Material Simplicity

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  If you have the Bible, and I really hope you do, uh, open your Bibles to the book of Matthew, Matthew chapter six. And if you’re somebody who plans ahead, we’ll also be in Luke chapter 12. So we’re just in the gospels. If you don’t know where that is, there’s no shame in looking in the table of contents to find that way in your Bible.

Also, we will have those on the screen if you don’t have the scriptures. With you again, we’ll be in Matthew chapter 6 now a key idea in all of these formed by Jesus series Is that we want to help you become a disciple and our our framework is really from Dallas Willard He’s one of my favorite thinkers philosophers passed away about a decade ago It’s like I it just kills me that never got to meet him in person.

It’s fine I’ll meet him in heaven But he has this thing called VIM and it’s this whole idea of how do you get people to change to become more like Jesus? And vim goes the following way, vision, intention, and means. So when you’re trying to disciple people, trying to create a series, first of all, it is my job, at least right now, to paint a vision.

What does the preferred future look like if I follow the way of Jesus? So, it’s my job to say, hey, this is a better life than whatever vision you’ve been told. The scriptures have, it’s not just the right way, it is the better way, it is the best way. But then you have this thing called intention. The thing about intention, I can’t do it at all, it’s totally up to you.

You have to decide, will I do this or not? Do I intend to become this type of person? And then you have the means and now it’s back our job again, where in preaching and our together guides, we’re always thinking, okay, how do we develop just a few practices, a few key plans that you will commit to? And if you do it over and over one day, you’re going to wake up and realize.

You fulfilled the vision. You are now that person, and we keep going on. So again, my job is to the vision and the means, but I am completely helpless. I pray that at the end of every week, you have the intention of doing these things. And that’s the Formed by Jesus series. That’s what we’ve been doing since the beginning.

So we began with Sabbath. So this screen used to say, or it’s, it’s not a screen. Sorry, it’s just a banner, used to say Formed by Sabbath. And the vision was, hey, what if we become a people of rest? Because we live in a world of hurry. Wouldn’t that be great? So we’re trying to like, yeah, that’d be great. I think that’d be awesome.

Alright, so we’re painting the vision. I met a guy who was restful once. No way! Tell me about him, right? His name was Jesus, or whatever, right? And so we get all excited, and then we go, here’s the means. Sabbath, once a week, for 24 hours. Stop, rest, delight, and worship. It gets a little bit harder now. Okay. I want that vision.

Cool. By the grace of God, you need to do the means. Then we talked about the vision of becoming a people of truth and a world of lies. And then we went in Revelation and we’re talking about like, yeah, this really is a world of lies, right? But we can become a people of truth. And so we’re like, yeah, we want to be truthful.

You know, that’s reality. The means is daily scripture intake. It’s not just hearing the word, but doing the word. That’s what we’ve been working together as a faith family. And now we’re adding to that vision. We’re trying to show this perfect human being, which is Jesus, but we can become more like this human every single day, is to become a people of contentment in a world of consumption.

Can you imagine if the life you’re living today, you actually just enjoy it? You see new things and you don’t need them? You’re just happy? That would be awesome. And so the vision I’ve been trying to paint is, guess what? We can be content. It is actually possible. And the means, which I think is the hardest one that we’ve been introducing so far.

Harder than Sabbath, although that’s very hard. Harder than Scripture, that’s hard. It’s simplicity. We looked at last week, simplifying our digital life, and this week, if you liked last week, praise the Lord, this week, you might not. It’s about material simplicity. So turn with me to Matthew 6, if you haven’t already, um, this is what Jesus does.

He paints a vision, and then He shows us the means by which we attain those things. Now, Matthew 6, 25 is a, Very famous scripture. In fact, the very first sermon this church ever heard, uh, was on this passage in verse 25, back in 2016. Jesus says, therefore, which we need to remember, that means something before matters, but, Therefore, I tell you, don’t worry about your life, what you will eat, or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.

Isn’t life more than food, and the body more than clothing? What Jesus is saying here is the way of Jesus means we’re free of worry. You don’t have to worry about these things. This is hard for us to hear because we live in what many people are calling an age of anxiety. If there’s anything that defines this generation, it is how anxious we have become.

What’s hard, and what I’ve noticed in my own life in trying to apply this passage, I just start at verse 25. And it looks like just a list of impossible things. Okay, cool. He’s telling me not to worry, but I’m still worrying, right? This is a really, really hard thing to do. What we have to remember is verse 25 and following is the vision.

But most of us miss the few verses right before are the means. How you actually get to the point where you can receive a word hearing, therefore. Do not worry. Let’s look at the means verse 22. We could be even before we could keep going before but let’s just land in verse 22 The eye is the lamp of the body if your eye is healthy Your whole body will be full of light But if your eye is bad Your whole body will be full of darkness So if the light within you is darkness, how deep is that darkness?

Now, stick with me. Jesus is making an argument here. There’s a metaphor, so you can get kind of confused. This is what he’s saying. Just as the eye can affect the whole body, science has proven that, right? Like, have you ever heard of sad seasonal affective disorder? Like, you need the sun. Like, there’s a lot about the eyes, right?

Circadian rhythm, I can go on. He is saying, in the same way of our eyes affect our body, he’s now saying our attention… Corruption affects our soul. What we give our mind to and our eyes to has a direct effect to the soul. I want you to think of last week. What did we talk about? Right? The quickest way to corruption is to be careless with consumption.

All of that was that last week. Be careful, little eyes, what you see. Oh, be careful, okay, I’m done, right? So, here at other translations, if you have the King James, I actually think it says a single eye or a single mind. All throughout the Bible, Jesus warns us, James warns us, many people warn us against a double mind.

James 1. 8 says, Be weary of the double minded, for they are unstable in all their ways. So this idea that many of us are living that reality is why we talked about digital simplicity last week. We need to have one singular focus and for us to have that and be healthy, we need to remove all the distractions.

I’ve already preached that last week. Go to formedbyjesus. com slash simplicity if you missed it. But let’s look at verse 24 because it’s the crescendo for what we’re going to look at today. Then he goes on to say, no one can serve two masters since either, since he will either hate one and love the other.

Or will be, he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. Jesus here is actually just being very logical. He’s saying, despite even your greatest intentions, you need to have a single mind, but also, it’s imperative that you have a single master. You can say all day, I love Jesus, and I love money, and those things don’t coincide.

You can either devote your life to Christ or devote your life to cash, but you cannot do both at the same time. It’s just purely logical. And he is arguing any attempt to have more than one master leads to depression and dysfunction. And that’s why he then says, do that and then you won’t worry. But if you don’t have a single mind with a single master, you will worry.

Let me put it this way on the screen. Jesus is arguing   📍 we are diseased. from being double minded and double mastered.  Right? You and I, some of us have actual diseases, but to describe our age, we are dis eased. We are not content. To put positively, the easy yoke of Jesus comes from a single mind set on a single master.

Okay? Last week was about the single mind. What does it mean to be set free from having a double mind? That is our agenda today. Pray for your boy. Okay, let’s pray. Father God, we just ask for your wisdom and for your truth. God, I thank you that your way is not just the moral, correct way, but it is the best way.

It has promised not only for this life, but also for the life to come. And so Jesus, we just ask you to lay down our prayer. We, we lay down our presuppositions at your feet. May we have an open heart to what you have to say about things like money. God, may we not have a crowded heart, being choked out by the deceitfulness of wealth.

But also, God, may you give us the wisdom to know that we can have money as long as it’s a tool to use to bless other people and to bless our world. God, would you have your way? May we not just be hearers only deceiving ourselves, but may we be doers of the Scriptures. In Jesus name, everybody says, Amen.

Amen. Nothing spreads dis ease like the propaganda of more. In the mid 1900s, uh, marketers, leaders, made a huge breakthrough. Everybody knows this, and it’s in all the films. During international conflict, People like it, the people with all of the things, because that’s how you make the most money. The greatest way to make money is the propaganda of war, right?

We need more war to buy more missiles, to stimulate more economy, all those sorts of things. But, throughout history, during peacetime, it meant you didn’t make as much money. Which is why a lot of people just makes up more wars to make more money. But in the mid 1900s… Especially because of a guy named Edward Bernays, which we’ll look at in a bit.

He discovered there is a way during peacetime to make just as much money as wartime. And it’s not the propaganda of war. Instead, it’s the propaganda of more. And I use the word propaganda intentionally because this, they literally learned this tactic called propaganda while they were fighting against the Germans.

And then Eber Bernays says, we don’t just have to use this manipulative marketing just to get people to help the war. Now that the war is over, we can use manipulative marketing to help our economy. And he has this really terrifying paragraph in his book literally called propaganda, uh, which he also calls modern day advertising.

And it says the following, he says, those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society, if you remember our Revelation series, we kind of talked about this, about the, the, uh, earth beast being propaganda, but those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government, which is the true ruling power of our country.

We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, and our ideas suggested Largely by men we have never heard of, it is they who pull the wires that control the public mind. He was talking specifically about marketing. Now, fun story, real quick, I was with my mom this week, and if anytime you’re around her, it’s gonna be a hoot, hoot, she does something funny all the time, and so we were talking, and she is, she’s, she would hate this sermon, by the way, she’s an avid shopper, and I don’t want her to hear this sermon, because my kids get clothes, like, I don’t buy clothes ever, my mom does that for my family, Praise the Lord.

You’re doing the work of Jesus, Mom. Now, in case you’re ever listening, but we were talking this week about how she was so mad because, and I hope the owner of this establishment’s not in here, if I won’t, yeah, yeah, whatever. Chico’s. Anybody of you own Chico’s? Okay, don’t raise your hand. I was about, even if you do, like, okay, so, um, What happened was she said she was there a couple weeks ago and it was like a back to school bash and they said okay if you’re a teacher you can put into a drawing and you might just win a huge prize.

And so my dad has this thing where he never loses prize. It’s weird like if there’s a drawing he’s gonna win and he’s confident about it and yet the still still Lord blesses him and he gets it. I don’t get it. So he puts his name down and puts it in under Lisa, but he has to be the one with the pen, right?

They’re superstitious kind of puts it in. Sure enough, 48 hours later, my mom gets a phone call. You have won. Come down to Chico’s to get your prize. Back to teach her a war. So she goes down there, she’s so excited, she’s thinking of all the outfits. My mom dresses like crazy, if you’ve seen her. I, I liken her to like, Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber.

When he like, goes all out and gets all the cash. Like he has like, she has like space boots and like a cowboy hat. Like, she doesn’t have the Camaro or whatever, the Lamborghini. But everything else, she rocks it. Like the, anyway, so, just think of Lloyd. Okay, now, um. She gets in there, she gets so excited, she walks in, and they’re like, oh, are you, you’re, you’re one of the winners.

She’s like, one of the winners? I’m the winner, right? Oh yeah, come on over to the back. And so she’s, she’s like, we have to find somebody. So as she’s waiting, what is she going to do? Start shopping. So she grabs this thing here, that thing over there, that thing would be cute. She’s like a 250 credit card award or whatever anyways.

Let me just start to get these clothes. They finally come out, and it just brings a bucket. That has Clorox, and notebooks, and colored pencils. Congratulations, have fun teaching this year. She was so upset, she had to buy the 300 worth of clothes to make herself feel better. And I told her, Chico’s won. That was the whole model.

She said she was walking around and she saw all these other teachers. With a bunch of clothes holding this bucket, this sad bucket and they’re trying to make themselves better by buying these items. Friends, marketers, and if you’re in here, praise the Lord for you. We market as well. Some of you are here because of an ad.

Marketers can be manipulators! And we don’t even know it! Nothing spreads this dis ease like the propaganda of more. And for our entire lives, we’ve been formed to believe that the answer is more. Eric Weinstein, he’s a mathematician and physicist. He’s actually made popular from the Joe Rogan podcast, and he calls this Dis ease the ego, E G O, which means Embedded Growth Obligations.

He’s argued we’ve created a whole economy that we assume we will always grow, we’ll always get more, and so even like, we’ll fire a CEO if a company’s not growing quarter after quarter. Have you noticed that, right? Like Bob, uh, Bob Iger just raised Disney Plus again. Why? They gotta reach those numbers. It reminds me of Walt Disney, the ultimate Walt Disney.

We have, uh, you know, her dog’s name’s Walt here in the front row. We’re kind of fans of the old school version. But he actually says we don’t make more movies to make more money. We make more money to make more movies. I think that’s been reversed these days, right? Our economy, we, our politicians, we, we don’t really care if you emulate character, we vote for you if you stimulate cash.

It’s all about more, because we think that’s going to be the answer to everything. But is it really? And the reality is we can look at companies and how corrupt they are, and everybody does this, but this more has influenced our own individual identities as well. Take a look at the next quote on the screen by Evie MacDonald.

She says the following, she says, We have begun to identify our worth with how much money we made or how many possessions we owned. This is such a key line. Our identity has changed from being American citizens to being American consumers. We now produce very little for ourselves. We have become ferocious consumers of not only goods, but services.

All in an attempt to increase our quality of life. When did we make that shift from citizen to consumer? I would argue it certainly was on full display starting in the 1960s. There’s a lot of data to back that up. Around then, our economy morphed from a needs based economy to a wants based economy.

Apparently, you used to only buy things when you needed them. I don’t know, right? That wasn’t my lifetime. Now you buy things because you want them, which is why I want a new iPhone every year, even though they make the slightest improvement. We are a once based economy. In fact, data shows Americans consume twice as many material goods as we did just 50 years ago, which is hard to imagine because my grandma’s house has a lot of stuff in it.

I’m like, I don’t know, but my papa was a hoarder so I blame him, right? Our homes have actually nearly tripled in size. We hate the size of our home. And I keep reminding her, babe, in the 50s, this was nice, you know, so we’re gonna be good. Also, the average home in America, check this out, has nearly 300, 000 items in it.

I didn’t believe this until I cleaned my junk drawer. That alone had about a half a thousand items just in one little drawer. So 300, 000 might be pretty easy to attain. But the question is, has it increased our quality of life? Right, every piece of data shows since the 50s, that was the last time our country was like happy.

Right. All the data is showing we’re more and more anxious as each passing generation grows up. Research also shows happiness and let me be clear. Happiness does increase as your salary and increases until you reach about 70, 000. My argument is like, let’s add 13% to that because of the inflation. So whatever the math is, real quick, like 80 something thousand, and there is a quality of life, things get better, but then there hits a plateau, and what’s fascinating, now once you make even more than that, the inverse happens.

The more money you make, the more miserable you are. Or as one famous person once said, Mo money, mo problems. Right? But we’re never told this obvious truth. I like to put it, riches get stitches. But it hasn’t caught on into the culture of moment yet. That Instagram reel is not going viral. Now, instead, we are assured.

We are just one item away from happiness. On average, we see an ad to buy a product 100 times before 9am. And that’s not even the end of it. 5, 000 times before the end of the day. Q real quick, my theory, you know, everybody’s like, Oh my gosh, I talked about this product out loud. And then I saw it on my phone later.

Anybody done this before? Raise your hand. Right? Here’s my theory. It’s not true. They weren’t listening to you. You were listening to it. You saw the ad for that product the day before, didn’t notice it, but it inception into your mind. The next day you talk about it out loud and now you’re on the prowl and now it’s in your phone again.

And you’re like, wow, they’re listening to me, friends that you’re listening to them. You heard that theory before? That should go viral on Instagram too. Now listen, Joshua Becker, he wrote a book called The More of Less. He argues the following, quote, he’s a pastor, churn, minimalist, blogger, by the way, he says, consumerism surrounds us like the air we breathe, and like air, it’s invisible.

We hardly even know how much we’re influenced by the philosophy that we must buy, buy, buy if we are to be happy. But friends, we are. Sad, sad, sad. Cue the line again from our rabbi Jesus. It is more blessed, or translations also say happy, to give than it is to receive. Most of us in this room believe Jesus, but the propaganda of more has been so successful that we are stuck in its chokehold.

Richard Foster, in his great book, Freedom of Simplicity, it’s one of our recommended reads, says the following. Think of the misery that comes into our lives by our restless, gnawing greed. We plunge ourselves into enormous debt and then take two and three jobs to stay afloat. We uproot our families with unnecessary moves just so we can have a more prestigious house.

We grasp and grab and never have enough. And most destructive of all, greed has a way of severing the cords of compassion. Now, is there a way to get our compassion back? Is there an antidote to be set free from this dis ease? Can we be freed from the chokehold of consumerism and truly live lives of contentment?

I would argue yes, and it’s Jesus practice of material simplicity. Last week we looked at digital simplicity. This week is material. Our working definition for simplicity is on the screen yet again. It says   📍 The practice of simplicity is removing the number of digital distractions, material desires, and relational dishonesties that keep us from living a joyful life in the kingdom with Jesus.

 Can we really experience a joyful life in the kingdom? Well, one way to do that is to remove some of our material possessions, some of our material desires. And maybe you’re like me, you know it’s true, but is that really true? Open your Bibles now to Luke chapter 12. Let’s look at the parable of what Jesus calls the rich fool.

This is starting in verse 13 as you’re flipping there in Luke chapter 12. This is pretty interesting. Luke is very fascinated about economics and the rich versus the poor. In fact, I encourage you to go to formedbyjesus. com. Me and Pastor Caleb are gonna have a conversation about this message on our podcast.

You can check it out there. We’re gonna kind of do a deep dive of Luke talking about money in a pretty interesting way. Remind me. Let’s do that. Okay, I just decided. Now, what’s interesting though is this is the, this parable is only found in the Gospel of Luke. And also, we don’t know this person’s name, which is a literary device to tell you, you might be that name.

Whenever it says, just a rich fool, you have to walk away going, am I the rich fool? Verse 13, Luke chapter 12, someone from the crowd said to him, teacher, or other translations actually rabbi, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. I could just imagine like, I want some of the money and I wasn’t born first.

Tell him I need some of the money. Now this actually is pretty common in this day. Rabbis served as mediators. So it’s not a really weird, uh, question. But look at verse 14. Jesus replied to him, Friend, who appointed me a judge or arbitrator over you? He’s like, I don’t really want to answer that question, but let me get to the heart of your problem.

He then told them, Watch out and be on guard against all greed, because one’s life is not in the abundance of his greed. Possessions, a few things to note. Notice the double emphasis here on being cautious. He says, watch out and be on guard. Don’t those things mean the same thing? Precisely. Which really means like, watch out, like don’t do it.

Quickest way to corruption is to be careless with consumption. Be careful. Then he says, all greed. Other translations may say all kinds of greed. So there’s many different types of greed. I’ve actually learned by Richard Foster. He’s saying sometimes the most greedy people aren’t the rich. It’s the poor.

They’re more fascinated with money than those who actually have it because once you have it you’re kind of like, Oh, it’s not as great as I thought. All sorts of greed. And then he says, One’s life is not in the abundance of his possessions. In other words, you’re not defined by how much you own or how much you don’t own, which is a real temptation.

I know for me as I am now fully in my 30s like, That’s more of a reality. It’s more of a fear. Like, I wish I possessed more. So, verse 16, Then he told them a parable. A rich man’s land was very productive. Who doesn’t want to be productive? This is pretty incredible. Notice how tempting this would be for you and for me.

He thought to himself, What should I do since I don’t have anywhere to store my crops? I will do this, he said. I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones and store all my grain and my goods there. A few things to note. One, notice the wasteful spending here instead of adding to the barns. He’s like, let me just tear it down and make something even bigger.

That’s a bit wasteful. But also notice the I, I, I, me, me, me. Now, most of us when we’re reading this, that isn’t. We don’t really, we don’t catch that, but for a person of this day, like this guy is very arrogant. He’s saying, my, my, my, my, me, me, me, me, Jesus is supposed to like, he’s showing you this is kind of funny.

This is how foolish this guy is. He thinks all of his blessings are his own. A key principle in the Bible is anything that you have, the Lord gave it to you, we’re just called to be stewards. So this isn’t my church, this is Jesus church. That’s not my house, this is the Lord’s house, you know what I’m saying?

All of it is the Lord’s, I’m simply a steward, so it’s showing his foolishness there, me me me, my my my. Although in today’s culture, we tend to reward that type of behavior, if you’re arrogant, you think you’re amazing, you know, like, I did all of this, that is not biblical, but also note, he’s trying to find more possessions for himself, but it’s very common in this day, if you had anything extra, you were commanded to give it to the poor, they didn’t have a government system like we do today, the only way the poor survived is if the harvest was plentiful, and the poor Uh, people were able to pick on the outskirts of your farm to survive.

He didn’t want that. Verse 19, Then I’ll say to myself, It’s still me, me, me, I, I, I, You have many goods stored up for many years. Take it easy, eat, drink and enjoy yourself. But God said to him, You fool this very night. Your life is demanded of you and the things you have prepared. Whose will they be? That’s how it is with the one who stores up treasures for himself and is not rich towards God.

Now, how are we to be rich towards God? You can use the rest of the Bible to see, well, it’s giving to the poor, it’s giving to the church for the sake of the mission and sacrificing your time, all of these things. But what is Jesus’s main argument in Luke 12, 13 through 21? And as his disciples, what do we need to believe and do as a result of it?

Here’s the key idea. Staying in the posture of gain will keep you in the prison. of pain, should be on the next screen.   📍 Staying in the posture of gain will keep you in the prison of pain.  This man should have said, what a blessing from the Lord! It’s not bad to have an abundance of things, but then it’s like, hey!

I’m going to use this to help my family, but also there’s some people in my community who need this. We need to set up businesses to help bless even more people, right? He can multiply and really make a difference in his community. But he was stuck in that prison, that posture. I need more, more, more. And Jesus is saying, I know that sounds great, but you’re not going to be able to take any of this with you.

The good life is found in two things. Limiting what we own. and increasing what we give. See you guys next week. You know, good luck. No, right? Let’s read verse 15 again, but now in the NLT translation. It says the following, Then Jesus said, Beware, guard against every kind of greed. Now under, this is the phrase right here.

Life is not measured by how much you own.

Now, this would be so much easier to preach if I didn’t have the type of week I had this week. I actually had a cool story, my truck had the check engine light at the men’s breakfast we had a couple weeks ago. They’re like, yeah, it’s about 1, 500. And I was like, why me Lord? You know, I was praying. And I finally was like, you know what, I’m going to pray that my car would be healed.

And it did. So don’t laugh at me. Uh, the check engine lights gone. I did hit the dashboard a few times, so I’m not sure, you know, but. So praise the Lord for that. So I’m feeling good. I’m like, I’m going to do a series on money, you know, this Sunday, I’m going to talk about this miracle. And then Wednesday morning, and I’m learning the difference between being transparent and authentic.

You don’t need to know all the details. Those close to me do. I received a devastating phone call, um, that really put this verse to the test. I’m still not over it. I’m still mad. Pray for my wife, like, she’s just like, you’re like, not fun to be around. I’m like, I can have a bad week. She’s like, I know, but like, be fun again.

I’m trying, babe. Now, what it is, it’s like this possession that I’ve been working on, praying for, uh, maneuvering to get for like six years. And I thought for sure it was going to be ours. And I was so excited. And then I got the phone call that it was not going to be in there. We’re going to give this thing to someone else.

It would have been a game changer. It would have blessed my family tremendously. And so. I was so mad, I went to the sauna and just sweated it out, to the glory of God. Um, but then in the sauna, that line, thank you Jesus, kept coming to my mind. Life is not measured by how much you own. I feel like the Holy Spirit was saying, you’re gonna tease this Sunday, but I first need you to live it.

Your life, this future, is not defined by what you possess or don’t. And I have to be honest with you. I still don’t know if I believe it. You know, I’m like, I believe it and I’m preaching it, but it’s like, I’m not happy yet. You know, like, I’m not like, Oh yeah, great. I’m glad we didn’t get that thing. Like, I’m still kind of struggling, but that’s the Christian life.

It’s knowing that my thoughts aren’t always the truth. And so I’m trying to submit and obey to that reality. All that to say, I realized what I am preaching today. You don’t want to believe. I don’t want to believe it, but it’s still true. And honestly, I think this sounds impossible because it is. It’s impossible without a few things.

One, the Holy Spirit, I’ve been praying all week. The Holy Spirit would open our minds to see that this really is the path to the good life. Two is a community to encourage us. I think it’s one reason why we have the church. Hey, you did it. Good job. Like it’s not in what you possess. Give that thing away.

Hoorah. Good job. Be like, we need community. But also number three, we need a plan. We need like step by step. How do I begin to live a life where I’m not stuck to material goods? And we want to provide that plan. This week in your Together Guides, you are going to study 1 Timothy 6 line by line. I wish that we had enough time to do that today.

But after studying that, we’re going to ask you guys a few questions and I’ll put it on the screen. I’d love for you to begin to ask yourself these questions today.   📍 Number one, you need to evaluate. What do you value most in life?  Right, when you begin to look at your material possessions. You have to decide, what is my values, and do my things mirror those values?

Joshua Becker, again, in his book, The More of Less, a very extremely practical way to talk about minimalism. He defines minimalism the following way. He says, minimalism is the intentional promotion of the things we most value, and the removal of anything that distracts us from them. Right? And so, my cousin challenged me when he was in town.

He was just on the screen during the countdown. It’s on our podcast. He’s like, Trey, I think you put too much hope in your books, so maybe you need to get rid of all your books. And I’m like, I think you need to leave now. You know, like, slow down, bro. Like, you know, we’re cool, but not that cool. No, so then I was starting to think through, should I get rid of all my books?

If you know me, like, my books. Those are my books. And, um, I’m still open to the idea, but I realize, okay, with this paradigm, I, the value I have in my life is to bring people information and to teach them and help them follow the way of Jesus. I can’t tell you how many times I look at my bookshelf, remember a quote from the book, and now it’s in the sermon, right?

So, that’s my justification, okay? If you think that’s wrong, take a hike. No, so… That’s a good example of like, yeah, like possessions bring a lot of griefs, but sometimes they bring you value and you need to have the wisdom to know the difference. So value help you define, do I keep this or do I let go of it?

Which leads to number two experiments.   📍 Here’s the experiment. I will live without insert blank, whatever possession for insert blank days.  Maybe it’s seven days or 30 days or 60 days or P90X or 90 days, you know, whatever. Begin to experiment on the together guide this week on formed by Jesus dot com slash simplicity.

You can look at this teaching. It’ll show like a chart from very easy to very hard. So we gave you a couple ideas like an easy thing to do would be to completely clean your vehicle this week and keep it decluttered for seven days. Easy thing is to live without a daily purchase for seven days. Right. If you’re somebody buys coffee every morning, don’t do that anymore.

Oh, no, he’s asking too much from us. Right. A moderate thing is to live without entertainment, uh, uh, live without entertainment that isn’t free for 7 to 30 days, right? So like yesterday, we took our kids to the movies. That’s a no no. Probably shouldn’t have done that, right? So 7 to 30 days where I’m having fun, but I don’t have to pay for it.

You know, it’s like going to the river, but that’s if you don’t lose your keys, because then you have to pay a lot for it. Anyways, moving on. That’s not personal or anything. What’s hard, this one’s really hard for us, uh, live without any online purchases for 7 to 30 days. You have to like, go to the store.

Like, what? Not like, buy now with one click? All the men are like, looking at their wives like, Let’s apply the sermon this month. Amen? You know? Very hard. Live without a cluttered home for 30 plus days. Begin to move things. So, I don’t want to get too into the details. Go on the Together Guide this week. But here’s the thing.

Clutter is scientifically proven to distract you from focus and disrupt your sleep. Literally, if you have a really big house that like, has a bunch of stuff, the data shows you don’t sleep well. Okay, look at this quote from Jan Johnson. There’s a couple of these books at the church march at the back.

She’s a great spiritual director. She has this quote. We have to choose between our stuff and our serenity because physical clutter creates mental clutter. This is why I say experiment. One of the biggest problems I did is I threw away, like I got so inspired last month and I threw away like a bunch of stuff.

I didn’t even donate it. I’m a terrible, I was just like trash. Right. And so there was a bunch of video camera stuff. I’m like, I don’t use this anymore. Trash. The next day I realized I needed it. Right? So now I got to go spend more money to get that thing again, right? So experiment by maybe putting it in a bag, putting it in the garage, allowing it to sit for 30 days.

If you realize you really don’t need it, then donate it or throw it away. Okay? Now number three, and this is huge.   📍 Remember, decluttering isn’t removal to get God’s approval, but it’s making space for God’s grace.  We’re trying to make a space where we’re just, God, even just these material things, it’s so clear in scripture, these possessions, they have a way to pierce us with many griefs.

And so I want to start getting rid of these things, not so that I’m all of a sudden this great person, but so that I have access and clarity of mind, because I am tired of being double minded and I’m tired of being double mastered. So what did it look like to get rid of those things, to keep our eyes on him?

Now, this will look different for every person. That’s what I love about these practices. So, you will never see in the Bible, Jesus giving us a specific dollar amount to live by, and then anything above, you gotta get rid of it. It’s different for every person. I think all of us have different capacities for blessings.

Some of us can receive more. I know for me and my, my family, we hate how small our house is. And, and I’ve been telling myself, we’re content, we are content, you know, whatever. But, My value is to be hospitable. And so we’re like, one day I think the Lord, we need to get a bigger home. I can, we have, we can have bunk beds.

Like I don’t care how small the rooms are. But I want a huge living space because I want people over to do life and a kitchen. Right. For her to cook in and all of that stuff. Right. Like that’s the value. So it’s okay. Like the last thing I want in our church to go, Oh, this person has a big home. They’re not practicing simplicity.

That’s not it. Right. But, it does look different for every person, okay? And don’t forget, typically those with less money often put their hope in money more than those who have it. So don’t be like, ooh, you seem to have a lot of money, you’re a bad person. That’s not how it goes, okay? All different spaces of maturity and whatever.

But the call is, what can you and I do to change our relationship with material desires so that… We can live a joyful life in the kingdom with Jesus. Hear me, in a world that is constantly calling us to raise our standard of living, what would it look like if you and I, instead, began to raise our standard of loving?

So convicted by that line from Richard Foster. Greed severs the cords of compassion. Hearing about what’s happening in Maui this past week. Having burden, but our money is tied up in so many things we can’t give towards it. Hearing a family in our church needs meals this week, so burdened, but we don’t even have the finances to help provide a meal, right?

It is severing us from living the life that we’re truly called to live. I love how G. K. Chesterton puts it. There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is just to desire less. Friends, by the power of the Holy Spirit, you and I can, can begin to desire less.

And that is you and I, when you and I begin to live more.