Restless Devotion: An Urgent Call to Godward Discontentment

Restless Devotion

An Urgent Call

to Godward Discontentment

Nick Thompson

Reformation Heritage Books

Grand Rapids, Michigan

Restless Devotion

© 2025 by Nick Thompson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Direct your requests to the publisher at the following addresses:

Reformation Heritage Books

3070 29th St. SE

Grand Rapids, MI 49512

616-977-0889

[email protected]

www.heritagebooks.org

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked ESV taken from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®). ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. The ESV® text has been reproduced in cooperation with and by permission of Good News Publishers. Unauthorized reproduction of this publication is prohibited. All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

25 26 27 28 29 30/10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Thompson, Nick (Theologian) author

Title: Restless devotion : an urgent call to Godward discontentment / Nick Thompson.

Description: Grand Rapids, Michigan : Reformation Heritage Books, [2025] | Summary: An introductory study to show how the Psalms are intended to awaken Christians to a restless hunger for God—Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2025004706 (print) | LCCN 2025004707 (ebook) | ISBN 9798886861822 paperback | ISBN 9798886861839 epub

Subjects: LCSH: Bible. Psalms—Criticism, interpretation, etc. | God—Biblical teaching | Christian life—Presbyterian authors

Classification: LCC BS1430.5 .T48 2025 (print) | LCC BS1430.5 (ebook) | DDC 223/.206—dc23/eng/20250326

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2025004706

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2025004707

To Canon Elliot, Owen Ezra,

and Vos David

May you far surpass your mother and me

in ravenous appetite for our gospel God

Contents

Introduction: The Vital Virtue of Discontentment

1. Restless for God

2. Restless for God’s Word

3. Restless for God’s Salvation

4. Restless for God’s House

5. Restless for God’s Restoration

6. Restless for God’s Mission

7. Restless for God’s Vindication

Conclusion: Dangers to Avoid

Appendix: Praying the Psalms

◆ INTRODUCTION◆

The Vital Virtue

of Discontentment

Restlessness is discontent—and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man—and I will show you a failure.

These are words the mastermind Thomas Edison recorded in his diary. Throughout his career Edison was awarded 1,093 US patents for his multiplicity of inventions. At his death he left behind over four thousand notebooks containing detailed records of his tireless drive for innovation.

As I write, an electric bulb hangs over my head, illuminating my desk. An electric bulb lies hidden behind the screen of my MacBook, illuminating my word processor. Thomas Edison did not invent the lightbulb, but he revolutionized it. In 1878 he filed a patent application for improvement in electric lights. At this time electric bulbs had a short lifespan and were very expensive. Edison set out to change that, and through his invention of a carbon filament bulb that was both durable and economical, electric light became commonplace in America and around the world.

What drove Edison to labor for the improvement of electric bulbs? Discontentment. He was simply not satisfied with their low quality and high cost. That restless agitation of soul drove him to seek progress. Had he, along with the rest of humankind, been content with the bleak state of electric bulbs in the late nineteenth century, the average person would have no access to electric light today.

Discontent was arguably what fueled every one of Edison’s ideas and inventions. His stubborn refusal to become a thoroughly satisfied man was what made him such a prolific success. In Edison’s estimation, nothing was more detrimental than embracing the illusion that the human race had arrived. There was always more to discover, design, and develop. There was always progress to be made. His vision of better things to come provoked within him a restlessness that drove him to his dying day.

Discontent and Human Progress

Discontent is the necessary precondition of progress. If humans had been content with the outhouse and the bedpan, we wouldn’t have indoor plumbing. If they had been content with the stagecoach, we wouldn’t have automobiles and airplanes. If they had been content with sleepless nights in sweltering heat, we wouldn’t have fans and air-conditioning units. Think of any of the modern-day innovations we enjoy. All of them were born out of discontent. In His common grace, God stirs up a productive restlessness in the hearts of men and women whom He gifts to make innovative progress in society. Without it, the human race may not have survived into the twenty-first century.

The book in your hands is about human progress, but not in the way Edison thought of it. I’m not seeking to promote progress in technology, medicine, economics, education, or politics. While I’m deeply grateful for those making strides in these areas for the general good of humanity, these common-grace blessings have not actually led to human progress in the ultimate sense. Given that humans are created in the image of God, true human progress is always progress toward God. And given the fall into sin, true human progress requires nothing less than God’s saving grace transforming sinners in Jesus Christ. Tragically, however, humanity’s innovative brilliance has often led society away from God and His saving grace and toward the idols of self-exaltation and self-salvation (see Gen. 11:1–9). Not everything that goes by the name of progress is true progress.

Restless Devotion encourages the promotion of progress toward God in Christ. So why begin with Thomas Edison and lightbulbs? Though not a Christian, Edison is an exemplary illustration of the reality that progress results from dissatisfaction and rarely occurs without it. That is true when it comes to technological advances, but it is equally true when it comes to spiritual advances. To slightly modify Edison’s assertion, Show me a thoroughly satisfied Christian, and I will show you a spiritual failure. True spiritual progress is born out of holy discontentment.

Discontent and God

But wait a minute. Doesn’t God call us to be content? Yes, He does: Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have (Heb. 13:5). Contentment is not a divine suggestion; it is a divine imperative. We are to rest in God’s providential plan for us, not enviously grasping after what He has not willed us to have (Psalm 131). In their exposition of the tenth commandment, You shall not covet (Ex. 20:17), the Westminster divines rightly teach us that God requires full contentment with our own condition and forbids all discontentment with our own estate (Westminster Shorter Catechism 80, 81). Contentment is the antithesis of covetousness. So, God commands us to be content, and furthermore, He reveals that contentment is the path to spiritual progress: Now godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out (1 Tim. 6:6–7). Spiritual progress (i.e., gain) is to be found in reflecting God (i.e., godliness) and in resting in God (i.e., contentment). But doesn’t this mean that spiritual success is obtained only by thoroughly satisfied Christians? It all depends on what you mean by satisfied.

God calls me, as a married man, to be content with the amazing wife He has blessed me with. To inordinately desire another man’s wife is to fall into grave sin: You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife (Ex. 20:17). I need to rest in God’s all-wise providence and rejoice in His undeserved gift. In this sense the spiritual success of my marriage depends on me being thoroughly satisfied in my relationship with my wife, Tessa, before God. But after over a decade of marriage, our communication and selfless devotion toward one another is far from perfect. As a husband, I fail miserably at loving Tessa like Christ loves the church (Eph. 5:25). We haven’t arrived as a couple, and I haven’t arrived as a husband. There is tremendous progress to be made, and there ought to be a restless ache to make it. Without that ache, we will cease to grow as a married couple. In this sense, the spiritual success of my marriage depends on my being thoroughly dissatisfied in my relationship with Tessa before God. To be discontented with my marriage could be a vice, but it could also be a virtue.

That makes sense when you understand that discontentment is all about desire. You desire an object because you are dissatisfied without it. The Hebrew verb translated covet simply means "desire. In some contexts, it refers to godless desires, like the prohibition against covetousness in the tenth commandment (Ex. 20:17; Deut. 5:21). But in other contexts, it refers to godly desires, like when the psalmist extols God’s word as more to be desired…than gold, yea, than much fine gold (Ps. 19:10; emphasis added). Christianity is not opposed to desire. God has wired us for desire. He has not merely given us an intellect to know and a will to choose, but He has also given us affections to desire. Holiness does not entail the suppression of desire; it entails the reformation of desire. Paul fleshes this out in Galatians 5:16–17: But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other" (ESV; emphasis added).

Discontentment, understood as a dissatisfied desire for an object we don’t now possess, can be either a sinful vice or a spiritual virtue. What makes the difference? God does. The flesh produces a godless discontentment, whereas the Spirit produces a Godward discontentment.

Let’s return to the marriage illustration. When a wife covets another woman’s husband, she is harboring a dissatisfied desire that is anti-God. It is a desire that fails to be grateful to God and claims to