Habits of a Healthy Heart
Part 3: Habit of Simplicity
SERMON TRANSCRIPT
Well, I will tell you, less than 12 hours ago my wife was supposed to be preaching today. And if you guys know when you have kids, nights can be crazy. It can be a roller coaster of emotion and surprises and twists and turns. And in the course of the night, what do we got? We got four. Four in the family got sick. And so I'm here, I'm doing good, praise God. My oldest daughter Adeline is here, she's doing great as well. So you got two of the six Sniders today for you. And with that, that means that I'm preaching. And so I'm preaching my wife's notes. This is the first time I've ever done this. So it may be short, maybe really long, maybe off topic. We'll see what happens, see where the Lord takes us this morning. But it's gonna be a great time. I'm glad you're here.
We have started this Habits of a Healthy Heart series and we're in week three, week one, where we talked about the habit of self-examination and really taking a pause and looking at where we are in life to be really honest with ourselves. And then last week, Pastor Andre talked about the habit of solitude, taking time during our week to pause the crazy and to connect with God, to take moments to stop what we're doing, the hustle, the bustle, the loaded calendar, the driving over here to over here to this appointment to this thing over here to work, to groceries, to all the things in life that we have to do to take time to be 100% intentional. 'Cause it's not gonna happen on its own, right? To be 100% intentional to stop and to say, "God, you're my focus. You're my source, you're my hope, you're my everything." And we learned that if we wanna change our life, we have to change our habits. But if we wanna change our habits, we have to let God change our hearts. And week one, we talked about the lies that we tell ourselves, right? All the lies, "I'm gonna be okay. This is gonna be fine. It's only for a season. It's not that big of deal. It's gonna be okay. I can handle it." We tell ourselves all of these lies 'cause number one lie, we're lying to ourselves, right? We're all lying to ourselves. And so I caught myself this week. And my wife goes, "I don't think that's right." And you're like, "You're right. And I don't like that you're right. Stop it." But I had to check myself and it changed my heart. And today we're gonna focus in on the habit of simplicity. And I know what you're thinking, "Oh, man. Here we go. Pastor Chris is gonna tell me to just go throw all my stuff away, downsize my house, get a bicycle, commute up and down 80 on that bike." I'm just kidding. No, honestly, I want you to stay focused if you could, please. Just the next 30 minutes or so. Just stay focused in that because the more that my wife studied the Bible on simplicity, no, I'm kidding, the more that we look at simplicity, we see such great truths in scripture for ourselves.
I think the biggest lie that we tell ourselves is more is better, right? We tell ourselves that if I could just have the newest, you fill in the blank, all my problems would go away. If I just had the newest phone that I guess now can like auto reply to your emails and your text messages, I would have so much free time with AI, I wouldn't have to do anything. I'd have all this vacation, all my work emails would be taken care of. I could do whatever I want, but I have to have more. More is supposed to make us happier, right? That's what the ads tell us, right? That's what the world tells us that if we have more, everything's going to be fine. My life will be that much better. But the reality is more turns into more stress, more bills, more anxiety, more worry. More is not better. This lie actually started in the garden. It started with Adam and Eve. It was amazing how the serpent was able to convince Eve that more was better. God creates Adam and Eve and they're in the garden, they're living life, they're naked and amazing. They don't have to worry about anything. Weather is perfect. They have everything that they could ever need and hope and desire and wish. God says eat anything in the garden. Do whatever you want. Walk up to that peach tree, go to town. There's an apple one about a mile down the road. There's some grapes over here. Life is great. There's a garden with vegetables if you want to go over to it. Do whatever you want. But there's this one tree. It's called the knowledge of good and evil tree. Don't touch it. Just don't go even near it honestly. And Adam and Eve start living their life and everything is great. And all in comes the serpent. The serpent says, hey, you have free range of everything in here. You can eat whatever you want, but God says you can't touch that. Wouldn't more be better? Wouldn't one more tree in your diet of all the fresh fruits and veggies that your heart's content. Wouldn't one more fruit just make everything perfect? And she falls for this lie and takes on more. And we realize that she ends up sinning. And this starts the world in a different trajectory. They're kicked out of the garden. They have to garden their own food. They have to work the ground. They have to survive the elements, the wild animal, everything around them. And more did not equal better.
Question for you this morning. What if the stuff you have is keeping you from the life you want? What if the things that you have, whether physical things, maybe in the garage, in a hallway closet, a guest closet buried in a box in the attic, basement. Maybe it's emotional stuff. Maybe it's relational stuff. Maybe it's your calendar. What if those things, this stuff, this more is better that we've been convinced that we need to have is keeping us from the life that we want. Now, hear me out. You're not having to give everything away. You're not having to purge it all and go to like two sets of clothing, have one car, one cell phone to share with the whole family. I'm not talking extremes here. But what I am talking about is less is freeing. Don't get me wrong. Stuff is a blessing. So many things that we get in life are a true blessing to our lives and they help us. They're valuable tools and resources that make our life easier to do things. But there comes a point when you have to acknowledge that we have enough, right? We just came out of the holiday season. I love Christmas. One of my favorite times of year. So good. I remember this year just sitting on the couch and kids are opening presents and papers fly and things are just going crazy. Everybody's laughing. It's such a great, great moment. We love it. We love blessing our children. We love blessing our family and giving gifts. But I did some research and the consumer spending on gifts in this holiday season has gotten astronomical. It's gotten completely out of hand, even in a recession with inflation. It's still out of hand. Every single year since 2009, the spending during the holidays from people buying stuff has increased every single year. And in 2024, the sales were expected, and I think they broke this, to break the record in 2023 of $955.6 billion in sales. That's billion with a B. That is just short of $1 trillion. I don't even know how to comprehend that amount of money. And listen, I love the holidays. I'm all for gifts. I'm all for blessing people. I'm all for having supplies and things you need, like socks and underwear and PJs, like some necessities that as a parent I've learned, you wrap up and give to your kids as a gift. And you're like, if this was a July month, I would have just been given this to put in my room. Right? But we wrap it up because it's Christmas.
But we have to ask ourselves, when is enough enough? Christmas is just one area I'm talking about. I'm talking about our everyday spending, our everyday lives. Where do we need to practice simplicity? I love this often looked over story in Acts 27. Paul is on a ship with his crew and they're sailing, I can't remember from what place to what place, but they get caught in this horrific storm. And they're trying to figure out what to do. They're being tossed back and forth. The waves are just beating them down. And the crew is literally going, I'm going to go see Jesus tonight. Like this is the moment when God's calling me home. They are staring face in the eyes. And they've gone about two weeks without eating anything. And yet in the midst of this, they break bread and Paul gives thanks. Read the scripture here, follow on. Paul, he took some bread and gave thanks to God in front of them all. When he broke it, he began to eat. They were all encouraged and ate some food themselves. When they had eaten as much as they wanted, they lightened the ship by throwing the grain into the sea. Another translation says, when they had eaten enough, they lightened the ship, throwing out the wheat into the sea. See, earlier in this passage, they had already lightened the ship once already. They were hitting some rocky waves. They realized they were overloaded. They realized we just got to make this call. Seems pretty extreme for us, right, to think we're just going to pitch this stuff and it'll be what it'll be. But they had to think about the long term here. And so they had already lightened the ship and now they were able to lighten it a little bit more by getting rid of some of the wheat or food that they had. Why? This is better. They can navigate the ship faster. They can maneuver it easier. They can keep going at a quicker pace to get through the storm to get to safety, to get to their destination. But when did they do it? They did it when they had enough.
What is enough? How much is enough? When you have what you need. So to begin to practice this habit of simplifying, you have to believe that you have enough. Say it with me. I have enough. Do you believe that? I have enough. See, we don't think we have enough, do we, truly, deep down inside, right? We don't truly think that we have enough because there's two aspects to it that we have to believe. The first of which is we have to believe that more won't make us happy, more won't make us fulfilled, more won't make us successful, more won't make us less anxious. It's about an identity. We have identity in the stuff that we have, right? I'll admit it. I'll be the first person to admit it. We have an identity with the stuff that we have. I love smoking meat and barbecuing. It's one of my favorite things. It causes me to slow down because you can't rush barbecue. You ever tried rush barbecue? It's horrible. It's the worst thing in the world. There's a reason they call it low and slow, baby. Low and slow because you have to slow down. But I have too much barbecue stuff. I have like three grills. I've got I don't know how many trinkets and gadgets, spray bottles for spritzing to make sure that brisket stays moist. I got peach paper to wrap it up. I got loads of foil. I got wireless thermometers. I have a device that I can connect up to my barbecue that'll keep my barbecue at the exact temperature. It's so funny. This Christmas, my mom was like, "Hey, what do you want for Christmas?" I'm like, "I have enough." I caught myself saying that and I was like, "Wait a minute, I want more." But I have an identity with barbecuing where I want to be the best barbecuer ever. When I sliced that meat, I wanted to be chef's kiss perfection. But it got to come with gadgets and gizmos and all the newest technology and the latest this and the latest that. It's an identity that I have.
The other part of this problem is that sometimes whether we want to admit it or not, we don't trust God to provide for us. This one hurts because we think, "Oh, no, God, you got me. I know you got me. My battle belongs to you. We're going to be glad." We sang all these songs this morning about God being our source of everything. But we want to be the hero of the story, right? We want to be the hero. We want to be the one that goes, "Look what I did for myself. Look what I did. Look what I provided, family. Look what I put on the dinner table, a delicious steak. Look what I did. We want to be the hero." But the reality is we have to let God be the hero because God is truly the ultimate hero, right? We haven't saved ourselves. We haven't forgiven ourselves. We haven't created grace. We haven't created love. We receive that. We receive it from God. When we step into a habit of simplicity, God becomes the hero of the story. We don't. We are not the hero. If we stay in this mindset of my identity is what I have and I'm the hero of the story, it'll ruin our lives. It'll take us to a toxic place that is so dark. It is lonely. It is hopeless. There is no peace. And we're sitting there trying to fend for ourselves. Some of us don't need more stuff in our Amazon carts to check out. We need to let God check our hearts out. We need to let God step into our lives and begin to work through what we have and to say and begin to pray this prayer. A regular is, "God, give me less of what doesn't matter and give me more of what does matter." That should be our prayer every single day. "God, give me less of what doesn't matter and God give me more of what does matter.”
Jesus himself says in Matthew 6:19-21, he says, "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Jesus here is telling us we don't need to store up stuff on earth. We're not taking any of it with us anyway. You hear those stories of those people who get buried with their stuff, right? Get buried in their car, the trunk's loaded, the backseat's jam-packed and they think, "I'm taking it with me." The family goes, "No, you're not. We're taking it home." Throw the body in the hole, cover it up and they drive the car home. Stop accumulating for accumulation's sake. Stop hoarding. I need to tell myself this. I have a garage full of things I just don't need anymore. God's been working on my heart, I'll tell you.
Even before this series and before anything, we did a generosity series, practicing generosity as a community group and we went through and it talked about one of the aspects of living generously is living with less so you can give more. One of the challenges was to go give away some stuff. I went home and I started looking through my closet and I'm like, "I don't wear that shirt anymore. I don't wear that. Oh, those pants, those don't work anymore. They're out of style. I got this." All of a sudden, I'm walking out of our bedroom with three garbage bags and Lauren, my wife's like, "What are you doing?" I said, "She's got too much stuff." She's like, "Wow, you had that much stuff in there?" I said, "I know, right?" And guess what? I'm still dressed. I still got clothes. I'm not having to run around nudie day. Like I'm still covered. Everything is good. But I didn't need the stuff and it was just sitting in my closet collecting dust. I was kind of embarrassed, honestly. I was just like, "Oh my gosh, let's get this out of here before anybody sees this." I'm trying to load it in the trunk in the front yard. Neighbors driving by. "Man, that guy's got a problem." "Yes, he does." No amount of accumulation of the stuff or your purchases will ever be enough to satisfy us. It just won’t.
We keep believing this lie that it'll make us happy, we'll be fulfilled, less anxious. We'll be more like this. You fill in the blank. But it's all a lie. And honestly, I believe it's a lie straight from Satan to keep us preoccupied from Jesus. We don't trust God to provide for us. I have a whole bin in my garage of odds and ends hardware supplies. I got whipped cream containers from my grandfather of screws and bolts. And even like yesterday, working on our dryer, I needed a bolt. One of my kids came along, grabbed the bolt, thought it was their bolt. The bolt was gone. And I'm sitting there going, "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, oh no." So I went to the garage, opened my trusty whipped cream container. Sure enough, I got my bolt. But what got the bolt in the garage was the fact that I don't trust. Found the screw later. But I didn't trust. And so my garage is filled with stuff just in case. Well guess what? Home Depot's open seven days a week just in case. Where am I putting my trust? We want to feel safe and secure. And we think that money, status, resources, connections will make this for us. We make ourselves the hero of the story. But when we ask God for less of what doesn't matter, we are saying, "God, you are enough for me and I trust you to be my provider." How does this work?
Well it says in Hebrews 11:1-2 it says, "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so entangles us. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us." Throw it off. Another translation says, "Strip it off," like it's clinging onto you, like it's stuck. Pull it off. Let it be free. Go. Get rid of it. We're being suffocated by our own fear of our stuff and our schedules and the things that we consume. And the only responsible thing to do is to throw it off. I remember as a kid, my parents were big into backpacking. And I remember, I think it was like one of my birthdays, I think it was like 14 or something, me and a bunch of my buddies, we said, "Let's go backpacking for my birthday." And so talking with my dad, I started gathering up the stuff that I wanted to take on the backpacking trip. And my dad's looking at me in the most loving way, he kind of just starts laughing. And he turns to me and he goes, "Son," he goes, "Do you know everything you take into the woods? Do you take out of the woods with you?" I said, "Yeah, dad." He goes, "Okay." He's like, "So that 10 pound hammer you have, what's that for?" "Oh, it's to be set in our tents. We're sleeping outside. We don't sleep in our tents." "Oh, well I might need it." He goes, "Okay, so that's 10 pounds in, 10 pounds out." You realize that? I said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." Okay. So I remember loading up my pack and putting it on, I test it, put it on about fall over. This thing is so jam packed with some of the most ridiculous stuff that only a 14 year old boy would think that he needs to take in for a camping trip overnight into the woods. I got food for a week just in case. I got water on me. I got all this stuff. My dad's like, "No." He goes, "We'll take a pump, we'll pump water out of the lake with the filters." He goes, "We'll take dehydrated food so when it is light, you got like one pot, maybe a spoon, your sleeping bag, a change of clothes, and a shovel to take care of business when it hits." "That's about it." I'm like, "What about this? What about this?" He's like, "You don't need it. Trip it off. You're just going to hurt yourself more on the trip." And I'll tell you what, man, I was so glad. We got about halfway to camp and I was dying. And that was with like nothing in my pack. I was like, "Can I imagine having everything else in this pack?" I would still be out there. They would have just buried me along the trail and said, "Here lies the kid with all of his stuff. Don't be the kid.”
We had to ask ourselves, and my wife's done an amazing job with this in the last couple of years with us. She started having us ask this question of, "Do I want to manage this?" Because we think, "Oh, it's just in the garage. It's in the closet. It's just in the drawer of my desk. It doesn't matter. I don't have to look at it." You have to manage it still because you open the desk. Guess what's there? That thing that you have to dig around to find what you need. You go in the garage and you trip over that thing again because it's in the path where you need to walk. You're managing it. So we started asking ourselves, "Do we want to manage this?" It turns this just stuff that's there like we think it's out of our peripheral to something right in front of us. See, I think the problem is, is as we try to take stuff and put it behind us, like where we put Jesus, and then we're walking forward in life going, "Jesus, where are you? I can't see you. We got all this other stuff in front of us. And Jesus, where are you? I can't see you." And Jesus is like, "There's no room for me to be in front of you. I want to be in front of you. I want to be what you look at. I want you to follow me. I want you to be my focus and my attention, but there's too much stuff there. We can't even see it." Jesus needs to be removed from the background to put in our foreground, but we got to clear stuff out to make room for Jesus. We need to have the prayer of God, "Give me more of what does matter.”
Ecclesiastes says, "Better is one handful of tranquility than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind." What do I mean by this? This is what I mean. Because we want stuff, right? See, I can't even hold all my stuff. But we think more is better, right? So we pick this up and we're like, "Yes! I got it all." And then someone comes along and says, "Can you help me? I need a hand." You're like, "I got my stuff." Someone comes along, they're having a really bad day. They want a hug. They want a word of encouragement. You go, "That's awkward." Jesus comes along and says, "I have a project for you. I need you to do this for me." And you're like, "But God, my hands are full. I got my stuff." Jesus tells us to pick up our cross daily. How do you pick up a cross with your stuff? So Ecclesiastes said, "Better is one handful of tranquility. I can bless people. I can go to people. I can care for them. This is enough. This is all I need." See, my hand's even making what is true enough. As more falls off, it's just extra. Have enough. And honestly, the truth is that we have enough. Say it with me. I have enough. But the reality is, the truth in that is, I have enough because I have Jesus. Because I have Jesus, I have enough. Say it with me. Because I have Jesus, I have enough. God... See, I can't even get out of my fingers. God has so much that He wants for our lives. But we sit here holding on to things, and there's no room for Jesus. We think, "Jesus, I'm gonna put down just for church. I'm gonna go to church. I'm gonna worship you, praise you, give you... I'm gonna come home. Pick up my stuff." We may be setting it down for seasons, and that's good. That's healthy. But I think the next step that God wants us to do is to just get rid of it. To just not even have to think about it anymore, and to focus on what we do need.
Paul later, after this shipwreck accident, or storm in the ship, he writes to the church in Philippi. He says, "I know what it is to be in need on a ship facing death, in prison." I made a joke this morning in our team huddle. We're talking about the storm. I said, "It feels like Paul was in prison every Tuesday." Just like you read through the Bible and you flip a page like, "Oh, there's Paul back in prison." He knows what it is to be in need, to be locked up, to be starving, to be captured. He was shipwrecked. He was stranded. He was out in a... He found himself in so many places where he was in need. He says, "And I know what it is to have plenty." There are times where he showed up at churches and they just blessed him. They gave him everything that he needed, and then some. I've learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well-fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in one. I can do all this through him, who's Christ, who gives me strength. Paul understood that because he had Jesus, he had enough. We have Jesus. We have enough. And some of us, just regardless of where we find ourselves, we just want more. And I will say the desire for more is okay. It's the action of accumulating those is where it goes wrong. It's a natural bent in our inner being to want more. Just is. But for us, the problem is this decision then. Do we need the more finances? Do we need the more phones? Do we need the more clothes? Do we need the more house, the more square footage, the newer kitchen, the perfect backyard, the perfect neighborhood? You fill in the blank. And Jesus is here to tell us that you have more than enough because I am with you. Jesus, some of the very last words he says to his disciples before he goes back up to the heaven, he says, "And I will be with you until the end of the age or your age." Because then we're face to face with him in heaven. You know there's no more in heaven, right? God will give you the enough in heaven and you will be for the first time ever in your life completely satisfied.
I find it funny. I talk to different people and they always talk about, "I get all these questions for God when I get to heaven." I say, "Oh, that's really good." I say, "I bet God's gonna wanna answer those for you." But then I think to myself, I said, "You get to heaven, you're not gonna worry about your question. 'Cause your question's here and now is the, "I want more. I want more answers. I want more understanding. I want more of this. I want more of that." You get to heaven, you're in front of Jesus, you will have enough and your questions of more will be gone because you will be face to face with him just worshiping him to say, "God, thank you. You are enough." So this is our prayer. God give me less of what doesn't matter. God give me more of what does matter because I have you. I have enough. Let's pray.
Jesus, thank you for your enough. God, we are so grateful for the enough that you are. So God, I pray this week as we really wrestle, oh, this is a tough one, to wrestle with this habit of simplicity, God, that you would begin to reveal to us where we have too much. God begin to define in our lives of what enough truly looks like. And God, I pray that we would step in boldness. We would step in faith, not knowing what that life without that stuff may be like, but moving you from behind us, not being seen, to in front of us to where we follow you, Jesus. It doesn't matter where we're going to go. It doesn't matter what's going to happen. It doesn't matter what's around tomorrow. If you, God, are in front of us and we are following you, everything is taken care of. We don't have to know the more or the where or the what or the how. All we have to know is that we're following you, our hero, Jesus. And so God, I pray that this week we will begin to maybe start working through some of our more. And it doesn't have to be all done at once because that's just going to be chaos. But God, may it be simple, small steps of walking in faith in the simplicity of the life that you want for us, God, ultimately to have the freedom, the capacity, the availability, the freedom to do what you desire for our lives, God. Because if we're too busy holding up our stuff, we can't do what you've called us to do. And we can't truly, truly love you and worship you. God, I pray that you would become the hero of our story. We would remove our identity from our stuff and our things to you, Jesus our savior. We thank you, God. We love you. Give us the grace, the boldness, the endurance this week to step into a life of simplicity. Everybody said, Amen.