Day 804 – The Prison of WANT – Meditation Monday

Wisdom-Trek

Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy Welcome to Day 804 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me. This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom The Prison of WANT – Meditation Monday Thank you for joining us for our five days per week wisdom and legacy building podcast. This is Day 804 of our trek, and it is time for Meditation Monday. Taking time to relax, refocus, and reprioritize our lives is crucial in order to create a living legacy. For some, it may just be time alone for quiet reflection. Some may utilize structured meditation practices. In my life meditation includes reading and reflecting on God’s Word and praying. It is a time to renew my mind, refocus on what is most important, and make sure that I am nurturing my soul, mind, and body. As you come along with me on our trek each Meditation Monday, it is my hope and prayer that you too will experience a time for reflection and renewing of your mind. We are broadcasting from our studio at The Big House in Marietta, Ohio. Are you in prison? I don’t mean a physical prison, but self-created shackles and bars. Anything that stifles us from reaching our God-given potential is bars that will imprison us. Today’s meditation is taken from a book written by Max Lucado, and it is… The Prison of WANT Come with me to the most populated prison in the world. The facility has more inmates than bunks. More prisoners than plates. More residents than resources. Come with me to the world's most oppressive prison. Just ask the inmates. They will tell you. They are overworked and underfed. Their walls are bare, and their bunks are hard. No prison is so populated. No prison is so oppressive. And, what's more, no prison is so permanent. Most inmates never leave. They never escape. They never get released. They serve a life sentence in this overcrowded, under-provisioned facility.The name of the prison? You’ll see it over the entrance. Rainbowed over the gate are four cast-iron letters that spell out its name: W-A-N-T The prison of want. You've seen her prisoners. They are "in want." They want something. They want something bigger. Nicer. Faster. Thinner. They want. They don't want much, mind you. They want just one thing. One new job. One new car. One new house. One new spouse. They don't want much. They want just one. And when they have "one," they will be happy. And they are right – they will be happy. When they have "one," they will leave the prison. But then it happens. The new-car smell passes. The new job gets old. The neighbors buy a larger television set. The new spouse has bad habits. The sizzle fizzles, and before you know it, another ex-con breaks parole and returns to jail. Are you in prison? You are if you feel better when you have more and worse when you have less. You are if joy is one delivery away, one transfer away, one award away, or one makeover away. If your happiness comes from something you deposit, drive, drink, or digest, then face it – you are in prison, the prison of want. The Apostle Paul in his 1st letter to his protégé Timothy explains it this way in 1 Timothy 6:6-10, "Yet true godliness with contentment is itself great wealth. After all, we brought nothing with us when we came into the world, and we can’t take anything with us when we leave it. So if we have enough food and clothing, let us be content. But people who long to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And some people, craving money, have wandered from the true faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows." When we surrender to God the cumbersome sack of discontent, we don't just give up something; we gain something. God replaces it with a lightweight, tailor-made, sorrow-resistant attaché of gratitude. What will you gain with contentment? You may gain your marriage.