Turn up the “mercies” in the music of your life. The rhetoric of the Spirit magnifies your mercies! A person who is filled with the Holy Spirit makes more of their blessings than they make of their sorrows. This does not mean pretending that your sorrows do not exist. But when you have suffering and pain in one area of your life, you can put it alongside another area where you have been especially blessed.

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 or hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. (Philippians 4:11-13)
Paul had experienced the best and the worst of life in this world.
He knew what it was to be “brought low” and he knew what it was to “abound.” He knew what it was to have “plenty” and he knew what it was to be in “need.” Paul had experienced life at the top and life at the bottom. He knew the full range of human experience and he says, “In every circumstance, I have learned to be content.”
The implication of the word “learned” is that it was not always like this for Paul. He grew in contentment over time. It did not come quickly and it did not come easily, but there was growth and there was progress for him, and the same can be true for us today.
Bring to Mind the Blessings of God
Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. (Philippians 4:8)
God has given you the ability to choose where you focus your attention. What are the good things about your family? What are the good things about your church, your work, your neighborhood? Bring these to mind, especially when you are inclined to complain, and as you do, you will learn to be content.
Make more of your joys than you do of your sorrows. Make more of your gains than you do of your losses. Do this in your thinking, in your speaking, and even in your praying, and you will grow in contentment. I’ve included praying here because of what Paul says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Philippians 4:6).
If you do this, “the peace of God…will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (4:7).
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Love Christ more and you will love money less. When you have less you will find yourself saying, “I am learning to be content. Christ is more to me than all the world.” When you have more you will say, “How can I use what I have to serve Christ? Because Christ is more to me than all the world.”

However much you have, there are others who have more. However little you have, there are others who have less. All of us have more than some other people. All of us have less than some other people.
However much or little God has trusted to you, there will be seasons of life when you have less and seasons of life when you have more. Let’s stand in both positions today and hear what God says to us when we have more and when we have less.
When You Have Less: Learn the Art of Contentment
Godliness with contentment is great gain. (1 Timothy 6:6)
Contentment is finding joy in what God has given to you. The opposite of contentment is greed. Contentment is a Christian grace that grows over time. It does not come quickly, easily, or naturally. Paul says “I have learned to be content” (Philippians 4:12).
How did he learn it? He tells us “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content” (Philippians 4:12).
God used the experience of loss to produce the good fruit of contentment in Paul’s life. Have you discovered the secret of being content?
Jeremiah Burroughs described contentment as “a rare jewel.”[1] How can you find joy in what God gives you, especially when it is less than you had before? Burroughs has great wisdom on how to obtain this jewel:
A Christian comes to contentment, not so much by way of addition as by way of subtraction…Contentment does not come by adding to what you have, but by subtracting from what you desire. The world says that you will find contentment when your possessions rise to meet the level of your desires… The Christian has another way to contentment, that is, he can bring his desires down to his possessions.[2]
So why is godliness with contentment “great gain”? Paul gives four reasons in 1 Timothy 6:

You cannot keep what you gain in this world (v7).
If you set your heart on money, you expose yourself to powerful temptations that ruin many people (v9).
You may wander from the faith (v10).

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The heart you were born with loved the wrong things. By nature, we were lovers of self rather than lovers of God. But God has given us a new heart, and this is why we love Him, trust Him, and want to serve Him. That’s regeneration.

If you search the Bible for the word “regeneration,” you won’t come up with much.
In the English Standard Version, it occurs just once.
When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior.Titus 3:4–6
If you run your search on the New American Standard Bible, you will find “regeneration” in Titus 3, and also in the words of Jesus recorded in Matthew 19.
Truly I say to you, that you who have followed Me, in the regeneration when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.Matthew 19:28
Other translations say, “in the new world” (ESV) or “at the renewal of all things” (NIV).
Jesus is speaking about the new heaven and the new earth, and the word He uses to describe this transformation is “the regeneration.”
Regeneration involves taking something (in this case the planet that has been devastated by sin) and making it new, so that it reflects the glory of God.
And this is the word that the Bible uses to describe God’s work in you. If you are in Christ, then what God will one day do for this planet, He has already done in you!
Regeneration is an often overlooked doctrine. But despite the fact that the word occurs rarely in the Bible, the transformation that God is able to bring through Jesus Christ is one of the Bible’s major themes.
Scripture speaks about regeneration in at least four ways.
New Birth
Jesus said,
No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.John 3:3
You must be born again.John 3:7
To be born again is to receive an infusion of new life that comes from God.
This new birth is a work of the Holy Spirit:
The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.John 3:8
And the Holy Spirit brings new life through the Word.
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Temptations will come to you this week, and Jesus says, “Watch and pray, so that what will come to you will not enter into you and trap you.”

Everybody is tempted. As long as you’re in the body, temptation can reach you. The impulse to sin has a landing place in your life.
Jesus doesn’t say, “Watch and pray, so you won’t be tempted.” There is no way you can get into a place in the Christian life where you are no longer tempted. He says, “Watch and pray, so that you will not fall into temptation.” Literally it says, “so that you will not enter into temptation.”
John Owen is helpful here. Entering into temptation, Owen says, has two distinctive features:
First, “Satan becomes more earnest than usual.”
There are times when he intensifies his assaults against you. Not every day in the Christian life is the same. There seem to be days and seasons of life when all hell breaks loose. Paul refers to this, “put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes…” (Ephesians 6:13).
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A proper understanding of the Ten Commandments will lead you to faith in Jesus Christ. If you look at yourself honestly in the light of these commandments, it will not be long before you conclude that you are a long way from the life that God has called you to lead, and that you need a Savior.
The law will lead you to Christ by showing you that you need both His forgiveness for breaking His law in the past, and His strength to fulfill the law in the future.
The Ten Commandments are a mentor to lead you to faith in Christ. A mentor is someone who can show you where you need to go and walk with you till you get there. Properly understood, that’s what the commandments will do.
A Proper Understanding
I say ‘properly understood’ because it is possible to look at the Ten Commandments at a surface level and to conclude that we are doing rather well.
A brilliant and successful lawyer asked Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Our Lord responded,
You know the commandments. Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and mother” (Mark 10:19).
The lawyer then said to Jesus, “Teacher, all these I have kept since my youth” (Mark 10:20).
I suspect that the lawyer really believed this. The man had lived a good moral life. He hadn’t murdered anyone. He had been faithful to his wife. He was committed to speaking the truth. He never raided a bank. He was a good upright citizen who flossed his teeth and paid his taxes.
The lawyer wanted to be sure of heaven and, assuming that he had fulfilled the commandments, he wondered if there was anything else he had to do. But the lawyer’s problem was that he did not understand the law!
A Matter of the Heart
Jesus made it clear in the Sermon on the Mount the scope of the commandments go beyond our actions and search out the thoughts and intentions of our hearts. Each commandment identifies a particular sin, but behind that sin lie many others.
Take the sixth commandment for example: You shall not murder. (Exodus 20:13). Picture a train moving along a track on which there are many stations. Murder is the station at the end of a line called ‘Conflict.’ Most people will never go near that station, but all of us have travelled somewhere on this line.