By Diana Shing

I have heard it said that God is not concerned so much with what you are doing for him, but more concerned with the person that you are becoming.  After all, we are not human “doings” but human “beings” created in God’s image.  I believe the call to simplicity is the call to “just be” the person God has uniquely created us to be.  To live in the truth of who we are and to rest in God’s love, enjoying His companionship and intimate friendship.  To be fully at peace with God, others and ourselves. It is the picture I get when I read Psalm 23.  To be like a sheep resting in green meadows, beside quiet waters.  Not lacking anything.  Having everything that I need.  It all sounds so wonderful.  

Even as I write this, I find my soul longing to live in this way, as God originally intended.

Yet as I look at my current life right now, I find myself in a frenzied state of “doing” – being overwhelmed, burnt out and exhausted, in a constant state of hurry and rush.   Instead of resting in green meadows, I find myself overly focused on filling each moment of my day, obsessed with accomplishing the tasks on my daily to-do list as fast as I can, planning each moment of my calendar and busying myself trying to “be” more than what God has intended for me.  

The other day I was given the opportunity to go to Just Float in Pasadena.  It was an experience I will never forget.  It was exactly the experience it said it would be – simply floating in a few inches of warm water for one hour in a small private room.  It was there with my arms outstretched, fully surrendered that I believe God revealed to me this truth – that who I was in that moment, not doing anything else but “just being” was exactly all He wanted from me.  There was nothing else He required from me, there was nothing else He was asking of me, but to just delight in Him and who He had uniquely created me to be with all my sin, gifts, weaknesses and strengths.  He loved me in my absolute “nakedness” before Him.  It was a moment of simplicity that led to deep freedom and gratitude.  

I realized at that moment that most of the time that I am living in a state of striving, earning, performance and pleasing is out of the lie that I am not good enough – that I need to be someone else.  That I am not loved or worthy.  That is a lie I believe the enemy loves to tell because it gets me to always believe that my worth is found in what I do, not in who I am.  

I am so thankful that I serve a God whose way is not the way of the world.  Thankful to be just a sheep, simply resting in my Shepherd’s arms of love.  That to me, is simplicity.

Diana Shing works part-time as the Minister of Family Life at First Evangelical Church of Glendale.  She loves to journey alongside others and witness how God continues to show his great love and faithfulness to each of His children.  She received her Master of Divinity from Fuller Theological Seminary and enjoys spending time with her husband, two daughters and dog, Maggie.