Life Together, pt. 7—Keep it Simple.

Luke 12:13-15 NIV
Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”

“We must shift America from a needs culture to a desires culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things even before the old have been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality. Man’s desires must overshadow his needs.” —Paul Mazur

“Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions in consumption… We need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate. The very meaning and significance of our lives, the measure of social status, social acceptance, and prestige is now to be found in our patterns of consumption.” —Victor Lebow

“Upward mobility often ends not in satisfaction and peace but in exhaustion, disappointment, and emptiness.” —Robert C. Roberts

“People worry about money no matter how much money they make. We live in a materialist culture, and we want money and possessions, and very few people have heard a powerful voice telling them to resist those impulses or how to resist those impulses. Organized religion has not done a good job of challenging people to examine their lifestyles.” —Robert Wuthnow

“Commercialism constitutes a worldview, a rival religious philosophy about what constitutes blessedness.”—Richard Foster

Luke 12:15 NIV
Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.

Keep it Simple.
We choose to prioritize clarity and substance over complexity and splendor, faithfully stewarding our God-given resources while shunning excess.

Simplicity is not:

• A
• Being
• A

Simplicity is:

• A focused to what matters most.
• Saying “no” to anything that distracts or from our “yes” to God.

Simplicity is about letting go of what keeps us from seeking first the kingdom.” —Jan Johnson

“Simplicity is an inward reality of single-hearted focus upon God and His kingdom which results in an outward lifestyle of modesty, openness, and unpretentiousness, and which disciplines our hunger for status, glamour, and luxury.” —Richard Foster

• A required element to faithful .

1 Timothy 6:6-7 NIV
But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it.

Keeping it Simple…

1. Starts in our .

“To be simple is to fix one’s eye solely on the simple truth of God at a time when all concepts are being confused, distorted, and turned upside down.” —Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“All plenty which is not my God is poverty to me.” —Augustine of Hippo

2. Must be .

Galatians 5:16 NIV
So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

“Simplicity is the path that the Spirit guides us on to live with less, so that we might have more space for Him.” —Joshua Becker

3. Is lived out and .

“In simplicity, we are freed from the tyranny of ‘more,’ and instead, we are opened to the gift of community—sharing with others what we no longer need.” —Jan Johnson

Acts 4:32-35 NIV
All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.

“There are two ways to get enough: one is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.”—G. K. Chesterton

Philippians 2:5-8 NIV
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature a God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he gave up everything, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!

Philippians 2:7 ESV
 [He] emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

Having is often laying hold of

Answer Key: Style; Organized; Fad; commitment; deters; stewardship; heart; Spirit-led; personally, communally; Less, more