Six years ago, I realized that living with less stuff would mean more time and energy to focus on who and what truly mattered. Improved relationships, time immersed in prayer, space for a hobby I loved—it was all waiting for me beneath the piles of random possessions. I didn’t have to be a full-time stuff manager anymore.

I felt like a veil had been lifted. All along, the answer wasn’t more. It was less.

Over the course of a year, 75 percent of my family’s possessions went packing. With less stuff, I began to see that minimalism also applied to the “me” underneath my stuff. My inner clutter also needed to go.

While we’re busy filling our lives with the things of this world, God longs to fill every corner of our souls to the point of overflowing. He longs to love us so much that it spills onto others. He wants to be the companion who alone resides within our hearts. And He wants happiness for us.

Looking back now at my years of consumerism, I imagine God in a helicopter, hovering over my life, looking for a place to land, for time to spend with me, to imbue my life with joy.

But there wasn’t space. 

The external and internal clutter left no landing site. He’d hover, come in close, catch my attention on occasion as the noisy rotary blades neared, but never land in my soul. Never stay and rest awhile.

Immersed in this stuff-centered, American gospel—wading blindly through a bog of inner and outer distraction and clutter—my life was full. Yet empty. Filled, but not with what mattered. Busy, but lacking connection with the One who mattered most: God.

As it turns out, the solution to uprooting our excess-induced stress and creating space for God is quite simple, albeit countercultural.

Galatians states that our true identity is found as daughters and sons of Christ. “For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes.” (Galatians 3:26–27).

We are designed to find our identity in Christ, not from what we consume. But for many of us, things aren’t just things; they are our identity.

Take time today to reflect on your true identity.

• What does your mind gravitate to when you are asked to describe yourself?
• Are your descriptors primarily external—your social status, your possessions, your profession, or your accomplishments?
• Or are they internal descriptors? Do you recognize that you are more than a consumer—you are a child of the Divine?