The story goes that Charles Spurgeon, on his deathbed, said to some of his final visitors, "As time has passed on, my theology has grown more and more simple. It is simply this, 'Jesus loves me!'"
I love that. I love it not only because it’s true, but because it’s so blissfully simple.
Thomas Kelly, the Quaker educator, once said that God “never guides us into an intolerable scramble of panting feverishness.” Regardless of what we might think of the rest of his writing, I think he was onto something. To reinterpret Kelly’s words, life with God and through Jesus isn’t meant to be complex.
There’s a blessed kind of simplicity for the Christian who is convinced of the providential love of God in Christ. You find glimpses of this kind of simplicity expressed in Scriptures like Psalm 27:4: “I have asked one thing from the LORD; it is what I desire: to dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, gazing on the beauty of the LORD and seeking him in his temple.”
Don’t you long for that? In an age of seemingly endless complexity, don’t you long to live simply in mind and heart? To not wake up with a thousand different things running through your mind? To be able to sleep soundly knowing that your heavenly Father never does? To know that God is for you in Christ, and because He is, you don’t make it your business to, as Kelly said, pant feverishly through life.
The pursuit of simplicity starts and ends with the gospel. Unless we truly know there’s nothing left to prove before God, because of the sacrifice of Jesus, we will spend our lives in an endless pursuit of self-justification. Unless we know that God has fully loved us in Jesus, we will spend our lives endlessly seeking to create our own opportunities for safety and advancement. Unless we know that God is reigning over the affairs of the universe, no matter what our senses might tell us, we will wring our hands in anxiety and worry.
If you’re feeling pressed by the complexity of the world today, come back again to what you know is true.
Michael Kelley
In the gospel, then, God guides us into simplicity. But we don’t only have the doorway to simplicity through the gospel; we have the example of true simplicity from Jesus Himself. Jesus, I think, made it His practice to simplify many things for His followers.
He simplified prayer for the disciples in Luke 11 when they observed His habit, again, of praying to the Father. So they asked Him to teach them. Perhaps they might have thought that Jesus would launch into a complex system of ritualistic rites, or at least that He would begin “session 1” of a four-part lecture series on the mode and method of prayer.
Instead, He gave them a very simple pattern to follow.
On another occasion, Jesus summed up the many complexities that add anxiety to our days. We worry about our future, money, clothes, retirement. Jesus nut-shelled the issues together again: “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you” (Matt. 6:33).
This is all part of the good news of Jesus’ kingdom. It’s that we don’t have to be crushed by the complexities of the day. Indeed, part of following Jesus is actually returning again and again to the simple. Thank the Lord for that. Thank the Lord that life doesn’t actually have to be as complicated as we seem to make it — that in reality, there are only a few things that we must know. There are just a few things that guide everything else. There are only a few things that we should — and even that we can — return to over and over.
If you’re feeling pressed by the complexity of the world today, come back again to what you know is true and breathe.
This article is adapted from HomeLife Magazine.