Simplicity & Contentment

Bridgetown Audio Podcast

Bridgetown Church

Religion & Spirituality:christianity, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 13 July 2020

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Part 7 of the series "Simplicity" as part of Practicing The Way. Every person will at one time or another be confronted with reconciling the ache, need, and desire to feel fulfilled within—to feel satisfied and happy with what we have and who we are. In order for us to practice Simplicity in our lives, we must first confront the soul ache within; to take notice of why we are driven to consume, and then to invite God to meet us there, allowing him to show us and teach us how to be satisfied in him. It is through the discipline and practice of contentment that we extinguish the fire of “more” in our lives and ultimately find freedom to live lives of simplicity.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everybody, welcome to the Teaching for Bridgestown Church Online. If you are new or
0:15.9	visiting, my name is Bethany Allen. Please turn with me and your Bibles to Philippians
0:20.6	Chapter 4. Now as many of you know, we just spent the last few weeks really unpacking
0:27.2	what it means to lean into the practice of simplicity, to not just discover and create
0:32.4	new habits of minimizing or organizing or even simplifying, but to instead experience
0:38.6	the transformation of this practice, both at a soul and heart level. Now you remember
0:45.2	that we've been framing simplicity as an inward reality that results in an outward lifestyle.
0:51.3	And today we'll continue in that framework as we conclude this practice by talking about
0:55.2	what Joshua Becker calls the lifeblood of simplicity. It was Independence Day 1979 when
1:03.7	President Jimmy Carter addressed the nation with a famous speech called the Crisis of Confidence,
1:09.2	or more famously dubbed the Malays speech. And in it was this profound statement. He said,
1:15.9	human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered
1:24.0	that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned
1:30.1	that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives, which have no confidence or
1:36.2	purpose. Now there's lots here, but essentially in this statement, President Carter was saying that
1:43.3	we as Americans have a happiness or a satisfaction problem. And that stuff, what we consume and have
1:52.2	is really at the heart of the issue. Now it's no secret that we as Americans are obsessed with
1:58.6	feeling good, particularly as Portlanders. We love feeling happy. In fact, it's now a scientific
2:05.0	reality that we are, despite a myriad of social and economic achievements, despite a technological
2:11.4	revolution, and a ratio of wealth most of the world would marvel at. Still dissatisfied.
2:17.8	We are still at our course unhappy people who are longing for more. It's what sociologists and
2:24.7	psychologists are calling the happiness crisis. It's a crisis rooted in the fact that while happiness
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