I was talking with an acquaintance after church yesterday on the playground. She was saying how the message our pastor gave was just what her unchurched friend needed to hear: about how we don’t earn our salvation. How it’s not about focusing on ourselves and whether we’ve been naughty or nice.
So important to remember.
I was thinking about how our church encourages training in Christlikeness. They value the spiritual disciplines because they are activities “in our power that we do to enable us to do what we cannot do by direct effort” (Willard, pg. 200).
The first example that came to my mind was the discipline of fasting, which helps us long for our true Home with God (Matt 9:15). It breaks the hold food and this world has over us, allowing us to dine on Him.
It reminded me of starting the fast our group did for The 7 Experiment. I did not have the best attitude because I knew I would have to reorient some things in my life. Jen nailed it when she wrote, “Fasting is an intentional reduction, a deliberate abstinence to summon God’s movement in our lives. A fast creates margin for God to move. Temporarily changing our routine from comfort jars us off high-center…It clears space for a fresh movement of the Holy Spirit…Every word from God purposes to transform us into disciples. There is no waste, no superfluous commands…God did not invite me into this fast to condemn me; it was to liberate me. This isn’t a guilt-mongering, finger-pointing, comparison game. Nor is it some angry, cynical, holier-than-thou experiment to feel superior to others.”
I feel the same way in this complex issue of simplicity of heart. It is one of many disciplines God can use our obedience in to transform our hearts and help us seek first His kingdom and His righteousness (Matt 6:33). We do not naturally do that on our own. Just as we don’t meet with Jesus daily to earn His love, we don’t seek to have single eyes to perform for Him. We do it because He commanded us to. And we love Him and want to love Him more. We become ever more a fruitful vine that he can prune to bear even more fruit (John 15:2). And this is “to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples” (John 15:8).
I appreciate how Foster continually points out how simplicity is the most outward of all the disciplines, and therefore most susceptible to corruption. Therefore I am regularly doing a gut check on my motives in finishing this series. It really does matter.
Foster writes, “The first overarching principle is the necessity of precision without legalism. No one knows more keenly than I the grave danger in giving specific outward application to simplicity. How do you address such a wide variety of people with different needs and vastly different circumstances?
Some have large families; others have small families or no children. Still others are single. Some children have unusual needs that increase significantly the demands of time and money. The needs of teenagers are different from the needs of children.
We are different emotionally. One needs privacy; another thrives on crowds. One is sensitive to beauty and symmetry; another has no interest in such matters.
Different jobs make different demands. The president of a university where I once taught needs a larger home than I do. He regularly entertains groups of forty or fifty people; I panic if we top six. Some jobs are so publicly oriented that absolute privacy in the home is a psychological necessity.
We also have the difficulty of the changing cultural and world scene. We cannot – we must not – live in isolation from our world. What was a prophetic expression of simplicity in one generation may become only quaint in the next. Time changes issues, and we dare not close our eyes to that fact if we hope to be redemptive.
And most dangerous of all is our tendency to turn any expression of simplicity into a new legalism. How quickly we calcify what should always remain alive and changing…Is it any wonder that we struggle and strain in an attempt to express exterior simplicity? But we must not shrink back from our task…” (Foster pages 131-133)
So, the complexity of simplicity. Seems so ironic.
A friend and I were talking this morning about how when relationships get deeper, the issues don’t become easier or smaller. In fact, because two people know one another better, we see the other’s flaws more easily. But that doesn’t mean we shrink back or start over with someone else. We travel that road together for His glory and our good in community.
All these lessons have been taught to me by His gracious hand in the excruciating realm of experience. I hope to pass on a few things He has shown me.
Any thoughts?