Simplifying-When Less is More

               It has become painfully clear to me in the last few months that life holds hands with chaos, is attached at the hip with distractions, and has become best friends with the world. Long story short: life and modern day living distract and pull our heart, thoughts, and priorities away from Christ. This is our story- the one where we are constantly struggling against modern day mindsets and influences, while striving and seeking a life of devoted discipleship to Christ. It is hard and impossible, apart from the power of God and the Holy Spirit. As Alex and I have wondered through the last few months praying for direction, one thing has become painfully clear: Life is not about having the perfect house with a white picket fence and a swimming pool, or having a stand-up successful career that makes your parents proud and your friends jealous, or knowing exactly where you are leading your family and in what ways you will achieve success. He is showing us little by little, that our one and only priority and focus should be living to serve Him and His people, loving Him and His people, and sharing the good news with the world.

              This is not new news to us. In fact this is what we've set out to do since accepting Christ as our Savior. However, actually living like this and not allowing the worldly concepts and ideals for our lives to deceive and distract us is so much harder than it seems. It is so easy to get sucked into the mindset and chaos of the world, falling into the trap of believing we need more...more everything. This is what has happened to us the last few months, maybe even years. We have lost sight of what our lives are about and how God calls us to live. This has resulted in depression, ungratefulness, desire for control, stress, and so much more. It is a poison that seeks to destroy our very souls.

           Living for Christ is simple (not easy, just simple). Therefore should not our lives be simple? We have started asking ourselves, 'what things like our mindsets and ideals distract us from our objective of giving all we have for Christ?' One thing we have had to realize, is that just because something may not be evil in and of itself, that does not mean that it is bringing us closer to Christ, it may be what is drawing us away from Him. We don't want Life to be pulling us away from God. We want our lives to be simple and our out-look and goals to be simple. Serving God will all our hearts in everything we do, investing in our children, church and the people God puts in our paths, doing what we can to provide without being obsessed with having the 'perfect' and successful career, rather putting our heart and soul and as much time as we can into serving God in whatever ways He makes available to us.

         We are responsible to teach our children what it means to be disciples and to show that what that looks like. We are their examples. This is a perfect time in our lives to start weeding out things that don't draw us to Christ- putting away the thoughts, and things that distracts us from Him. This means reevaluating our goals, how we spend our money, where we invest our time, and the things we allow to entertain and influence our lives. It is time to start cutting down, cutting out, and taking a step out in faith-allowing God to lead our lives and take first place in our hearts.

  So here we are, back tracking and taking a step back. I wonder where God will lead us from here.

Love,
Leah