Welcome back to the Aspester John podcast. Here we talk every so often about

wartime living and we talk about minimalism too, but those are not the same thing.

The Christian life is not simply about

decluttering our closets and living a simpler life. No, we aim at wartime

simplicity, which is a more specific goal, a material simplicity in this world that is on mission, not simply happy with being more organized.

You can see how Pastor John distinguishes the two

between wartime simplicity and minimalism in the APJ book on pages 98 to 101.

Today we look at a new angle on the topic in an email from a woman who

listens to the podcast from China. Here's the email from our friend, dear

Pastor John, hello to you from Hong Kong and thank you for this podcast. My question is that my unbelieving husband has the habit of

hoarding. He keeps boxes, newspapers from years back, packaging, all the things that average people

may regard as garbage once their expected

usage is over all that accumulates in our home. I try to throw away some things but

it causes disharmony in our relationship. I feel like I live in a rubbish

dump. How do I deal with the problem, bibically? Well let me admit right away

I am not an expert in either understanding, hoarding, or counseling

hoarders. So you might say, well, why are you even trying to answer this question and

and I'm trying to answer it because it's it's so hard I mean yeah I feel like as a

pastor I can't ignore things that I haven't I just have not

given a lot of thought to but but frankly I have seen enough of this in in the last 40 years

that I've thought about it some so don't take this as a final word just take it as maybe there's something here that would help me and

if there's not you haven't wasted too much time.

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