day 29: purposeful simplicity is spending time with jesus.

We’ve talked all month long about Purposeful Simplicity and some of the barriers that keep us from it. I’m learning that the one vital thing that helps me remember my purpose is spending time with Jesus.

There are voices all around me and voices inside of me beckoning, tugging me away from Purposeful Simplicity: telling me there’s no happiness to be found there, no joy, no fulfillment. They tell me I need to prove my worth by how I look and who I know and what I do. They tell me to compare myself to women around me to make sure I’m doing better. They tell me there’s no way God’s Word is relevant to what concerns me here and now in 2014.

But they’re wrong. Those voices are dead-end streets, promising many things and delivering emptiness and heartache.

In the end the problem isn’t with the voices; it’s with my own heart which so desperately grasps at anything that will give me comfort and a sense that I’m somebody special. My heart is like a writhing, tantruming toddler, demanding what I want and totally blind to what I need.

And so my heart needs help. It needs help every single day. It needs to pour out all these burdens and desires and dead-end-road stories to Jesus. And then it needs be still and listen, because God’s voice is quiet and He will never force Himself on me. That’s not the way He works. His love is gentle — not like the other voices that bombard me and clamor for my attention. His love is patient and He will wait. But I won’t experience the blessing of hearing Him if my heart is noisy.

I can make a plan, I can become organized, I can research and learn. But in the end none of it will work without the One True voice.

That’s where I find a life of rest. That’s where I find Purposeful Simplicity.

I run in the path of your commands for you have set my heart free. – Psalm 119.32