The Pondify Podcast

and welcome to the Pondify podcast. I am your host Matt and I'm joined by my wonderful co host Nigel. Hi, Nigel. Hello, Matt. It's really warm, isn't it tonight? It's boiling in here. Yes. But we're going to crack on as well. And hopefully we're going to turn the heat up with some fantastic discussion.

That was a bit too much hospital radio for me, mate. That

was really cheesy, wasn't it? That was We're going to carry on. I'm joined by two wonderful guests in our studio tonight. Guest number one, please introduce

yourself. Hello, I'm Beth. I have been at the community church for about 19 years.

I'm married to Stuart and we have two kids who are... 12 two boys who are 12 and 10. Wonderful

to have you, Beth. And we're joined by guest number two. Guest number two, introduce yourself, please.

Hello, I'm Chris. I've been at the community church for five years or just over five years. And I came back to Bishop Stortford after a marital separation.

And I found a new family in this church. So I am. Forever grateful for

that

and we're grateful to have you here with us tonight Chris. So we've got our big question I'm going to introduce that for us. Now. The question is What does it mean to live for Jesus with simplicity and how do we do it? Why on earth are we talking about that, Nigel?

I'm just amazed at how much cheese you seem to have eaten before we started. Yum. We are doing that. Part of our series at the moment in the community church, in the preaching series, we're going through mini series, and they're all part of the bigger picture, which is practicing the way. And that is all about the spiritual disciplines.

Now, the spiritual disciplines have been around in church history the whole time, and actually were around in Jewish traditions and all sorts of spiritual traditions. And simplicity... is one of them, and it's really complicated. It's surprisingly complicated, and I feel quite guilty that we're doing simplicity, because I feel like we should introduce the idea of simplicity and then sit for an hour in silence and wait for things to suggest themselves, but that doesn't work very well on a podcast.

If we were visual, I think we could sit here and look really meaningful and all the rest of it. Simplicity is, in history, really important. The number of men and women of God over the history of the church who have withdrawn from society, withdrawn from all sorts of complications in order to focus on God is overwhelming.

And it's only in the modern times, since Victorian times, that we think that's a bit weird. And in our current time, the idea of simplicity is almost unthinkable in society within which we live. So I think One of the things I want to say just to start with is simplicity is a spiritual discipline. It is supposed to take effort Spiritual disciplines take effort.

It takes effort to pray. It takes effort to worship. It takes effort to read scripture It takes effort to be simple particularly nowadays so my first question for everybody to answer is Do you practice simplicity,

Matt?

I think I try to, but stuff gets in the way a lot of the time. If I'm very honest I like to have a pattern, a way of doing things. I'm a creature of habit. And so when it comes to spiritual disciplines, I have my prayer time. I have my Bible time. I have my soaking time but, just Being with God, I can sometimes find that really difficult.

And I think the reason I find it really difficult is because I have lots of stuff going on. And I have lots of thoughts that, that jump in. And I don't think they're always helpful. Some of those thoughts as well. So like the big thing for me is work. Work is always playing on my mind.

And so to take time out and to just be with God. Is hard. So do I practice it? I try to. Am I always successful at it? No, I'm not. I'd love to know how to get better at it.

What about you, Chris?

I think rather than do I practice it, I think really for me, simplicity was really enforced. With my whole life change and now living on my own.

I think that I've got more time for God, actually. And I really hesitate to say that because it sounds terrible, but I've got, I think I've got more time for God and it has become more of a routine for me to... spend time with him. The flip side of that, however, is it has sometimes become routine and not quite a tick box exercise, but certainly not the quality time that it should be.

I think as far as simplicity goes though, not having a immediate family around me all the time has cleared away some of the distractions and the noise. However, they remain a vocal and primary part of my

prayer life. That's obviously an unintended consequence, but is it a positive?

unintended consequence.

I really think it is because in out of this terrible situation something positive has come and I feel that over the last few years my spiritual life has grown, my faith has grown because of that. Perhaps because I've become more reliant on God as well. So I think It's got to be a good thing.

What about you Beth?

It depends what you mean by simplicity. So if you are meaning simplicity of kind of routine, spending time with God, there's one answer. If you mean simplicity of heart after God, I suppose I've got a different answer. So give us both answers then Beth. I think I, because I was thinking, oh, I'm a terrible person to ask about simplicity because I think I overcomplicate everything.

I overthink everything. Nigel's saying yes. I overthink everything. I'm quite disorganized, which causes quite a lot of chaos in my life. I love having routine like that, but I do find if I'm not organized it very , swiftly disappears, and then I feel even more chaotic, so I hunger for that kind of quiet time with God but I do have to be really on it to get it.

I suppose like all of us really life is complicated, isn't it? I'm busy. If you mean simplicity of heart, I don't like everybody I struggle with The different things in my head, but I do feel like a hunger after God, really, and I want to hunger after him more I don't, by any means, think I've got that sorted, but I, that is a desire in me to want God more, and to want to see him more, and know him more yeah, and I'd love to become a Even better at that.

So the reason I was going yay is because I absolutely get overcomplicating things. My friends will know that before most people have thought about one thing, I've thought about it from 37 different angles and it is a nightmare for keeping my head clear and I've had to put in place. Disciplines in my life to make sure that doesn't happen.

One of them is I have one or two people, my wife being one of them, who will say, Nigel, you're being silly. And I will stop doing that. The other thing is I go for a walk every day. And in my walk, I it gives me space where I don't have to do anything else. And that allows me to sort my mind.

Because my mind is just, it's great because it does mean I'm really good at some things, but it means I'm really bad at others. And it gives me that space to do that. So I can, I completely get what you mean. As far as simplicity of pursuing God, I think we'll probably get into that because I think that's a really interesting thing.

What I'm interested to ask as a secondary thing is, okay, so where are the areas in your life where complexity really starts pushing in? Because I know for me, it's... It's that thinking. It's that thought life. My thought life goes mad about things so I can get, for one of the things I do in my life, I will do funerals.

I've had to put in place structures which mean that I don't pursue the thinking that follows through from burying people and from talking about their lives because I'm interested and I care about people. That seems to me to be a logical thing but that's one of the areas. And of course I have five children life is not always simple.

What about what about you, Chris? I think

it's interesting what you say about having that sort of structure of your thoughts in your mind. It's almost the same as that physical structure of clearing out clearing out all the rubbish, to clear the decks and have the order in there puts you in a much better position to have that simplicity.

As far as the complications and the sort of interferences, if you like. For me, I think it comes probably from overthinking as well, but overthinking of myself and self doubt and a lot of really just thinking I don't deserve this. I'm not good enough for this, or I shouldn't be allowed this happiness.

That's a battle for me. And I think that's something that really God and I are working through

for me. It's like I mentioned earlier, it's. It's finding time but I'm, I know I'm lying to myself when I say I don't have time because I have time to see my friends, I have time to play on my PlayStation, I have time to watch stuff on YouTube it's being disciplined enough to say actually what's more important spending time with my heavenly father by myself, or mucking about playing car soccer.

Rocket League, that's for for all you guys that don't know.

I would argue that there's a space for that too, in a simple life. I play video games and I, I have had to sometimes struggle with not playing too many of them. But it's one of the ways I wind down, it's one of the ways I do that, I

think it's that balance, isn't it? It's it's saying, okay, fine. I'll give an example, a real life example at the moment, work is really tough for me, at the moment. And I have played very few video games, surprisingly enough. Because, instead, I am trying to get God's attention.

I think that's the way that, cause there's a difference, isn't there? There's, I suppose there's being simplistic, for the sake of... Wanting to spend time with my heavenly father just for the sake of spending time with him and wanting something from God Say for example, I've gone to some prayer meetings.

I've gone for walks and prayed I've Instead of flicking through YouTube. I've been watching documentaries on heroes of the Christian faith And the trust that they had George Muller is the big one at the moment. It's amazing sometimes how God uses complexity to make me more simplistic and to drive me towards him.

I think that's maybe something to talk about. Maybe some of you others can relate. The other thing is again that always steps in is family life as well. Because... I really love my family. I really love spending time with them. And and sometimes God has to take a back seat.

He doesn't have to take a back seat. He shouldn't have to take a back seat. But in the busyness, stuff just gets in the way. Is that making sense? So yeah that's the complexities that I face.

I think it's probably similar for me, family life. I think part of the main thing is That I don't deal with practical details very well and my main part of my life is lots of practical details.

So it's diaries, getting children to places, organizing food, cleaning, things that I'm not actually that good at. And I get quite overwhelmed by it. I want time to sit and think and I've got to just be practical mummy. And so that. Does something in my head where my head gets quite busy and overwhelmed and I find it quite hard to focus on God because I'm thinking so much about this I get quite driven by a tick list and getting jobs done and that can sometimes take over from that call to intimacy and spending time with Jesus because that's not as easy to tick off a list or not as satisfying to tick off a list.

I've got these five things to do. I'll feel better once they've done once they're done. So there's the practical day to day life, and then there's Chris and Nigel have mentioned, it's the busyness in my head, I do get very anxious, and so I can go down a rabbit hole, lots of different rabbit holes, and I think you're right, we have to be disciplined with those in order to hear Jesus voice louder than, it's a lure, isn't it, for all the anxious thoughts yeah, those are The complexities, probably the noise in my life.

Again, I do have a strategy for trying to get back to simplicity. It's one that I've spoken to you about this before. Beth is the examine, have you heard of examine before? Yes.

And we did it when we were doing Loom. I don't know if you remember, Beth when again, it was. Just basically stripping everything down, getting rid of stuff and thinking through how to get rid of all the nonsense. So like one of the questions we would ask ourselves is what do we need to do to take a break today?

What are we thankful for? What are we sorry for? Who do we need to say thank you to? Who do we need to say sorry to? And again, it was a very practical way of walking through dealing with all the nonsense before asking the big questions, which is what do you want to say to God?

And one of the best questions, because it was a friend of mine that put this together for me this, examine all these different questions. One of the best questions was, Imagine you are a school kid and you've just got home from a busy day of school. Throw your bag down, take your shoes off, sit on the sofa.

What do you want to tell your dad? And I find that process so freeing because it allows me to deal with all that nonsense. And get to the real stuff. Because God wants us to have a relationship, right? And that means being real. Sometimes I've done that process, and I have shouted.

Like a school child, I have shouted. And other times I've cried. I've got very emotional about it. But, what I often find is that God meets me in that. And, like a dad, as the best father there is, I always feel better. I always feel safer. And I do feel more simple because I've broken it down that way.

So yeah, that's the process of examine. That's how I find it helpful to get rid of complexity. What about other people?

I think for me, while you were talking there, I've got a bit of an image of a very stormy sea. Waves all over the place, ups and downs, all the noise that gets in the way. And, like it or loathe it, the song, My Lighthouse, comes in here because that lighthouse is unmovable and you keep your focus on there and one of my sort of key verses if you like from teenage days actually was Keeping our eyes fixed upon Jesus.

So I think looking beyond trying to train yourself to look beyond the immediate complexities and the immediate difficulties is a good way of smoothing out that very stormy sea and having that focus at all times. I wish I could do it all the time, but that's my ideal and I know it has worked for me.

So

easier said than done. It is certainly

easier said than done, but I think, as I say that keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus is, that, that's the key memory verse for me on this.

I love Lectio 365. I particularly love the evening one. So I put my earbuds in as I'm going to sleep, and I find it really meditative, and you you're breathing in God's peace, and you're receiving God's love, and it...

You're thinking about your day. I suppose it's a bit like examine mat. You're thinking about the things where you've received God's favor and his goodness today. And you're also thinking about those moments where maybe you feel actually you've not done as. You would have wanted and bringing those things to God.

And there's just, it's just so lovely. They have a prayer often from somebody in church history. That's quite meditative. And I just find myself just relaxing into Jesus arms really. As I go to sleep, it's one of the best struggle with sleep. It's one of the best ways for me to get to sleep. So that's really special for me.

We could have been separated at birth. Struggle for sleep too. I find, I it's quite interesting how in our tradition, the tradition that our church would be we look on the idea of liturgy and rhythm and discipline as a negative thing, as the enemy of freedom. And the reality is that we do that at our peril because for the last Give or take three and a half thousand years, people have been doing that as a way to find God and a way to find freedom in God.

And God is all about freedom, it seems to me. I think it's very interesting. All of us have talked, I talked about walking and all this other stuff, putting in place rhythms, putting in place things of discipline. Lectio 365 is about as Anglican as you can get. But that's absolutely wonderful. There's some amazing stuff out there and as far as st Ignatius of whatchamacallit goes he was one of the leaders of the Monastic movement.

He was an incredibly was the first Jesuit I think but it was fascinating stuff I think it would be a good idea if it's okay for us to turn to the Bible. We don't What we normally do is we have a passage and we kick around it. But there were, there have been three passages really that came up in the Simplicity series, of which one of the excellent preachers that we had, Beth, one of the excellent preachers we had, I did, I loved your talk, it was great, brought up Revelation, chapter two.

Talking about Ephesus, Ephesus being the place where you did the history far better, do go and find it on the YouTube channel. But Ephesus being the place where they burnt all of the idols, worth humongous amounts of money. And the whole idol making industry that Ephesus was built upon because of the, what was it, the Temple of Dionysus?

No. Temple of Artemis. Temple of Artemis. Temple of Artemis. Where that was it's fascinating, isn't it? The christian faith destroyed it just by bringing people to know jesus And that church is the ones that the letter In Revelation in the first seven letters to the early churches, the seven churches, the one to Ephesus says, and this is to quote Revelation 2 4 to 5, yet I hold this against you.

You have forsaken the love you had at first Consider how far you've fallen Repent and do the things you did at first if you do not repent I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place Whoa Is the first love I think is probably the question, isn't it?

I suppose there's first love in terms of the love they had at first. So you're right, Nigel, they were throwing their bits of sorcery on the fire and they were repenting and it was messy. And they were willing to really put themselves on the lines. There was a riot, wasn't there?

Because those who were making the Silver Idols weren't happy that their trade was being taken away from them. And they got them all into the theatre and they were chanting for several hours. They were saying, about Artemis is the greatest. And They were really willing to put themselves on the line.

And so that was the passion that they had for Jesus at first. And although they've been faithful, there's something of that fervor and something of their willingness to rely on Jesus, not themselves. To turn them back on their reliance on themselves and throw themselves wholeheartedly on him that maybe has diminished.

And then there's, I don't know, I suppose we're not, we weren't, we're not there. They were faithful. They were faithful to Jesus. They hung on. They were doing the right thing. They were holding onto the truth. They were serving, they were doing lots of works Revelation says, but maybe it was first in terms of their heart as well.

First in terms of emotions. And I think we have to be really careful, don't we? Because as Christians, we know we shouldn't be swayed by our emotions. We live by the truth. Emotions come and go. They go up and down, but we we live by God's word. We trust in what he says is the truth. And yeah, I think there is also actually Aligning our hearts desires and our hearts passion to Jesus.

So there's a balance there, isn't there? Where we trust in God, not in our emotions. And yet we are, it's a relationship. It's not duty. So duty is I just slavishly obey something with my will. And relationship. Even in a human relationship, there's, if we had no emotion, there would be something wrong.

And so there's something of our heart's affection for Jesus that actually love Him. That's what we were made for, to actually love Him. To walk with him, to enjoy him, to be with him in the garden. And there was pleasure there, there's taking pleasure in Jesus. And so that's harder to grasp, isn't it?

In some ways we're more comfortable with, I'm doing the right thing, I'm being faithful, I'm serving in church, I'm giving, I'm tithing I'm giving to the poor all of these things, and they're things that God calls us to. But actually there's something deeper. That our hearts shy away from because it's more costly in a way to actually give our affection to Jesus.

So we complicate it then in that case, is that what you're saying? So again, it's initially it's that, that just heart call to want to be with Jesus to then add in all the checklist in like you said, the tithing, the the Bible reading. This is important by the way. I'm not trying to diminish that, but actually again, as you were talking, Beth, I was thinking about.

When I first became a Christian, I was on fire for God. I actually Had my appendix burst on the night that I gave my life to Jesus and I but before then I'd made a load of phone calls to loads of friends to say I've become a Christian and I didn't care what they said I went home.

I I had a really bad tummy ache. I called the doctor. The doctor said, your appendix is bursting. Call an ambulance. Did the next best thing and woke my dad up. He took me to the hospital. They put me on morphine. My dad said it sounded like you're talking in tongues, Matt. I wasn't talking in tongues.

I was just on morphine. And I just couldn't stop talking about Jesus.

. Yes. Yes, Matthew. We know we, you were christened. No, mom and dad, you don't understand. Let me tell you, my friends came to visit me in the hospital and I had to tell them I, I just, I could, it was an overflow. It was this. I'd experienced Jesus's love, a pure love, and from the overflow of that, I wanted to share it with others, and I wanted to learn more about him.

I searched in the hospital, as the lights dimmed, as the evening came, for a heat magazine. How embarrassing is that?

. And instead of finding a heat magazine, I found a Gideon's Bible and I opened the Gideon's Bible and there on the first page, it said my name, it said Matthew.

And all I wanted to do was read about this Jesus that I'd fallen in love with. And I'm getting really excited talking about that now, but, and I was excited and lots of things, but I started to come to church and that was even more exciting. I went treasure hunting. I got to pray with people. I got to see people healed and then life just went on and it dulls and I've complicated it.

And I suppose. I just want to go back to, as I've been talking about it, and as I've just been explaining it to you guys there, I just want to go back. There is a hunger there to just go back to that heart overflow. I don't know why I'm telling you this. That's just what I want to do. I want to keep it simple.

I think you're absolutely right. It's that first love that blossoming first love is something to treasure. It is something to, to hanger after actually and to, to long for again, to keep going. But I do also think that, that love deepens and changes with time because a different character about it.

I think it was quite odd that previously we were talking about almost the liturgy and having a sort of habitual response and a structured response to God. And how that balances with becoming routine that Beth was talking about and and losing that love. There's a fine line between both, but I think both have are very important as well.

The main aim, yes, is love, but I think God surprises us as well because He knows what we're like, he is unendingly gracious, and thank goodness so he can provoke that initial love again and again, because he has it all the time.

I think we need to be open to allow that to happen as

well.

That's interesting. We've come back to liturgy. It just prompted me to think that actually, when I was growing up as a teenager, I grew up in an Anglican church and I really struggled with liturgy. I really struggled with it. I used to go and think, Oh, just saying the same thing again and again. And maybe it's getting older, but actually there's something in me that hankers after those.

The rhythms of the church year and there's such depth and beauty in the words in the liturgy. , you're right, Nigel, we're in danger of missing something really precious if we just throw it all away. I think we're, in the Bible there's so many rhythms, isn't there? Festivals and yearly. Remember this, Jesus, God puts in place with the Israelites, doesn't he, each year, remember this, and I think that's good for our souls, isn't it?

To have those moments in our days, in our weeks, in our months, in our years, where we're pointing towards. God's goodness in different aspects of God's goodness because we forget which is we're human we forget And so we need those kind of markers those reminders as lovely safeguards for us almost The balance is where do that and still have life?

It still be life giving and responsive to the spirit as well I suppose