The Best Three Questions I've Ever Heard

It was during a time when my faith was rolling along "fine" (which actually means it's dead) when someone gave me these three questions.

I tend to get skeptical when people tell me their relationship with God is fine and their "heart is in the right place" mainly because my faith experience is rarely "fine" and my heart is never in the right place.

"My faith is fine." Really? What god do you know? Mine is holy, intense, overly-compassionate and complex and yet totally simple, loving, and just. And everything is fine with him? Please tell me how you do it.

Friends, the scriptures are clear: there is a godly contentment and a godly discontentment.

In fact, sentences after St. Paul tells his protege Timothy that "there is great gain in godliness with contentment," he tells him to "fight the good fight of faith?" When was the last time you were content during a fight? If you've ever been in a fight, you'll remember that you were scared out of your mind, adrenaline rushing, and making split second decisions to save your life.

Sound like your Christianity?

The nation God chose to move through in the Old Testament is named "Israel," which literally translates as, "Those Who Wrestle With God." He named his nation whom he would work through a word filled with discontentment and tension. There is godly contentment and there is godly discontentment. It's just about being content in the right things. Being content in your knowledge of this God is missing a lot of who God is - on the other hand, being discontent in what God has provided for you is to be prideful.

So at the point in my life where these things were going screwy, someone gave me these questions, which are written all over my possessions and notebooks:

1) Do you have any real affection for God?

2) How do you spend your time and your money?

3) How do you view the world around you? (i.e. Do you see the world as everyone existing to serve you and your delight or do you see it as you existing to serve everyone and their delight?)

These questions changed my life because there's no escape from them. When we are honest with ourselves, we know if the word "affection" resonates when we think about God, or when our money and time are being spent without any consideration of others, and when we see that barista and that server and that employee and that spouse as existing to serve us rather than the other way around. We know. And it haunts us.

The beauty is that these are also the things Jesus talked about the most and therefore they are the very things that he is saving us to: affection for God, rearrangement or priorities and treasures, and an upside-down view of the world.

Not only that, but even better: he accomplished all of these perfectly, not just to show us, but to justify us before the one we answer to. And that brings me great contentment.