Being content part 2

I know I wrote about being content yestarday but last night we had a great discussion on this subject again. I think the hardest thing about being content is that first of all we have a bad idea of what it means to be content. I think we see being content as being happy and excited about going through our current situations. This reminds me how in James when it talks about going through trials that it builds character but no where in there doesn't it say that we need to smile and be stoked about it. The idea behind that is to see that there is a hope behind these things that we can look to that will help us to be ok with what it going on. I believe the main thing about being content is realizing that the current place that we are at in our lives is no accident. We need to realize that God has assigned us to be here or he's allowing us to go through a trial because he has something bigger and better for us. We need to take our eyes off of our current situations and put them on the Lord.
One thing I want to talk about real quick is the idea of being mad at God. We talked last night about how we get sometimes when things aren't going the way would want them to go. Whether it's hurt, depression or the feeling of dissapointment when your plans don't work out the way we thought they would. The funny thing about this is when we look back on the things that God has brought us out of, we see how his hand has been on us and how much his way was better then ours. Here's something to think of next time we get like this, the next time we get mad at God and feel that it's unfair that we have to go through something hard. The only thing we deserve my friends is death and punishment! We don't deserve God to help us, we don't deserve God to care about what we are going through, and we definately don't deserve him to love us. But he does help, he does care, and he can't stop loving you. We need to realize that even though we might be going through a tough season in our lives we need to be content/ok with what we are going through not because we like it but because we have a good God who is at work in our lives, who will never leave us nor forsake us in the midst of our trials, and a good God who loves us so much that he will turn all this bad stuff into good for his glory.
My prayer is that God would open our eyes to see that there is a hope and a purpose for what we are facing in this point of time in life. I pray that we would take our focus off all the pain, worry, and any other feeling that comes with our current struggles and focus on the hope that God has for us. I pray that we can our lives as we are and not want anything else other then God and help us to live out or lives with a peace and no fear/worry of what's happening to us.