Have you ever taken the time to sit down and take a piece of paper or your journal and write out all the main areas of your life – all the plates that you are spinning? Let me encourage you to take some time to do this important exercise. Once you have all the different areas of your life on paper circle each of them.
S.U.M. Simplify: Do you feel like you need to simplify your life? Why? Are you too busy, do you have margin in your life – space for growing deeper in life. Everyone is trying in their own way to simplify life. Often we just add things to our life and are not sure how to simplify. Our lives seem more fragmented then unified and therefore our capacity for impact is radically limited. Our desire to simplify is really a desire to make sense of the S.U.M. of our life and find something to unify our life together.
S.U.M. Unify: What Unifies your life? We simplify our life to keep it unified, but if we are not sure of what holds it all together then what’s the point of simplifying.
S.U.M. Multiply: Do you want life change and impact built by addition or multiplication? Most of us find ourselves just adding circles into the S.U.M. of our life, which only serves to increase stress and remove whatever is left of margin. Most of us just keep adding things to our lives and we never catch the momentum of multiplication through our lives.
When self is at the center we are under bondage to centripetal force, everything converges inward, even our outward actions, because we have said, “I” am at the center and “I” naturally is selfish and extremely needy.
When Christ is at the center of our life He shows us how to simplify for He unifies our life and multiplies our impact. When Jesus is the unifying principle in our life the potential impact is exceedingly abundantly beyond what we could think or ask – radical multiplication. It is a compounding of blessing.
What does it look like when each of us has self at the center? Is it possible for unity to take place when we each have self at the center? No, we remain fragmented selves unable to truly unite together. But when Jesus is at the center we become part of one another and He makes us part of His Body. We are unified through Jesus while each of us contributes to the whole and we are able to grow up into the fullness of Christ and see supernatural multiplication of Christ’s love moving outward to a fragmented world.
Our heart was not made for an idea, philosophy or religious belief, it was made for a person and His name is Jesus!
If Jesus is uniting all the plates in our life together then we must also have His Body at the center. We cannot separate Jesus from His Body, the community of believers. Many see church as just one more plate to manage in their chaotic lives and not as what it should be. The Church unfortunately has often added to the chaos of people’s lives rather than bring peace. The Church is suppose to be the vibrant uniting community that helps people simplify their lives with Christ at the center so they can maximize their impact.
So, what is the S.U.M. of your life?
Take some time this week to take someone through the S.U.M. idea. Most people do not have someone in their life who is speaking into these important issues. Be that someone this week.
