Burroughs was an English Congregationalist and eminent Puritan divine, born in East Anglia in 1599 or 1600.
I’m posting this material because Christian contentment is necessary for godliness to be great gain; and after listening to the audiobook, I realized that Burroughs’ ideas are like jewels to any Christian who wants to grow in grace.
Please listen through parts in order, as this is an audiobook and the initial parts lay a necessary foundation for the latter parts. See part one for links to the Kindle version of this audiobook, and to the 3 hour 22 minute audiobook you will be listening to in this series: see CATEGORIES, Spiritual Disciplines for all parts.
Each part has an excerpted audiobook mp3, 15 – 20 minutes in length; the narrative section only provides highlights of the audiobook excerpt:
Part 6
The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment; Part 6 [Emboldening, underscoring, square brackets are mine]:
A 16 minute audiobook follows the textual excerpts from the Kindle version of Burroughs book, pages 22-26; excerpts in capital letters are subheadings;
IT IS NOT SO MUCH THE REMOVING OF THE AFFLICTION THAT IS UPON US AS THE CHANGING OF THE AFFLICTION, THE METAMORPHOSING OF THE AFFLICTION, SO THAT IT IS QUITE TURNED AND CHANGED INTO SOMETHING ELSE.
…though for the thing itself the affliction remains. The way of contentment to a carnal heart is only the removing of the affliction. O that it may be gone!
‘No,’ says a gracious heart, ‘God has taught me a way to be content though the affliction itself still continues.’ There is a power of grace to turn this affliction into good; it takes away the sting and poison of it. [several examples]
Therefore think not this strange that I am speaking of. You do not find one godly man who came out of an affliction worse than when he went into it; though for a while he was shaken, yet at last he was better for an affliction.
But a great many godly men, you find, have been worse for their prosperity. [In scripture, Daniel and Nehemiah were the only two not hurt by it.]
Luther has a similar expression in his comment on the 5th chapter of the Galatians, the 17th verse: he says, [A] ‘Christian becomes a mighty worker and a wonderful creator, that is’, he says, ‘to create out of heaviness joy, out of terror comfort, out of sin righteousness, and out of death life.’ He brings light out of darkness.
It was God’s prerogative and great power, his creating power to command the light to shine out of darkness. Now a Christian is partaker of the divine nature, so the Scripture says; grace is part of the divine nature, and, being part of the divine nature, it has an impression of God’s omnipotent power, that is, to create light out of darkness, to bring good out of evil-by this way a Christian comes to be content.
God has given a Christian such power that he can turn afflictions into mercies, can turn darkness into light.
…many carnal people are ready to make such expressions as these ridiculous, understanding them in a carnal way.
This is just like Nicodemus, in the third of John, ‘What! can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb and be born?’
So when we say of grace, that it can turn water into wine, and turn poverty into riches, and make poverty a gainful trade, a carnal heart says, ‘Let them have that trade if they will, and let them have water to drink, and see if they can turn it into wine.’ Oh, take heed you do not speak in a scornful way of the ways of God;
This is the mystery of contentment, not so much by removing the evil, as by metamorphosing the evil, by changing the evil into good.
A CHRISTIAN COMES TO THIS CONTENTMENT NOT BY MAKING UP THE WANTS OF HIS CIRCUMSTANCES, BUT BY THE PERFORMANCE OF THE WORK OF HIS CIRCUMSTANCES.
This is the way of contentment. There are these circumstances that I am in, with many wants: I want this and the other comfort-well, how shall I come to be satisfied and content?
A carnal heart thinks, I must have my wants made up or else it is impossible that I should be content.
But a gracious heart says, ‘What is the duty of the circumstances God has put me into?
Indeed, my circumstances have changed, I was not long since in a prosperous state, but God has changed my circumstances. The Lord has called me no more Naomi, but Marah. [From the book of Ruth]
Now what am I to do?
What can I think now are those duties that God requires of me in the circumstances that he has now put me into?
Let me exert my strength to perform the duties of my present circumstances.
Others spend their thoughts on things that disturb and disquiet them, and so they grow more and more discontented. [Focusing on what they would prefer to be experiencing; on escaping the present evil, etc.]
‘Had I but my wealth, as I had heretofore, how would I use it to his glory? God has made me see that I did not honor him with my possessions as I ought to have done. O if I had it again, I would do better than I did before.’
You should labor to bring your heart to quiet and contentment by setting your soul to work in the duties of your present condition.
And the truth is, I know nothing more effective for quieting a Christian soul and getting contentment than this, setting your heart to work in the duties of the immediate circumstances that you are now in, and taking heed of your thoughts about other conditions as a mere temptation.
No, no, let me consider what is the duty of my present circumstances, and content my heart with this, and say, ‘Well, though I am in a low position, yet I am serving the counsels of God in those circumstances where I am; it is the counsel of God that has brought me into these circumstances that I am in, and I desire to serve the counsel of God in these circumstances.
After David in his generation had served the counsel of God, then David fell asleep. O that should be the care of a Christian, to serve out God’s counsels.
What is the counsel of God? The circumstances that I am in, God has put me into by his own counsel, the counsel of his own will.
So I shall have my heart quieted for the present, and shall live and die peaceably and comfortably, if I am careful to serve God’s counsel.
A GRACIOUS HEART IS CONTENTED BY THE MELTING OF HIS WILL AND DESIRES INTO GOD’S WILL AND DESIRES; BY THIS MEANS HE GETS CONTENTMENT.
This too is a mystery to a carnal heart. It is not by having his own desires satisfied, but by melting his will and desires into God’s will. So that, in one sense, he comes to have his desires satisfied though he does not obtain the thing that he desired before; still he comes to be satisfied with this, because he makes his will to be at one with God’s will.
It is said of believers that they are joined to the Lord, and are one spirit; that means, that whatever God’s will is, I do not only see good reason to submit to it, but God’s will is my will.
This is the excellence of grace: grace does not only subject the will to God, but it melts the will into God’s will, so that they are now but one will.
You will say, This is hard! I will express it a little more: A gracious heart must needs have satisfaction in this way, because godliness teaches him this, to see that his good is more in God than in himself. The good of my life and comforts and my happiness and my glory and my riches are more in God than in myself.
THE MYSTERY CONSISTS NOT IN BRINGING ANYTHING FROM OUTSIDE TO MAKE MY CONDITION MORE COMFORTABLE, BUT IN PURGING OUT SOMETHING THAT IS WITHIN.
Now the men of the world, when they would have contentment, and lack anything, Oh, they must have something from outside to content them. But a godly man says: ‘Let me get something out that is in already, and then I shall come to contentment.’
The way to contentment is to purge out your lusts and bitter humours. ‘From whence are wars, and strifes? are they not from your lusts that are within you?’ (James 4:1).
So if those lusts that are within, in your heart, were got out, your condition would be a contented condition. These are the mysterious ways of godliness, that the men of the world never think of.
Here are seven particulars now named [he is referring to 7 points covered in my parts 1 – 6], and there are many more. Without the understanding of these things, and the practice of them, you will never come to a true contentment in your life; Oh, you will be bunglers in this trade of Christianity. But the right perceiving of these things will help you to be instructed in it, as in a mystery.
Burroughs, Jeremiah. The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment (pp. 22-26). Unknown. Kindle Edition.
For other parts of this series on Burroughs’ book, see Categories: Spiritual Disciplines