DNDW 4: SIMPLICITY

Feeling buried under your stuff, suffocated by your schedule, and exhausted by others’ expectations? Author and simplicity expert Jan Johnson chats with Christine about the paradoxical liberation of simplification. They explore how to determine your core values, establish your priorities, and chisel away what’s getting in the way of rest, joy, and abundance. They also discuss how “checkbox spirituality” contributes to our exhaustion, why Amazon won’t save us, and how to do a heart exam in the middle of Target. If you’d like to learn to be more present, generous, and peaceful, this episode will encourage and equip you to take practical steps toward simplifying your life and faith.

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Season 3 | Draw Near Dwell Well | Topics & Guests

NOTE: Featuring a guest, resource, or organization on The Holy Shift does not necessarily constitute a blanket endorsement of their entire body of work.

Draw Near Dwell Well Resources

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We’ve highlighted some key points from this episode below. Feel free to share these on your blogs/feeds with proper attribution to the writer/speaker/podcast. Or stay tuned—we will be posting several of these verses and quotes, along with clips from this episode, on our IG page and you can save/share from there.

Scripture

MATTHEW 6: SIMPLICITY FROM SEEKING FIRST

1“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. 19“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

25“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

28“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

PSALM 131

1LORD, my heart is not proud; my eyes are not haughty. I don’t concern myself with matters too great or too awesome for me to grasp. 2Instead, I have calmed and quieted myself, like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk. Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me.

1 Timothy 6:6-8

6Yet true godliness with contentment is itself great wealth. 7After all, we brought nothing with us when we came into the world, and we can’t take anything with us when we leave it. 8So if we have enough food and clothing, let us be content.

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Quotes

• Our corner of the kingdom is hooked on checkbox spirituality…when it’s really all about desiring God. -Jan Johnson
• I think that once we begin tasting the goodness of God, we just want more of God, and we want to connect with God. We want to have that interactive life with God. And we begin to see that, okay, without this, we’re only half alive. -Jan Johnson
•  Simplicity is liberating. It’s like chiseling away what’s in the way to expose the art in the stone. -Christine Crawford
•  More than anything else, simplicity is about making space for God.…  The white space on the calendar is very important. Being still and knowing that God is God. -Jan Johnson
•  Do it as you can, not as you can’t. -Jan Johnson
•   The goal of spiritual formation is transformation. And so I always say, you do the connecting and God will do the perfecting, -Jan Johnson
•   Simplicity is not the absence of beauty. In fact, I feel like simplicity is what makes room for us to notice beauty, to appreciate beauty. -Christine Crawford
•   A really good place for someone to start is just to begin practicing a pause. A pause before purchasing, a pause before speaking, a pause before acting, a pause before accumulating or doing or whatever else. -Jan Johnson

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Related Inspiration

ART

MUSIC

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Other Resources

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