Consume with Restraint and Intentionality

To be monastic is to live an ascetic life. A simple life. A life with less. One consumes and owns less. Let our desire to consume become a desire for God’s presence and love. God has given us more than we will ever deserve. Creation is good, but God is greater. Therefore, let us consume with restraint and intentionality.

God’s love is enough.

Each of us, in our own time, makes a discovery. We find that what we consume in our lives consumes us. Our lives depend on the things that we use every day. Consumption is so natural that it is like breathing. We consume nearly on reflex and without much thought. Upon reflection, it seems like it is what we consume that sustains us. Yet, we are sustained by God. It is God alone who is enough. God is enough to sustain us and for us to enjoy forever.

Unlike most everything else, being ascetic requires us to do with less and do less. It is through this simplicity we begin to be more. We discover we become more present with ourselves. We start to be more present with God. Within the presence of God there is always more to learn, feel, share, and know. Deep within us, our soul longs for the presence of God to be what consumes us. May God become what sustains us.

Our lives shift as we cultivate this type of simplicity. With time, one becomes less consumed by the desire for other things. We discover a true, growing freedom that comes from living life with fewer things. Our journey in life gains a new kind of richness. We find a richness that is foreign to every age except the one that is to come. This richness gives us freedom to more deeply explore ourselves and to dwell within the presence of God. We gain the strength to shift our dependance from the things of this world onto the one who created the cosmos.

Let this change grow naturally out of a deep inner transformation. What is visible cannot clearly show us the shifts in our hearts. It can be easy to do the outward work. When the work is forced and unnatural to us, it leads to exhaustion, discontentment, and anger. Instead, let us ask the Lord Jesus to journey with us as we step into a more simple life. In time our understanding of our needs will shift. We will discover we have far fewer needs than we thought. We will find that our God is generous and sufficient. There is no expectation within Urban Monasticism of what a simple life will look like. We should expect different seasons of life to look different. We should never demand or force others to live a simple life. May we celebrate one another on the trails and ways our Lord has invited us to walk.

To be a monastic is to live a simple life. This is an invitation to a life of growth and transformation. Let us not believe there is a perfect way. Instead, we accept that God’s grace is sufficient and discover ourselves, our world, our God, and who we may become with God.

In place of a life of poverty, we are called to consume with restraint and intentionality.

• Prayerfully consider the ways that Jesus is asking you if He is enough in our secular cultures of excess.
• Reflect on the things you most strongly desire to consume. How can you be more intentional and restricted in consuming them?
• Contemplate on the ways our consumption takes away from what we experience from God.
• Meditate on what it could look like to be more intentional with what you consume each day and week.
• Celebrate the positive surprises since you have begun to change how you consume.
• Contemplate the trade-offs between what we consume and what we receive from God.
• Reflect, dwell, and deeply feel the reality that God has given you more than you will ever deserve.
• Meditate on how you can shift more of your identity and pleasure from consumption to God.
• Reflect on what it looks like to be more ascetic within your current living situation.
• Meditate on the challenges you are facing as you change your consumption and pray for God to give you wisdom.
• If you live with others: how can you live with different amounts and choices of consumption? How can you not shame others, and share in what brings them joy?
• Meditate on the ways it is difficult to be gracious and loving to others who are living simply, yet differently than you.
• Reflect on the blessings and surprises you have experienced as you have restricted your consumption.
• Reflect on yourself five years ago. What would surprise you about how you now choose to consume?