Good Morning Everyone,
Our theme for this month: “Obeying God when obeying isn’t easy”
Our Bible verse for today: “But we encourage you … to seek to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with our own hands …” 1 Thessalonians 4:11 (HCSB)
Our thought for today: “Many of us need to simplify and downsize”
The poet J.W. Goethe once wrote:
“To live within limits. To want one thing. Or a few things very much and love them dearly.
Cling to them, survey them from every angle. Become one with them – that is what makes the poet, the artist, the human being.”
Goethe’s words echo what Paul was expressing in 1 Thessalonians 4:11, God calls us to a quiet and simple life that honors Him – a life with which we are content. This is a theme which is repeated many times in the Bible. Jesus Himself, in Luke 12:15 cautioned us that the true value of our lives is not measured in the multitude of our possessions but in the quality of our relationship with God. Solomon also, in Ecclesiastes 2:24, urged his readers to find joy and satisfaction in the simple things.
But this is a problem for many of us. Our culture celebrates and encourages larger, bigger, better, more, and faster; rather than quietness, simplicity, and contentment. For many people their life has become too big, too cluttered and demanding, and, sadly, less satisfying rather than more.
I think Christopher Smith and John Pattison nailed it in their book “Slow Church”. They wrote, “In an age of consumerism, economic imperialism and what Martin Luther King Jr. called “jumboism”, the sacrificial way of Jesus may be calling us to forsake the supersized life.”
Most of us would be better and happier, and the quality of our lives would improve exponentially, with less instead of more – less work, fewer activities, fewer possessions (and consequently less debt). Interestingly, the only upward mobility the New Testament calls believers to pursue is to be upwardly mobile out of this life and into the next. While we’re here on earth we’re to be simple, modest, and content.
Pursuing such a life is counter-cultural and therefore not easy. But it is what God calls us too and therefore it is what’s best for us – even if it doesn’t seem that way from a human perspective at the moment. This is something I have struggled with for years and there’s a good chance you do too. I encourage all of us to consider if perhaps God might be calling you to a simpler and quieter life.
God Bless,
Pastor Jim
Oak Hill Baptist Church 