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The single-hearted person
Introduction
When we say we're "going in twenty directions" or "feeling scattered," that's usually not a good sign. It means we feel torn and frustrated, as if we never get anything done or never do anything well. It leads to a life of regret. Yet we also talk as if we think it's good or even saintly to be busy.
As we practise simplicity, the Holy Spirit trains us to cut busyness and hurry out of our lives by remaining focused on God and God's kingdom. We refrain from participating in activities and owning possessions that are superfluous and do not further our union with God. The result is singleness of heart, so that we are deliberate and purposeful in everything we do and say and think.
But simplicity may look different for each person and for each culture. For many of us, it means not caring about owning the kinds of things that a self-respecting thief would break in and steal. But it also means not being "holier than thou" about what we don't own or don't do. In and of themselves, simplicity choices mean nothing. We discard certain objects and activities because they take us away from what God created us to do: to have union with God, to hear what God is calling us to do in the kingdom, and to take the next step in doing that.
Turning Toward God
Describe the last time you remember feeling hurried, torn and pulled in different directions.
Hearing God Through the Word
Simplicity is the alternative for those who heard Matthew 6:19-24 as part of the Sermon on the Mount. In this section, Jesus urged people to stop trying to secure themselves through reputation and wealth. Instead, they should seek God and God's kingdom and everything else would take care of itself.
Read Matthew 6:19-21.
Questions
- What reasons does Jesus give for not storing up treasures?
- What objects or goals often become "treasures on earth" that we "store up"? How do they complicate our lives (v. 19)?
- How do these treasures get destroyed or stolen, much to our despair?
- What would it look like to live with God as one's "treasure?
- Verse 22 in the King James Version reads ‘if, therefore, thine eye be single’. How are you full of light instead of darkness when the eye of your soul has a ‘single’ focus?
- Richard Foster notes that ‘when Jesus said that ‘no-one can serve two masters’, he did not mean that it was unwise to serve two masters, but that it was impossible’. When we try to do this anyway, what miserable results do we experience?
- What inner motives drive us to serve so-called earthly treasures while we are trying to serve God?
Read Matthew 6:33.
- What does "all these things" seem to refer to?
- How do we get distracted from primary characteristics of Christians: seeking God, being conduits of God's grace?
- Simplicity can be defined as "being clear and uncomplicated." How is God calling you to be clear and uncomplicated in one of the areas listed?
- your life with God
- your relationships with others
- what God has called you to do
- What do you believe God is calling you to do in relation to one of these patterns of thought or action?
- have clear and uncomplicated purposes
- be deliberate about focusing on God
- minimize the things that distract you from seeking God
- Which of the transformation exercises would be most helpful in letting God work within you?
Transformation Exercises
Experiment with one or more of the following.
Walk around your house or apartment and pick up or gaze at items you truly treasure. Kneel next to them (or hold them) and ask God,
- What is it within me that causes me to treasure this?
- What would have to happen within me to help me be willing to give it away?
Visit the places where you do your "treasuring" of God (perhaps the bed where you read your Bible; the paths where you walk and talk to God, even the driver's seat of your car where you've pondered what God is saying to you). Say a prayer of thanks for the moments you've known of treasuring God. Ask God to help you live a God-centred life.
Find the hymn "Be Thou My Vision" and read the words of the stanza that begins, "Riches I heed not" and ends with "my treasure thou art" (speaking to God). Take these words with you on a walk and sing this song, especially this stanza, to God. Or use another song that speaks of God as one's treasure.
"There is a prevailing philosophy today that has dominated culture, including religious culture, that it's a positive virtue to satisfy absolutely every human passion. Whole churches have been created around these tin gods of good feelings and affluence." Richard Foster
"The Puritans lived as if they stood before an audience of One, carrying on their lives as if the only one whose opinion mattered were God." Os Guinness
"Were our lives simpler, we would be more vulnerable to the subtle workings of the soul." Mary Conrow Coelho