April 2007

Listening to God's Voice Meant Leaving a Comfortable Job and Adopting a Simple Lifestyle

Last spring, something happened in my life that I would not highly recommend to others. After ten years of working in my respective field, I resigned from my job with no other employment options in queue.

It’s not that anything was troublesome with the company or with my career path. In fact, I had climbed to the senior management level at a fairly young age and was comfortably in charge of a moderately sized department. My income more than paid the bills, helped me create a decent nest egg, and allowed my family to give support to the church. All in all, I was quite agreeable to my chosen vocation. Walking away from it then did not seem like the wisest of choices.

So when God asked me to quit, I did what any rational person would do—I ignored this leading. In my case, I tried ignoring for so long that I would sit at my desk and have waves of sick nausea rise up in me. As these feelings continued, it became more and more frustrating. Not only had I spent a decent sum on higher education, I had worked extra hours to get ahead and made the obligatory family sacrifices one makes when starting out.

Likewise, I could easily pinpoint significant events along the way where God’s hand intervened in my career path. Was that all for nothing? Whether I liked it or not, God was now making it rather clear that my time needed to be finished at my job. As frustrating as it was, I finally resigned to God’s will and handed in my resignation at work.

The Journey Began Two Years Earlier

The process I went through to get to that point actually started two years prior when I began writing a short on-line newsletter on simple living. The newsletter was more of a side hobby because I thought the topic worthwhile with post-modern relevance. I wrote about everything from time management to organic gardening. In due course though, I realized I could not ignore my own advice. Even though I still lived a busy and complicated existence, I slowly started letting go of the superfluous extras. At the same time, I tried letting God in to fill that void. It was hard work, but I was learning. I was a beggar who found just enough bread to realize how hungry I still was.

Simplicity Rediscovered

While working through these issues, I rediscovered simplicity. Instead of searching for which of the smorgasbord of simple living techniques I needed to adopt—many of them were espoused in my newsletters—I discovered that, when responding first out of my faith, simple living was a uniquely spiritual discipline.

In contrast, I find that simplicity today has come to represent a minimalist reductionism. Perhaps because the industrialized parts of the world have so much, those of us living in industrialized society use this pseudo-asceticism to tickle the underbellies of our consciences so we can say we are doing something. The problem is that this doesn’t paint a complete enough picture of how simplicity is intended.

When lived out as a spiritual discipline, simplicity is not about living with less. I left my job not to “cut back” per se, but because I needed to be faithful to what I was being asked to do. I think of simplicity, then, as an effort to find God’s truth in my complicated world. In the process, I could release all of that extra stuff because it had no more meaning left for me. When lived out this way, simplicity led to all sorts of wonderfully strange and complex Spirit-led behaviors.

Last fall, after three months of being unemployed and slowly burning through my life savings, God opened up some doors for me to pursue seminary course work. Once again, this was not any easy transition.

I had completed graduate school once before and I thought it rather more prudent to secure some income—not create more bills. Yet, I found that when I was faithful in what I was asked to do, God took care of me and my family. Simplicity is not about the easy life, but about finding the flow of Christ in a complex world.

To Live Simply is to Trust God Extravagantly

As of today, almost one year after resigning from my job, I still sit in a state of peaceful ambivalence although I am not sure what will unfold next. I go to classes, hang out with my family, and do a few odd jobs here and there. But despite no significant household income, we have not missed a bill payment, have not incurred any debt, and have discovered new and more meaningful ways to get by.

Looking back, I can’t tell you exactly how this all happened, nor can I claim the absence of worrying about tomorrow. I do understand that my simple-minded encouragement to just “be faithful and listen” may come across as trite or even insulting to some. It’s not my intention to present easy answers to difficult questions.

All I can do is acknowledge the truth of my own story. I have learned that if I let go of everything else, God, in turn, becomes the foremost reality in my life. I can simply live with the reality of that extravagant truth.

—Tim Burdick holds a Master’s Degree in Psychology and is completing a Master’s Degree in Theology. He lives in Bellevue, WA, with his wife, Heather, and daughter, Sierra. They attend North Seattle Friends Church. Tim edits an online newsletter called Simple River.

For more information on simple living, check out Tim’s on-line newsletter on simple living at www.simpleriver.org.