Day 1
and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you
The reason why it will be important to continue with the topic of contentment is threefold.First, we are a country that has become very competitive, very, very competitive. And being competitive, it means we are always trying to outdo each other. You wear a dress, somebody else wants to wear a better one. Am I right? Yet you are not wearing your dress for competition, you just found a good dress and worn it. But everybody else is trying to compete with you. Does that happen?
Now, that idea creates a real problem, where you are trying to outdo each other almost in every area. Now, because the issue that you need to understand right at the beginning is that, there will always be somebody better than you. Bad news, isn’t it? There will always be somebody better than you in which ever area you pick. Are you tall? You will discover somebody taller. Are you fat? You will discover somebody fatter. Are you thin? You will be surprised how thin the next girl you see is.
Therefore, it means you are making yourself to have an impossible life. You will never enjoy life, instead you will endure it all because you are in a competition which is not possible to win it.
I left university 1977. So it is now almost fifty years since I left the university. And you leave university, and even the very idea of being able to look after yourself having grown in the village is such a big idea, until one of your classmates buys a car and then when you are at the bus stop, he waves hello. Now, you need to understand when that happens, all over sudden you don’t enjoy what you have been enjoying. Those days Kenya Bus services were very good. They kept time, they were clean. The matatus were not the main thing in the seventies. Life was wonderful. We felt very nice in a nice estate like Buruburu having come from the village. That was true until somebody else gets a car and you feel, eeh God even me, I need a car.
Thus, you start praying for a car. Then finally God allows you to get a car and you feel so happy for the first time you are driving to church in a car. Only for the person from the traffic department shows you where to park, next to a Mercedes. When you come out, this side is a Mercedes, this side is a Mercedes, your small car in the middle. All of a sudden you are not happy you have a car. And you have just acquired a car. So, you thought the day I have a car I will be a very happy person, but now I have a car but unhappy. You see, people without cars all they want is a car, people with cars- the make matters. Now the issue is not that I have a car, which make.
And you need to understand that if that is what you are talking about, your car will never do. These days we have moved from there, people are now having helicopters. Have you seen the politicians? They are able to do ten meetings in a day. They are moving all over. Now you can actually go to the airport by helicopter. I saw an advert where if you want to go to the airport you don’t need a car taxi, you have air taxi. Are you getting my point? So, people are having aircrafts hence whichever make of a car you have,is not a big issue.
That the kind of culture we are developing. That way, it is not difficult to be contented, it is impossible. There will always be somebody better than you. Always. You are rich, there will be somebody richer. You are beautiful, there will be somebody more beautiful. We have created a culture that ensures we will never ever be satisfied. That’s not God’s message for us. God does not want us to endure life, He wants us to enjoy it. And that’s why this subject is that important.
But then number two as to why we need to discuss this one,is modernism.Sometime back I was asked by Eldoret University to discuss with them the issue of Christianity and modernism. And when I was researching it is when I discovered that in the West HIV is not a big deal. Suicide is the trouble. Yet here e we have HIV crisis centres. What are they called? VCT centers everywhere, isn’t it? Now, there they have suicide centers, and you go to the internet you will find it. They tell you, before you commit suicide please call the following number.
Thus, in the west the biggest killer is suicide is not HIV.And people are not committing suicide because they have nothing to eat. In fact in Britain if you have nothing to eat, if you have no job, you just prove you have no job you are fed on social welfare. They pay you for having no job. You get a salary for having no job. In fact I was told by my daughter who studied there that, if you are poor they also get you a council house. Yes ,you are given a house until you secure a job and afford your own house. It means you can never die out of poverty there because poverty is paid.
Day 2
Listen to my cry, for I am in desperate need; rescue me from those who pursue me, for they are too strong for me
So, when you hear people are committing suicide, they are not committing suicide due to poverty, they are committing suicide due to meaninglessness of life. Some of the people committing suicide are university graduates, they are having big jobs, but life has no meaning. And because life has no meaning they just feel like it is not worth living and they die.
When I was at Alliance, I still remember one of my classmates committing suicide and he was the son of who is who in this country. I will not give you the name, whose name is in our history books. We used to look at him and say, waaah, he is son of somebody whose name we are reading in the books. We thought he should be very proud of his heritage. But one morning the bell rang in the middle of the day and after the bell rang the whole school came together, only for our headmaster to announce, so and so had committed suicide on the valley. Those from Alliance will know there is a forest on the other side towards near Maai-ma-ihii. Somebody was passing, one of the workers was coming to school early morning and found somebody hanging from a tree if I remember correctly.
As usual people started talking about it that he actually had asked for permission to go to Kikuyu township where he secretly bought a brand-new rope. People were wondering what the rope was for. The rope was to kill himself? And he left a poem. The poem talked about the tale of two cities, Muthaiga and Mathare. And in the poem, he said, life is not worth living as long as Muthaiga is next to Mathare.
Now, it is very important to understand that given the culture we are developing, the next thing will be suicide among our youth. Suicide because if you have nothing to eat you can work harder, if life is meaningless nothing can give it meaning. And you know there are many confusing things that are happening in life. Now these days people don’t want to wed, they just want to have a come we stay. And you know if we come we stay we also can agree we go our ways. It just means that you are in a relationship but there are no strings attached. That means that guy can drop you like a hot potato any time… and you are not supposed to ask questions. He asks you, Didn’t we agree we don’t tie each other?
Why are we not having a wedding? Because I don’t want to be tied. And I hear these days the women are even more interested in this come we stay than men. Now, you need to understand what will mean is you only need to be left by three or four of them, by the fifth one you will hang yourself. That lack of care and commitment is something that is going to bring discontentment to where suicide will be a normal thing.
While discussing discontentment I started with the issue of competition, a rat race. But now I am talking about things in our society that are making it impossible for one to deal with the upheavals of life. And this topic becomes a very, very important topic given the kind of things that we all are going through.
You know, the question people are asking is, how does one accept that godliness with contentment is a great gain? Godliness yet with contentment? That tells you, you can have contentment without godliness, and you can have godliness without contentment. I am talking to those of us who claim to be Christians. You are born again yet you keep breaking the tenth commandment. What is the tenth commandment? Thou shall not covet. Lack of contentment means there is something you want which you don’t yet have. And because somebody else has it, you are breaking the tenth commandment.
So, you need to ask yourself, do I have godliness without contentment, or do I have contentment without godliness. Both of them are challenging. If you have godliness without contentment, it means that you believe in God, you trust in God but you don’t trust him enough to be happy within the little he has given. You know there are two kinds of people everywhere you attend a church. There are people who believe God is able but not loving enough. So, the reason they are not getting things they want, it is because although God could give them, He has the ability but He doesn’t have love. God does not love me enough. You have godliness but you doubt God’s love.
But the second type of people we have are people who believe God loves them but He is not able. I know God loves me but you know He is not able, the devil is so tough. Now, if that is the kind of god you believe in, is that the God of the Bible? No. So you need to ask yourself, if you are going to deal with the issue of lack of contentment, you need to ask yourself, do you believe in a God who is both able and loving, who is loving and able? Because if you do so, whatever He has given you, you will accept it and know, it is not that He could not give me more but that is what He has found good for me at this time. And so you are happy. You get a C plus and you feel excited that the Lord has given you a C plus grade despite that your cousin got an A. Why? God loves me and He saw C plus is what is best for me, and C plus has brought me to Jomo Kenyatta University. So ,I am grateful to him. You are not jealous that your cousin got an A. Because God loves me. You don’t doubt his love. Therefore, you need to come to where you are able to answer the question that your godliness has led you to where you accept the things that God has brought your way. How do I accept myself despite the past and background status?
Day 3
Do not hold against us the sins of past generations; may your mercy come quickly to meet us, for we are in desperate need.
You know some of us cannot even tell you who our parents are. Why? Because our parents are a mess. My father, you say, is the village drunkard. We have collected him in the ditch many times. I can’t count how many times. So, I don’t want you to know my father. But you need to understand for you to have the spirit of contentment, you must have the ability to tackle your background and your past. And it does not matter whether it is a good background or a bad background. Irrespective of what it is, it can hardly serve your current purpose.
Let’s first of all talk about people who come from very successful families as far as society is concerned. What does it do? Three possibilities. Because your parents and your senior brothers and sisters, and everybody is doing so well, it makes you live in fear that you will not succeed yourself. Is that a possibility? So that even when you are doing well,you are never happy. I still remember one of my friends who was among the last children, and all his relatives, his siblings, had degrees. Me I was the first one to get a degree in my family. For him, he is just one of the many. And he told me, you know John I am not like you. If I don’t get first class honours nobody will be happy , because degrees are plenty in our home. You can see he was suffering because there were many degrees in his home. Now, you need to understand your background is messing up your contentment because of their success. If you don’t learn how to differentiate yourself from your siblings and from your parents, you will never stand.
Are you aware, like I have repeated , that you are unique? You are not like your parents, even in terms of DNA, because your DNA includes your mother’s DNA, your father’s DNA, and some of the recessive genes from your grandfather. So you are unique. You are totally unique. You cannot pretend to be like your parents. You are unique. So you must understand that there has never been another person like you, irrespective of the success of your parents.
But the second problem of a successful background is this, because it is so successful you assume like it is a right, it is automatic. You are entitled.And many people can’t believe that they can’t do badly because after all in their family nobody does badly. When they finally do badly they just commit suicide, because it is not in the nature of our family to do badly. So I can’t be alive.
Please, don’t hang your neck, please hang your leg. It is very dangerous to start thinking that you must be like others. Many people who are living discontented lives is because of how successful their background is. It has created a certain demand so that you can’t accept anything less than that.
But thirdly, when you have a successful family, you tend not to rely on God because once you have assumed it is normal for your family to do well, where does God come in. Are you getting my point? So you start believing you cannot do badly given your family wealth. Then they start dying one after the other. Your father dies, your mother dies, your brother dies, once you are alone you don’t know who to rely on. You know only God is permanent, all others are temporary.
And it is an important thing to understand. So,when you are in a position not to trust God, rest assured you will never have true contentment. But the other one is equally challenging, where you come from a background, you know, like I told you I was the first person in my mother’s family and my father ‘s family, nobody had been to the university before I went to university. Not even that, nobody had been to high school before me. Now, you need to understand all over sudden three things may go wrong. One, because you are the first one, pride is natural. You go for a cousins’ meeting and although you don’t want to be proud they treat you like you are a celeb. All the cousins, haiya, you have been to university? Jomo Kenyatta? I am so proud to have a cousin like you. But you need to understand pride is not a sign of contentment. Remember our topic is discontentment. And when you have a background that is where everybody looks at you as special,even your parents have never gone beyond standard two, and you, you are a second year, can you see the difference? They feel like you are so educated, even in the family meeting they are no longer advising. In the family meeting they are no longer give you instructions, you dictate the instructions. Now, what happens with you? The first problem you have is pride.
The second one is, you cannot credit your performance on your family, you credit it on yourself. You know, I am a self-made man. Have you heard of that statement? It is Churchill who said, he was the prime minister during the Second World war, he said, if you tell me I am a self-made man, you just give me a responsibility only God has. None of us can make ourselves, God is the creator, isn’t it? And if you come from a background that is not doing very well, you tend to feel like you are a self-made man. The truth is there is no self-made man, all of us are made by God. And sometimes He doesn’t make us without using others. there people who have come to you to influence you. Your parents may not be clever but they paid your school fees. If they had not paid your school fees would you be here? No, you are not a self-made girl, you are a God-made girl.
But you need where you have the kind of background where nobody seems to have done like you, you tend to end up trusting yourself.
Day 4
But I trust in you, Lord; I say, “You are my God.” My times are in your hands; deliver me from the hands of my enemies, from those who pursue me. Let your face shine on your servant; save me in your unfailing love. …
But the third thing that is important when you don’t have a rich background I have low ambition. When you come from a very weak background where things have not been very nice, you tend to be the kind of a person who can be very easily be contented with nothing. In the fact that you are a second year in a university you feel like it is enough, so you fail third year.
You start working and to get a job is so such an excitement, you don’t require anything else because after all where you are you think it is very high. Are you getting the problem? All those are not signs of contentment but lack of ambition. And you need to understand contentment is a complicated term because contentment is to be happy with what you have as you work out of what you will have in future.
May I repeat? Contentment is to be happy with what you have as you work on what you will have in future. So, it is a complicated thing because it does not mean, to be contented does not mean that you are happy to be where you are. Contentment is I am happy to have reached here but Iam asking God for more. This is not the final place. Can you imagine a team that is playing a game against an impossible opponent, then they score? They feel, waaah! To score against Manu, we are done. Now, so they will be relaxed. They will end up with another five goals from Manu.
So, contentment is not feeling like you don’t need more, contentment is being grateful for where you are,but working for more. It is living in one compartment mentality. What is one compartment? You are thinking about travelling by train to Mombasa. If you go from compartment to compartment, by the time you reach Mombasa you have not even sat down. You need to learn how to enter a compartment and enjoy it before you go to the next compartment. The fact you have a bedsitter in Umoja after campus should make you very excited. It is the first time you are in your own house. So,you feel wonderful. You should enjoy. If you don’t enjoy the bedsitter, you will be forever discontented. Do you know what a bedsitter is? A bedsitter is a house with one room. There is a toilet and a shower but everything else is there. When you are cooking you can talk to your visitor, and you can also talk to the other person who has not woken up because all of them are visible. That is called a bedsitter. And when you leave campus it is a very attractive place to go to, because you don’t have a lot of furniture.
It is a good place to begin. If you don’t enjoy your bedsitter, when you finally have a three-bedroom house you might also not enjoy it. You have to learn how to be grateful with the bedsitter but don’t start assuming you will be there forever. You know a bedsitter has certain challenges. If you are a girl and your father is visiting Nairobi, as soon as you hear he is coming, you are in trouble. Why? You cannot welcome him to the house unless you look for a place to go, because in a bedsitter, you will be in the same bedroom with your father. Are you getting the difference? A bedsitter means you cannot accommodate somebody else. You will need to look for a place where you get two rooms. So you are working for more. But you do not allow the fact that you are working for more to stop you looking at it and saying, at least I am in my own house. When I come home I can choose to cook, not to cook, nobody asks me. I can eat ugali every day of the year and nobody asks me questions. I do with myself what I think is good enough to do.
So, start enjoying where you are now. You are so contented with what you have, it causes you to want to do more and you are strong enough because contented people have energy. When you are contented you sleep well at night so you are able to work hard in the day, therefore you are the first to get a promotion.
Are you getting the point, how contentment helps you? That contentment helps you to do well and so get more. That if you are contented with your B plus you accept it, you are actually material for an A next, because you see people who are fighting their B plus, every time they study they think about Kariuki who got an A and they feel so bad they cannot study well. How can Kariuki do better than me? So, they don’t understand what they are reading. So, the next time they do, they now don’t get an A, they now backslide to a B minus. Are you getting the difference? But when you are contented you are able to be at peace; therefore, you can do even better, and it is contentment that allows you to move to the next stage. So, you need to ask yourself, have you reached a level where you only enjoy what you have? And because you enjoy what you have, you are able to go to better things.
Day 5
On the seventh day the child died. David’s attendants were afraid to tell him that the child was dead, for they thought, “While the child was still living, he wouldn’t listen to us when we spoke to him. How can we now tell him the child is dead? He may do something desperate.
But is contentment a totally loss to value? Has the cancer of materialism and greed so taken over our souls that we must get it at all costs? One of the ways of understanding you have no contentment is when you say, I must get that. That’s a girl talking. I must get her. Now, the moment you feel that, that guy is so good I must get him, it means you are not satisfied where you are. Your intention is to drop your current boyfriend. You have not told him, because a bird in hand is better than two in the bush but the relationship with your current one is no longer good. Contentment means you are not seeing anything better in the other person, you allow them to be who they are, you are happy with who you are. Now, you need to understand that when you are being driven by what is next, it is what we call materialism. I must get it at all costs. Most girls who end up pregnant before the wedding, that is the picture they have. They feel like to lose this boyfriend, what will my life be? Once the boy senses that you are desperate they insist on sex. You know boys never get pregnant, it is not a possibility, so he has nothing to fear.
So, you can’t say no because to say no it means he will drop you and will get another girl who is also desperate for him. So, you say, no, I can’t lose him. I will fight for him. Because he knows you are a desperate girl. Even after you are married twenty years, he still remembers, he never wanted you, you are the one who wanted him. It justifies him to keep ndogondogos and bigbigs, all because of the type of desperation you showed….
So that idea of anything you want desperately, something you must have at any cost means you are in a very discouraging position, you are not satisfied with where you are. But when you are satisfied with where you are, you still want more but not at any cost.You need to ask yourself, you want more things, but are you desperate for them? If you are, it means you have not accepted where you currently are.
And it is important to ask yourself those questions. That’s what we really are talking about. Can one find contentment in a world that claims at a thousand decibel levels noisiness, more, more, more still, bigger, bigger, bigger, even bigger still.
What is the biblical cure for materialism? The biblical cure for materialism is accepting God loves you and that God is also able to provide whatever you need … That because He loves you, He will certainly do the best for you, and because He is able. He cannot want something good for you and He is unable to give you. He is actually able.
I want to say that Kenya is suffering from a big problem of integrity. In Corruption, we are rated among the highest in the world. But you know the solution for corruption is integrity, but integrity is only possible when there is contentment. Because when you are contented, you are not desperate, you cannot steal, you cannot be corrupt because you are happy where you are. So, you will wait until what you are intending to get you can get it correctly. I still remember wanting to buy, some piece of land in Kajiado, Ongata Rongai area. And the young man who was the salesman told me, Mr. Ng’ang’a you must understand that to buy land you will have to give me money that has no receipt. I asked him, you mean bribe? No, no, no, it is not bribing, it is money without receipt. I told him, I know what you are talking about, but if you are going to buy land for me, I will not give you a single shilling which is not needed by the government. And if it is needed by the government they must produce receipt. He told me, then we will take forever buying this piece of land, and the Maasai has already agreed to sell. I told him, you know I am waiting for Jesus to come. I have no idea when He is coming but when He does I will not need land. So why would I be so desperate to get land and Jesus could come before I pay for it? Are you getting my point? The guy, a non-Christian, he gave up on me because now he could not ask me for money. He knew I was not desperate to get the land. I wanted the land, I had certain things my wife and I had agreed to do with it, but we had put it in God’s hands. If it is his will, He will make it happen, if it is not his will we will still be contented with or without the land. That released me from the hurry. So, as we went to one step after another, through Ngong, finally in Kajiado, I was able to resist all temptations that my guy wanted. I still remember when we were finally finishing with the Maasai, and I gave him the banker’s cheque, because he signed a transfer form. Then once it was transferred, now I was left to get the new title. And the girls refused to type my title without paying them something. They had learnt I am mikono ngamu, tight fisted people who don’t give. So, they were not willing to do it. You know the young man told me, I know you told me not to pay unreceipted money but you know they have refused to type. I asked him, are they employed by the government as typists? He said, yes. They are paid a salary for typing? Yes. To type titles? Yes. And they will not type? Yes. Why? And you know what they want. He was asking for a hundred shillings, and I am paying, the land is much more expensive. So, when I told him no, the guy can’t understand why a whole manager with Shell can be wasting his time in Kajiado. I told him, by the way I only asked for an off day in the morning, if they don’t type it today, I will drive back to Nairobi and forget about the title today. I will come back another day. He said, you drive all the way to Kajiado again? If that’s what the Lord wants and He knows part of my money is for petrol to come back, why do I want to refuse with God’s money? I am willing to come back.
As we were there with my wife waiting, they are not typing, we were committing it to God. And we know if God wants us to have the title by one o’clock, we shall get it. I was having an afternoon meeting, and therefore I needed to be back to the office before two for the meeting, but those days there was no traffic jam, so I could drive from Kajiado to Nairobi within an hour. We just sat there praying, and we are telling the Lord He is the one to take over. Just about one o’clock somebody with a bald head came and then I could not recognize him. He said, John, what are you doing in my office? I still could not recognize him. He said, come in. It turned out he was the District Land Registrar. We were in his office. And when he was seated in his office and we were with him, he asked, what brings you to my office? Oh, might these be your papers? This Ng’ang’a is you? Yes. You know I am waiting for them to be typed. He looked. Then they are not typed. He called the girls and told them, bring us a cup of tea, as we take tea with Mr. Ng’ang’a make sure you bring his typed papers. Now, you know they refused to type during office hours, they now typed outside office hours. Because you see the boss said he is not leaving until he signs and seals the title. Are you getting the point?
So, it turned out it was somebody who was behind me at Alliance, he knew me as a Christian. He is not expecting anything from me, but he was excited to catch up with me. The bringing of the man a few minutes to 1.00 PM is called a miracle. So, you need to understand we believe in a God who makes you stop being discontented., you are no longer desperate.You start understanding that God can intervene at any time to get what you want, when you need it, if that is his will.
Day 6
But I trust in you, Lord; I say, “You are my God.” My times are in your hands; deliver me from the hands of my enemies, from those who pursue me. Let your face shine on your servant; save me in your unfailing love.
It is important to understand if you are going to end up with no corruption it will be because you have learnt contentment. You have been tarmacking for three years, no job. But even at that point you are aware there is something God wants to achieve through tarmacking, and until He has achieved it, you will still get no job. So, as you apply for a job, you are not desperate to get the job, you are grateful to wait for God’s timing. Thus, you will apply again, you are again told no. You don’t commit suicide, just tell God, I don’t understand you, all I know is you mean good but to be honest I can’t see the good but I know you mean good. So, you are able to trust him and not be desperate.
You don’t reach a level where somebody says, unless I sleep with you, you will not get a job. You need to understand you have reached a level where you are so sure that God is in control, you can never give yourself to a man. So that’s what we mean. You never become desperate.
The problem of corruption is because of breaking the tenth commandment, which says, thou shall not covet, you must be contented. What we are saying is, if you are going to have contentment, it will be important that we learn that it will remove lack of integrity and corruption.
But again, what is contentment? Contentment is the opposite of coveting in the Ten Commandments. A contented person may still want more but is able to enjoy what he has now., I have written a book called The Secret of Contentment. You can pick a copy. Are you aware contentment is so difficult because every time you reach that level, you want more? You know, you get married and you start realizing the reason why you are quarreling is because in the morning your husband says we must not be late for work. And that’s the thing that I am emphasizing, that contentment is a secret. You do not sort it out by getting more material wealth. Most people with material wealth, are discontented.
People in Muthaiga, in Lavington, rich areas of Nairobi….and wherever, they are rich, and because they are rich, the husbands can keep flying away, so the wives are very lonely, so they need to see a psychiatrist. So that if you want to be contented, it does not come from marrying a successful man… In fact, studies show the wealthier, the more unlikely the marriage will last. I am not suggesting you pray for poverty but I want you to understand the studies, don’t rely on me, you can Google it up, the greater the wealth, the more unlikely for your marriage to last.You need to discover contentment, where you will be contented without money and you will be contented with money. Because once you learn how to be contented without money, when you become a billionaire it will not affect you because that’s not you. You, you are different from your money, you are not relatives, you only are keeping the money aside not in your heart.
So, you need to learn. That means you can be contented with a C plus, so when you get an A it will not affect you, you will still be contented. ..not proud. And that’s really what we are discussing.
Day 7
Philippians 4
11 I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. 12 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 in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want
But I want to quickly read Philippians chapter four. Philippians 4:11, is where I have gotten the title of my book from.
I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learnt to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learnt the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or…
Are you reading? Philippians 4:12, I know what it is to be in need and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learnt the secret of being in any and every situation whether well fed or…. whether living in plenty or in want. That is the message of this writing . That you need to discover that contentment where, whatever situation you are in you are at peace and contented. Why will you be contented? Three things and I finish with them.
Number one, because the basics of life have been provided by God, and you realize they did not come to you automatically, God is the giver. And once you develop a thankful heart for what God has done, you will be contented because you know that He that has given you the little will one day give you much. It causes you contentment.
Number two, the reason why you live contented is because you have accepted your uniqueness, you do not spend time comparing yourself with others. You are contented because you are personal. You may not have the size of nose of sister Kariuki but you are happy the way you are and you have accepted yourself. So, you will be at peace despite the size of nose. So, whatever you are, that’s what the message is saying, whatever condition.
Thirdly and importantly is because you have thrown yourself in God’s hands and you know your future is in God’s hands. So, you are able to accept today because you know God who takes care of you today will take care of you in the future. But the choice is yours. Are you willing to surrender the totality of your life into God’s hands?
They built a swimming pool at Alliance just when I was a form six about to leave the school. And I come from the slopes of the Aberdares. So, we used to swim as boys in our shallow rivers. You know, we would say we are, niturathambira, swimming.I thought we are swimming. But when I went to Alliance and now we had a swimming pool, I went to the swimming pool and fell like a stone to the bottom. And that’s when I discovered I did not know how to even float. Then I asked myself, do I really want to know how to swim? By taking time struggling to know how to swim, I might fail my exams.I gave up on it. I never learnt how to swim until my children went to a school where they were learning how to swim, and I was a member of Nairobi Club, and there was a swimming pool. My daughter kept saying, can you take me to swim? And I went there and I found, children must be accompanied. Now, if I don’t know how to swim, I am not a good accompaniment. Are you getting my point? So that’s when I told, I tried to tell my daughter we will try next time, next time. In the meanwhile I looked for somebody to teach me how to swim. When I went to the swimming pool where I was being taught, I went and again went under. He was trying to teach me how to float. But every time I tried to float I would go under. I told him, you know, I know my problem. I am too heavy for this water. You know, another tourist came, big guy, and he told me, watch him swim. The guy came, he is so heavy, he was walking one step at a time. Then he went into the water and he just started swimming, enjoying himself, swimming around. He said, you see. It is not your weight.
Then what is my problem? You don’t trust the water. Nobody swims until they trust the water. As soon as you trust the water, it doesn’t matter how heavy you are, you will just float. And that’s how I started trusting the water. And I went to it, fell a little, then woke up. Now these days, I can swim to the deep end. And now I allowed my daughter to come to the swimming pool. Within no time she was a better swimmer than me. She no longer needed me.
It is exactly the same with contentment. In as long as you have not trusted yourself into God’s hands, you will keep sinking. You can’t float. Contentment is a life of joy, swimming in joy. And it will not be possible until you can throw yourself in the water aware you will float. Floating only becomes possible when you totally surrender your life to the Lord and He helps you. From then onwards it doesn’t matter what happens in the future. You may get children not get children, you may get a wife not get a wife, you may be rich or get poor. The Word of God is saying you will be contented all the days of your life, but it begins with trusting yourself into God’s hands.
Is there something that is saying in your heart, this life of joy and contentment is not a life I have actually followed? I am not contented. Yet the Word of God is saying it is possible to be working hard to get a better grade but grateful with the current one you have. Have you learnt how to accept where you are even as God takes you to better places? Why don’t you go to God and tell him, God, forgive me for coveting, never enjoying what I have as I covet for me? Lord help me to get the secret of contentment. Forgive me but I now hand over myself to you, give me contentment for the rest of my life.
You might be saying… I have many gifts but I don’t enjoy them because I am always looking for more without enjoying what I have. Lord, forgive me for my past, I now want your forgiveness. But then I am handing over my life to you. I want you to take over, I want to be your child, I want to be born again. And not just born again, born again where I have godliness with contentment, which is a great gain.