern readers in mind, smoothing out difficult language of a bygone era while retaining the meaning of the original authors. Books for the series are thoughtfully selected to provide some of the best counsel on important subjects that people continue to wrestle with today.