The Cost of Discipleship - Chapter 17

The Simplicity of the Carefree Life

This Chapter was incredible. I'm going to provide you with very little of my personal insight, I'll just let you dive into a few passages from the chapter.

We walk as pilgrims through the earth,

With empty hands, bereft and bare;

To gather wealth were little worth -

'Twould only burden life the more.

If men will go the way to death,

With them we will part company;

For God will give us all we need

To cover our necessity.

(Tersteegen)

Something to chew on... Assuming Tersteegen has a valid point in his poem, how do we reconcile something like that with our western culture and how we live our lives?

Be not anxious! Earthly possessions dazzle our eyes and delude us into thinking that they can provide security and freedom from anxiety. Yet all the time they are the very source of all anxiety. If our hearths are set on them, our reward is an anxiety whose burden in intolerable. Anxiety creates its own treasures and they in turn beget further care. When we seek for security in possessions we are trying to drive out care with care, and the net result is the precise opposite of our anticipations. The fetters which bind us to our possessions prove to be cares themselves. [...] The only way to win assurance is by leaving tomorrow entirely in the hands of God and by receiving from him all we need for today.