“But we encourage you, brothers and sisters, to do this even more, to seek to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you.” 1 Thessalonians 4:11 CSB
Jesus lived a simple life. He never owned a home, He never drove a car, He never married. He walked everywhere He went. He didn’t worry about what He was going to eat or where He would sleep. He didn’t have a checking account, He didn’t have a credit card. Yet He changed the world. Over 2000 years later, and His message and ministry is more alive and active than ever. Jesus kept it simple, and so should we. But how do we do that in this hectic world we live in today, how do we keep it simple?
I have found one key to the simple life in this verse, “mind your own business.” I worked my way through college at a hotel in Williamsburg as a Front Desk Clerk. I fell in love with a guy I worked with there. Unfortunately, he was in love with someone else, who also worked there. Classic love triangle. As soon as the other girl found out we were dating, she decided she was interested in him. My heart was broken. I still had to work with both of them, I had to watch them take breaks together, hold hands, all of the things I wanted to be doing with him. Then one night a guest of the hotel gave me two porcelain angels, he sat them before me on the counter. He told me God had angels watching over me; I needed to keep my eyes focused on what was in front of me. He helped me realize, it was none of my business what they were doing, they weren’t in front of me.
Minding our own business can be tough. Losing ourselves in other people’s problems keeps us from focusing on our own problems. We justify not fixing the brokenness in our own lives by focusing on the brokenness in someone else’s life. We all have broken areas that need attention. Dealing with our brokenness takes hard work. We have to identify the brokenness, change our behavior, and accept our reality. For my love triangle, I had to accept the truth he had been using me to make her jealous, he had never cared for me, I was just a means to an end. The truth was hard for me to accept, but once I did, I could begin to heal. I began to learn what God wanted me to learn. I wasn’t applying God’s principles to my life, it was one way God drew me back to Him. God showed me when we try to do things without Him, we hurt ourselves in ways He never intended us to hurt. I learned that if I was going to invest my time in someone else’s business, I wanted that business to be God’s business. When God’s business becomes the business we mind, we will begin to find the simple life.
