Keeping it Simple (Part 1)

Sometimes I wonder where all the 'stuff' in my life came from.  It's everywhere - in the house, in the closets, in the garage, in the yard.  I don't even remember where some of these things came from, but here they are, and because I have to store them and maintain them and repair them, it seems like they own me!  Yikes!  Is that how this is supposed to work?

In a word, no.  The Message Bible says in Eccl. 7:29, "God made men and women true and upright; we're the ones who've made a mess of things." James says in 4:2-3 that every kind of conflict comes from evil desires for more, more, more:  "You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure."  Adam and Eve messed things up when they wanted more, and we're still doing it!

Jesus gave us our priorities in Matt. 6:33 -- "Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need."   Earlier, in verse 24, he said we cannot succeed by having two gods:  "You cannot serve both God and money."  So do we give all our stuff away so we can just live simply?  Richard Foster, in his classic book Celebration of Discipline, quotes Kirkegaard commenting on this passage, 'no, we must first seek God's kingdom.'  Shall we spend all our time preaching the Gospel so our lives will be properly simple?  No, we must first seek God's kingdom.  In other words, we have to get our inward life right, then we will find the right outward expression of what is true inwardly. 

Simplicity, as a spiritual tool, is a huge topic.  Foster writes a chapter on it, and barely begins to outline it.  But simplicity begins, and continues, with having our hearts and energies and lives focused on the will of God.  Studying the life and teachings of Jesus, and how those were expounded by the rest of the New Testament, is our best view of 'the will of God.'  As Jesus himself said in John 6:28-29: They replied, “We want to perform God’s works, too. What should we do?”  Jesus told them, “This is the only work God wants from you: Believe in the one he has sent.”

Focus on what he said just there, and we will find simplicity.  More on this idea next time.