“Simplified living requires more than just organizing your closets or cleaning out your desk drawer. It requires uncluttering your soul.”- Bill Hybels
As Bill Hybels continues Chapter 1 of Simplify, he emphasizes we need to examine the core issues that lead us into frenzied living in order to stop doing the things that don’t matter and begin building our lives on the stuff that does. Based on his own experience, Pastor Hybels has identified ten key practices vital to keeping the soul clutter-free. He devotes one chapter of Simplify to each of these practices.
The author challenges us to go beyond reading each chapter only on a theoretical basis. Rather than giving a mere intellectual nod to each of the ten key practices, Pastor Hybels exhorts us to apply what we read “with courage and grit.” By clearing our soul of needless clutter, we’ll be able to hear and respond to each whisper from God (Bill Hybels’ previous book is The Power of a Whisper).
Citing Luke’s account of Jesus at the home of Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42), Pastor Hybels states all of us, like Mary, “yearn for an antidote to all the drivenness and busyness in our lives.” That antidote isn’t getting a handle on our busyness. The antidote is sitting down for an unrushed conversation with Jesus. In all our activity, we must not lose sight of relationship.
Today’s question: Following your vocation loss, what needless clutter must be cleared from your soul? Please share.
Tomorrow’s blog: the new addition to the Annotated Bibliography, All the Places to Go
