I prepared well. I prayed for pure motives and repented from impure ones. I disciplined myself not to dwell on “what others would think.”
I drove to the church with one aim: to glorify God and encourage the ladies in evangelism. I taught the evangelism class with Spirit-empowered passion and boldness. I made a few mistakes. But I drove home quietly satisfied in Christ.
That quiet satisfaction felt irregular and odd to me. No paralyzing insecurity?
Contentment.
Recently I’ve learned how much contentment applies to ministry.
Early Identity in Ministry
From infancy to the end of middle school, I found my identity in being a “missionary kid.” But one night my parents broke the news to me.
“We’re leaving Bolivia. We’re moving back to the States.”
I was crushed. I wanted to be a missionary kid until I graduated high school. Moving back to the States? Leaving my home in Bolivia? Becoming an average American kid? It felt like my identity was being torn from me.
Still, my aspirations to be a missionary never left. “The United States will just be my mission field,” I thought.
As a freshman in high school, I read John Piper’s book, Don’t Waste Your Life, and I prayed big prayers asking God to use me. I hung a paper sign on my wall that said, “Jesus is not a PART of my life, Jesus IS my life.” I wanted my life to be laid down for Christ.
I still do. But what if “laying my life down for Christ” doesn’t look like I thought it would?
Contentment.
Simple, Quiet Faithfulness
I graduated from North Greenville University and became a member of Ridgewood Church in Greer. I asked my discipleship pastor to meet about my passionate desire to become a missionary. He intentionally scheduled the meeting about a month later when my dopamine rush subsided.
I sat in the living room and told my pastor, and my friend Hannah, about my missional aspirations. They told me to wait — to practice my faithfulness muscles in the mundane.
Over the two years I’ve been at Ridgewood Church, I’ve continually heard the same ministry mantra. Be simple. Work hard and be quiet about it. Be faithful where God has placed you. Frequent the same restaurants, coffee shops, and grocery stores to build relationships and share the gospel. Be rooted. Be okay with staying in one place for 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years.
But, behind all those truths was a needed lesson that could sustain that ministry model.
Contentment.
And though my heart wants to cry out, “But what about,” I must quiet my soul to learn the mystery of contentment — of rest and trust in the Lord.
Repenting from Finding Contentment in Ministry
We’re tempted to find contentment and fill our longings for satisfaction in ministry. We feel we’re not enough, so we use ministry to fill our need for purpose and identity. We take our desire to be great and mix it with our ministry and end up with a recipe of insecurity, pride, and discontentment.
But Christ offers a better way.
First, He gives us an identity as children of God. He saves us by grace through faith. And then He calls us to walk in the good works that He already prepared for us beforehand (Eph. 2:8–10).
After Jesus sent out the 72 to minister, they came back rejoicing that the demons were subject to them. But Christ reminded them to rejoice that their names were written in heaven (Luke 10:20).
When Martha was distracted with much serving and Mary sat at Jesus’ feet, He didn’t commend Martha’s anxious serving. Rather, He commended Mary’s presence at His feet (Luke 10:38–42).
Jesus cares for our hearts — more than our performance. He desires our love and worship above all else. He cares about you — not just your ministry (1 Pet. 5:7).
Our discontentment will slowly disappear when we repent from our self ambition in ministry. And then what else can emerge, except satisfying delight in Christ (Ps. 16:1–11)?
Contentment in Christ
Paul said he could do all things through Christ who gives him strength in Philippians 4:13 — he was talking about contentment, not achievement.
Paul said, “Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need” (Phil. 4:11–12).
Then, based in that context, he said, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Phil. 4:13). His contentment rested in the strength of Christ, not in his circumstances.
Sinful Ambition vs. Holy Ambition
But what about ambition? Does contentment mean I cease to dream about future ministry? Yes and no — it depends on whether the type of ambition is holy or sinful.
Sinful Ambition
Ambition is a type of discontentment. It’s about wanting and doing more — being forward-driven. Ambition is sinful when it’s rooted in pride, ungratefulness, selfishness, discontentment, and restlessness. Paul said in Philippians 2:3, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.”
Ambition is wrong when it’s about making ourselves great for our own sake.
The disciples argued over who was the greatest, and Jesus reminded them of servanthood (Mark 9:33–36). And John the Baptist reminds us that “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).
Ultimately, ambition is sin when we seek our satisfaction and identity in idols instead of in Christ. Yes, even ministry can be an idol. But when we repent from selfish ambition, something else can emerge: godly ambition.
Godly Ambition
Not all ambition is sinful. There’s a God-glorifying type of ambition. Paul was satisfied in Christ, but he was also ambitious. In fact, he didn’t stay in the same place forever. He moved around a lot. But his moving around wasn’t due to restless discontentment — it was due to godly ambition for the Lord.
“(A)nd thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation, but as it is written, ‘Those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand’” (Rom. 15:20–21).
We see Paul’s godly ambitions throughout the New Testament. He was in anguish over the Galatians’ spiritual state (Gal. 4:19). He didn’t value his life for his own sake; instead, his goal was to finish the ministry he received from the Lord — testifying of the gospel (Acts 20:24). Paul was passionate about treasuring Christ. He said he counted all things as rubbish compared to knowing Christ (Phil. 3:8).
Some holy discontentment is good: wanting people to be mature in Christ, wanting people to be saved, wanting God to be glorified, and wanting to go to other lands to preach the gospel.
Paul’s ambitions weren’t about him. His ambitions were about being faithful and obedient to God’s call on his life — to preach the gospel to the Gentiles.
Paul already gave up his pride, achievements and former identity in Judaism (Phil. 3:3–10). Paul was already loved by God (Gal. 2:20). Paul had no righteousness apart from Christ, and he didn’t seek to establish his own (Phil. 3:9; Rom. 3:21–22; Rom. 10:3). Paul didn’t live for the approval of man, and his ministry wasn’t built on outdoing false apostles who were outwardly more impressive than he was (Gal. 1:10). Paul received his commendation from God, not man (2 Cor. 10:17). Paul was “enough” in Christ and didn’t try to squeeze his sense of worth or identity from his ministry.
Paul’s life gives me hope that both contentment and godly ambition can be present together. He was content in Christ. And from that deep, all-satisfying contentment flowed his holy ambition for ministry.
Servants of Christ
First Corinthians 3:5–7 says, “What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.”
If the one who plants and the one who waters gospel seed isn’t “anything,” then that means doing those things did not make Paul become “something.” In other words, sharing the gospel did not increase Paul’s righteousness, worth, or impressiveness — because in the very act of gospel proclamation, he declared he was nothing.
In 1 Corinthians 9:16, Paul says that his preaching the gospel gives him no grounds for boasting and that necessity is laid upon him. He says, “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!”
So then, what is Paul? He called himself a “servant through whom you believed.” In all our godly ambitions, may we be content to think of ourselves the same way.