Answer:
When I see things that I wish were different in my life and focus on them and continually think on them, I am working out my “discontentment muscle”. The more I think this way, the more those little path ways are treaded in my mind.
Imagine you are in a field of wild grass- and then you see a pathway that has been made by people walking one direction, back and forth, over some period of time. Which is easier: to tread your own path in the high grass or to take the one already made for you? It becomes easier and more natural to walk down those pathways because they are the ones clear from years of walking, or in the case of contentment, thinking. If God allows a certain situation to come again and again in my life, and I choose to compare, complain, grumble, doubt that is the pathway that is being made clear again for the future, that is the muscle I am choosing to strengthen and it will only be that much more challenging to choose thankfulness the next time I am put in an undesirable (to me) situation. To create a new path, I must SET my mind on things above (Col 3). I must choose to let my mind be transformed (Romans 12) by BEING thankful in ALL THINGS (1 Thess 5:17).
Explanation:
