Living Simply
Signs of the Spirit
Discuss where you have seen God's Spirit at work this week. How have you experienced grace in a new way through Christian practice? Discuss any joys or struggles you had. How is it with your soul?
Purpose
Because we long for Christ to be formed in us, we make this covenant to tend the fires of our souls so that our longing for Christ may never be extenguished and that our lives will be set ablaze with his love.
Instruction
Do you overbook your days chasing here, there, and everywhere? Have you ever had to collect your scattered self so you could make an important decision? Do you let the stuff you own lead your life? ever lay awake at night thinking about all you have to do? ever think about why your life is so full? ever wonder if it makes any difference at all? If this is you, simplicity must sound like an oasis in the desert of your frantic life.
But simplicity isn't a pill that promises to cure burnout and fatigue. It doesn't come from typing your schedule into a whiz-bang techno-organizer. It isn't a planner or a new way to multi-task. Living simply is not about deciding to get your life under control but about giving control of your life to God.
On the Inside
Talk as a group about all that controls your life. What do you treasure? Who owns you? to what are you attached? What part of your life takes up most of your energy? What do you do because of who you know? What do you do because of what you own?
Jesus talks about our wealth and our worries (Matthew 6:19-33). His bottom line is about as simple as simplicity gets: seek God, trust God, and receive God. With a partner, determine how far you are from living simply.
♦ How much of a turn will it take to clear the way and get your life pointed toward God?
♦ How close are you to trading worry for trust? to believing that God will take care of your basic needs? to receiving all God supplies as a gift?
Outward Reality
Imagine that you and your friends meet to eat, and no one comes to the table empty-handed. Everyone comes with a backpack or briefcase full of the stuff of their lives. If you unpacked them and put all the stuff on the table, what would you see?
Simplicity means clearing away the clutter (on the inside and outside, modifying your feelings about wealth, and changing the way you calculate your worth).
For a few minutes, play a "what if?" game. What if you left some of your important stuff on the table? What if you walked away from the table, taking only what is necessary for you to live? What would the things left on the table say to your friends about you?
Take a few moments alone to reflect on these questions:
♦ What does living simply have to do with your spiritual life and your relationship with God?
♦ What does the source of your power and wealth (Deuteronomy 8:17-19) have to do with your faith?
♦ How might you live simply in our consumer culture?
Living simply is centered on the desire to seek and know God. Its outside-in/inside-out complexities clearly point to a great gospel "absurdity": losing your life to find it (Matthew 16: 25-26). Losing the stuff of your life to make room for God really saves your life.
Rehearsal
Take turns making a list of all the stuff you usually carry around in your backpack or purse. If you have it with you, dump it out. Choose to lose one thing that represents your own efforts and riches. What will you leave behind? What difference might your choice make in your relationship with God?
As a group, make a top ten list of clutter you want to clear from your lives. Brainstorm some strategies for loosening its grip on your life.
Draw a rough sketch of your favorite living space on a piece of paper. Look around for "luxuries." Put an X through any luxury that has become a necessity for you. Share your X's with the rest of your group. Talk together about how to really "X" these things from your lives.
Involving
What kind of ripples might (or have) come about from living simply? How could your daily routine change by the transformation taking place in your soul? Discuss how you might see all areas of your life—home, school, nature, community, world, job, paying bills, and so forth—connected in a new way based on your spiritual formation journey.
Tomorrow
√ Living simply is centered on the desire to seek and know God. See how much time in a day you are really seeking God and are aware of God's presence.
√ Practice planned spending. Make a budget and stick to it. Pay cash when you shop.
√ Part of living simply is understanding that God's provisions are gifts—not ours to keep. Our ancestors freed God's gifts during the year of Jubilee (Leviticus 25:8-55). Celebrate a day of Jubilee by freely sharing your God-given riches with others.
√ Simplicity is an outward sign of an inward grace. Nurture this spiritual practice by integrating it with other spiritual disciplines. Try fasting as a way to see what owns and controls your life (see pages 57-60 in Soul Tending).
√ Go to the Alternatives for Simple Living website at www.simpleliving.org to find other practical ideas for simplifying your life.
This is one of forty-four life-forming practices from Soul Tending edited by Kenda Creasy Dean and Ron Foster, Nashville, TN, Abingdon Press, 2002. Reprinted with permission. Click here to buy the book.
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