5. Limit your children's extracurricular activities to one to three a week, depending on age. Otherwise, you will exhaust yourself and your children will grow up addicted to constant stimulation.

6. Take three to four months off every few years and go live in a foreign country. Living in a different culture fascinates, excites, and vitalizes us. It teaches us to live in the present, a core practice of simple living. We gain perspective when we experience a foreign culture. We learn how much we have to be grateful for. [Short-term missions]

7. Spend at least an hour a week in a natural setting, away from crowds of people, traffic, and buildings. Three to four hours of nature time each week is even better. There is nothing more basic, more simple, than the natural world. [Spend this time in prayer and reading the Bible.]

8. Do whatever you need to do to connect with a sense of spirit in your life, whether it be prayer, religious services, journal writing, meditation, or spiritually-related reading. Simplicity leads to spirituality; spirituality leads to simplicity. Cultivate a practice of silence and solitude, even for 15 to 30 minutes a day. Your spirituality will evolve naturally. [Allow God to speak to you.]

9. Seek the support of others who want to simplify their lives. Join or start a simplicity circle if you enjoy group interaction. Living simply in our culture can be a lonely journey. Your friends and family may still be on the work-and-spend treadmill and are unlikely to give you support. Participating in a study group will give you support and validation for your choices.

10. Practice saying no. Say no to those things that don't bring you inner peace and fulfillment, whether it be more material things, greater career responsibility, or added social activities. Be vigilant with your time and energy; they are limited resources. If you say yes to one thing (like a job promotion), recognize that you are saying no to something else (perhaps more time with family). Live consciously and deliberately (Linda Breen Pierce, article found at http://www.gallagherpress.com/pierce/recipe.htm).

So I searched my library for just the right quote from my favorite authors. One or two came close, but I thought it better just to come right out and say what you and I need to hear: The key to making life matter is to choose to live with less.

Give stuff away.

Simplify your lifestyle.

Deflate your opinion of yourself.

Choose less because less is more.

(Mark Tabb, Living with Less, Broadman and Holman, 2006, ix-x).

Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. - Prov. 30:8

For several years now, an increasing number of evangelical Christians, as well as a growing number of Americans in general, have been writing about, testifying to, and highly recommending to others a simple lifestyle. Even so, those who are endorsing a simple lifestyle are a minority, especially among evangelical believers. Indeed, it is rather embarrassing that living a simple lifestyle is more popular among non-believers than it is among believers. This is in spite of the fact that it seems like every other Christian book being written deals in one way or another with living a simple lifestyle and not storing up for oneself treasures on earth. The fact that most American Christians, evangelicals included, are not listening, is perhaps because our materialistic culture and sinful nature have defined us more than we might think.

I have no doubt some of my friends will think I wrote the following. But it also comes from Mark Tabb’s Living with Less:

We live in a culture of accumulation. Therefore, the best way to escape its grip is to do just the opposite. Rather than buying more and more, begin de-accumulating. Give things away. Cleaning out the mountain of clothes and other things you no longer use is a good place to start, but don’t stop there. Discover the joy of giving gifts from things that you still use. One of the greatest gifts I ever received was a set of books that was no longer available in hardcover. A close friend gave me his set as a going-away present when my family moved to California. When he handed them to me, I asked, "Won’t you still read these? How can you give them away?" His response still rings in my ears more than fifteen years later: "I would rather give them to you." That’s the spirit of de-accumulation.

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