Up and Up

"To be prosperous would not require much of me. You see, contentment is the one thing it entails—to be content with where I am and getting where I need to be. I'm moving past the past where I have failed."

I was listening to a Relient K playlist last night, and the lyrics of a lot of songs caught my attention. So I went back to listen to them again today, and this one, "Up and Up," seemed particularly interesting. This verse was what really got me thinking.

"To be prosperous would not require much of me." The world looks at fame and fortune as something you earn for yourself. If you succeed in school and in your career, you will have (or at least, be able to afford) all you could ever want. But if you just fail at life, you have nobody to blame for your poverty but yourself. But Relient K seems to think differently. They take the godly view of success: all success and failure, victories and hardships, are given or allowed by God to ultimately bless us. In the difficult times, it can be hard to see how God is blessing us through our trials, but when we emerge from them, we come out stronger than before, rejoicing and thanking God. And when God gives us success, He gives it to us so that we would glorify His name and make His power known to those who have not experienced it. So according to the Bible, prosperity comes from God, and only God; however, that does not mean that we should sit back and let Him do everything. He has given us talents and abilities so that we would use them. The success we achieve with those abilities comes from God because He gave us the abilities in the first place.

But the song doesn't stop there: "You see, contentment is the one thing it entails—" Let's look at Job for a minute. Job was a wealthy man by all standards; he had many children, he had abundant livestock, he had plenty of slaves, he was wise and thoughtful, he was strong in health, and he was very deep in his relationship with the Lord. But then Satan attacked him, stealing everything he had from him: he took his family and his earthly riches; he took his health; he attacked his thoughts by challenging him, through his own wife, to give up God. But he could not take God from him. Job remained faithful to God, and because of his faithfulness, God blessed him with more than he had had before Satan attacked. He became even wealthier than before. But even in his trials, Job remained the wealthiest man alive. How? He remained content. He trusted that God would bring him through his trials stronger than before, and he knew that God would never abandon him; God was all he needed. When you have God, and God is all you need, you will never be disappointed.

So to be prosperous—wealthy, successful—contentment is all we need. The song continues: "—to be content with where I am and getting where I need to be." Job knew where he was, all the trials he was facing; but he also knew that God was with him through it all. And he also knew that God was going to take him above and beyond where he had been before. He was content with where he was, and he was content to be moving toward his final destination, no matter how difficult the journey.

"I'm moving past the past where I have failed." Another song by Relient K, "Getting Into You," says, "You say You will not dwell on what I did, but rather what I do." What this means is that what's past is past; if you have repented, God has forgiven you. There's no point in dwelling on the mistakes of the past, so we move ahead. God has forgiven our past. What He cares about most is what you do now, how you act on what you learned from your past. Contentment lies not only in accepting where you are and where you are going, but also in accepting where you were and knowing that you're not there anymore.

It's amazing what God can teach us through music.