Greetings and welcome to the Beacon Broadcast from Beacon Baptist Church on Kirkpatrick Road in Burlington, North Carolina. The Beacon Broadcast is supported in part by the gifts of faithful listeners. If you'd like to correspond with Pastor Barkman and The Beacon Broadcast, or if you wish to support this radio ministry, write to The Beacon Broadcast, Post Office Box 159, Alamance, NC 27201. The Beacon Broadcast, Post Office Box 159, Alamance, NC 27201. Now with today's message from God's Word, here is Pastor Greg Barkman. In the standard Baptist Church covenant, members commit themselves in paragraph 2 to helping their church to grow and develop in three areas, namely knowledge, holiness, and comfort. And we're ready for that third one today. We engage, therefore, by the aid of the Holy Spirit to walk together in Christian love to strive for the advancement of this church in knowledge, holiness, and comfort. We have no difficulty figuring out what knowledge and holiness are. There's plenty to work on there, but at least we understand what it is that we are supposed to be doing in helping our church to advance in knowledge and holiness, but what are we supposed to be doing if we are endeavoring to help our church grow and develop in comfort. That's quite an interesting word, isn't it, to be used in this way. Well, what does comfort mean? One definition is contented well-being. Contented well-being. In other words, the goal for church members in relationship to their church is that there be a state of spiritual health which is reflected by contentment, a sense of well-being, that all is well, that I'm content, that I'm happy to be where I am, that I'm satisfied with the dealings of God in my life. I'm grateful to be a member of this church. I'm content. I'm doing well. I'm developing, I'm growing, I'm thriving spiritually as a member of this congregation. That's the idea. And it is the responsibility of all members to help the church develop in comfort, that is, to help all the other members of the church make progress toward this level of comfort, this state of contented well-being. I think the words of Paul in Ephesians chapter 4 verses 13 and 14 are a good description of this. He says, till we all come in the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God to a perfect man, that is mature, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ that we should no longer be children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the trickery of men in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting. What Paul is describing here is, to some degree, the opposite of comfort, of well-being. The enemy of our souls is out to make us discontent. He is endeavoring to make us uneasy and to cause us to be uncertain about who we are and what we believe. and where we ought to be and where we can best grow and thrive spiritually. And so he is endeavoring to create discontent. Whereas growing, mature Christians are developing in contentment and are helping others around them to develop in contentment as well. I don't think I need to tell you that we live in an age of uneasiness, an age of spiritual discontent. It seems to permeate all of our society and it certainly does not leave Christianity untouched. We see that, for example, by the frequency with which church members change churches. We live in a revolving door style of Christianity. People will involve themselves in one local church for a while, a few months, maybe a few years, and then they get restless and move on again. And they go find another church where they think that they will be more content, will be more prosperous spiritually, but usually it's an unending round of relocations. Understandably, I suppose, you can imagine that I do follow with interest the church lives of people who leave our congregation. And people do leave for various reasons. It's never my desire to see people leave. Of course, sometimes relocations to other cities and other circumstances in their lives, marriages and so forth, require a relocation. When two people marry from two different churches, they can't end up both of them and the church they came from. Somebody's going to have to give up their church in order for the other one, in order for the couple to remain together as a married couple, obviously. And so there are various circumstances where relocation of churches within the same locality does become necessary. And certainly when you leave a locality, of course, it goes without saying, you have to find another church. But the level of people church hopping church shopping and hopping going on all the time in the same locality has reached alarming proportions. It's a growing trend in our day. Pollsters have detected the same trend. Anybody who observes this with a degree of interest like I do, and I'm sure many others do as well, has noticed that this is not only a a phenomena of our age, but it seems to be an increasing phenomena. It seems to be accelerating more and more as time goes on. And I started to say, I generally follow with interest those who depart from our church, and most of the time, not always, but most of the time, you'll see the pattern repeated. They go to another church for a while, and then pretty soon they're at another church, and then pretty soon they're at another church, and pretty soon they're at another church. It's hard to keep up with them. Sometimes my children, who are pretty well grown now, in fact they are all grown, they're all past the age of majority by quite a few years, and sometimes they'll run into their friends who grew up in church with them, but their families left our church and they come back and report to us. I ran into so-and-so today and they said that their parents are attending such and such a church. And I will say, well, I thought they went to so-and-so church. And then I heard that they had gone to another church. And now you say they're at this church. Yep. Moving around, moving around, moving around. What's going on? Spirit of the age. lack of contentment, lack of comfort. Now we need to explore this a little bit. I say it's a problem of our age and it's not just churches by any means. Actually churches are getting the overflow of what's happening in our society. We see the same thing happening with jobs. Job instability, lack of security in jobs is a growing problem in our day. It has something to do, I suppose, with the change in the economy, but I think as much as anything it has something to do with the change in our society in certain cultural norms and changes which are developing, which actually, I'm convinced, represent a downward trend. This is not good. It's not that people should never change jobs, but this idea of changing, changing, changing, and of course the same thing in regard to marriage. Never more divorces than we have in our day. Why? The same phenomena. People can't seem to settle down and be content. Changing jobs, changing spouses, changing houses. People used to frequently, frequently buy a home and live there for the rest of their lives. Well, that's very rare. That not only is not the norm, that is almost unheard of in our day. It wasn't unheard of in the days of our grandparents. That was quite common for someone to get married, buy a house or build a house and raise a family and live in that same house for the rest of their lives. But today, if somebody stays in the same house all of their adult life, they are considered to be very strange indeed because most people are going to change houses numerous times again and again and again and again and again sometimes there are legitimate reasons for good reasons for it no question about that it's a reflection of the uneasiness and discontent of our society and what's going on Well, when it comes to Christianity, a big part of the problem is that Christianity is moving away from a doctrinal foundation to a feeling-oriented style of Christianity. And people are looking for comfort not in the truth, which they learn from the Bible, but in their surroundings. immature Christians who are not made stable and comfortable and content by their understanding of God's Word are instead looking for comfort and contentment in their surroundings. It's more of a psychological approach. And so We are supposed to be striving for a state of contentment and well-being that is not related or dependent upon our circumstances. Like the Apostle Paul who said, I have learned in whatsoever state I am therewith to be content. He was content in his relationship with God and his knowledge of God's Word and it didn't depend upon circumstances around him that made him feel good. he had a settled and growing faith in God through his word and therefore he was content in any circumstance but if you are not grounded in the word of God then you are constantly being unsettled in your circumstances I'm just not getting the same level of good feelings, good vibes from this church relationship that I used to get, so let's find another one. You go there for a while and it's just not doing it for me anymore. Let's find another one. Let's try another one. And so on and on and on it goes. And that should be a signal that something's wrong. This is a very immature level of Christian living. And instead of always thinking that when you're not feeling good about your situation, that there's something wrong with the circumstances, you ought to instead find out if there isn't something within you. Funny that people very seldom look at it that way. If I feel like something's wrong, then of course there's something wrong with the other guy, with the church, with the other people. I've got to find another place where things are right. Dear friend, how long is it going to take you to realize that there is no place where everything is going to be right. And how long will it take you to realize that when you get that feeling of discontentment, it's probably because of something in your life that needs to be understood, confronted, identified, confronted, acknowledged, and changed. It's a part of growing. It's a part of your sanctification. And then you will become more content. Until tomorrow, Greg Barkman saying good day, may God give you His eternal peace.