Girls, Gold and Glory // The Road to Contentment, Part 3

<p>Contentment … it’s one of the things that each one of us wants. But today, today we’re going to look at three of the things that can rob us of that contentment – girls, gold and glory.</p> <p> </p> <h4><span style="color: #ff9900;"><strong>GIRLS AND GUYS</strong></span></h4> <p>In the days when I was studying at Bible-college, a good many years ago now, the principal of the college was a man by the name of Barry Chant, and I remember quite distinctly he came down to the common area where we all gathered before lectures, and he announced that today was exactly fifty years since he’d started following Jesus. Fifty years! And the more I came to know him, as a teacher, as a colleague ultimately, and as a trusted counsellor and friend, I realised how much his life had been impacted by fifty years of walking with Jesus. The man has a maturity and a wisdom that are quite remarkable.</p> <p>I say that as a preface because I’m about to share with you something today that he shared with me all those years ago. We were studying in our various dreams of academia to become ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and I recall one lecture where he talked about the three things that generally bring ministers unstuck. They’re really easy to remember because they all start with the letter G. Would you like to know what they are? <em>‘Girls, Gold and glory’</em>. Pretty simple. Pretty powerful, and the more I think about it, those are the very same things that bring us unstuck in our search for contentment: Girls or (in the case of women) guys, gold, and glory.</p> <p>I want to kick off with the first one of those today because unless we get this girls/guys thing under control, then we’re not going to be content. And the whole subject of the boy/girl, man/woman relationship and intimacy thing isn’t an easy one to talk about in this day and age without sounding a bit anachronistic, because attitudes and lifestyles have changed a lot.</p> <p>See, these days, intimacy before marriage and indeed outside marriage is pretty much acce