Turning Down the Noise of Need

Listen carefully. There is a noise track playing in your head. It’s so constant you’ve lost awareness of it. It sounds something like this . . . 

• I need to buy a new bathroom rug. Mine’s never been the right color. 
• I need a gray sweater like the one Ashley wore to church on Sunday. 
• I need a new bedspread. I’ve always wanted a striped one. 
• I need some new jeans. Mine aren’t quite the right style. 
• I need a new pair of tennis shoes if I’m going to start walking more. 
• I need a new outfit for that dinner we got invited to. 
• I need a new moisturizer. Maybe it will help with the lines that are forming on my face. 
• I need a new car. I’m the only mom in the car line with a van this old.
• I need . . . 
• I want . . . 
• I crave . . . 

In our culture of cheap goods and “buy now” buttons, shopping is no longer an event. It’s become our chronic state. Rather than satiating our appetites for more, we’ve just become hungrier. 

If I’d read this far on this blog post a year ago, I might have already concluded it wasn’t for me. I’ve never considered myself much of a shopper: no out of control credit card bills or clothes hanging in the closet with the tags on them for me . . . but at the beginning of 2024, the Spirit began to reveal the dangers of the noise of need in my life. 

As I prayed about the blank year ahead and asked God to use it to make me more like Him, I couldn’t shake the feeling that He was inviting me to give up shopping for an entire year. Oblivious to the true cost on my heart and mind of constant buying, I figured it would be easy. (It wasn’t.) I said “Yes, Lord!” and committed to one year of no shopping. 

I still had to buy groceries and toilet paper, of course (as a mom of four sons I am always buying groceries and toilet paper), but no new clothes or jewelry, nothing new for my home . . . nothing that I didn’t truly need. Now on the other side of that object lesson, I’m beyond grateful for it. Here are just a few of the things I learned. 

The “Hedonic Treadmill” Doesn’t Go Anywhere

Psychologists say that though we will get spikes of happiness from things like a new house or car, a bedroom remodel, or a fabulous new dress, our brains return to our baseline of happiness surprisingly quickly. They call it the “hedonic treadmill,” and I think they’re on to something. Our flesh compels us to constantly seek comfort and pleasure. My clicking and swiping had become so reflexive that I was oblivious to this hedonistic hunger. It was just a new shirt after all. Just a couple of fresh things for my home . . . all relatively harmless and not necessarily sinful, but the hunger inside of each of us can never be filled with something we purchase. When I stopped shopping I started listening to my flesh’s constant clamoring for more. 

Scripture speaks to this, of course:

But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. (1 Timothy 6:9–10 ESV, emphasis added) 

Most of us reflexively read those words and think, I don’t want to be rich. I just want enough to cover what I need. The problem is we often conflate needs and wants. That’s the craving Paul was writing about, and it really is a treadmill—always walking, never moving forward. It’s keeping our souls from ever finding the satisfaction we desperately crave. 

I’d sat so long in the soup of Western consumerism that I was clueless about the swap I’d made: more stuff for less peace. Once the noise of need was turned down in my life, what had been true all along became glaringly obvious: only Jesus can truly satisfy.

Every retail promise is hollow compared to these:

You make known to me the path of life; 
in your presence there is fullness of joy; 
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. (Psalm 16:11 ESV)

Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5 ESV)

The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied; 
those who seek him shall praise the LORD! (Psalm 22:26 ESV)

I Wasn’t Letting the Church Do Her Job

Like most of us in the West, I have embarrassingly little practice with going without. None of us think we’re rich. We live in a world with Elon Musks and Bill Gateses after all. We’ve heard that we’re in the one percent enough times to feel a little funny about it, but we’re not sure what to do with that angst. 

My year of no shopping reframed this for me. It helped me to stop thinking of my resources relative to the world and start thinking hyperlocal, not by forcing me to compare what I have (or don’t) to my literal neighbors but by seeing how need provides opportunity for us to serve and be served by the people nearby. 

I had a series of speaking engagements and video promotions lined up for the year. Historically, I would have bought myself something(s) new to boost my confidence. In a no-shopping year I didn’t have that option, so I reached out to friends (who are all far more stylish than me) and asked to borrow. 

It was humbling and helpful. I needed some new exercise equipment but couldn’t click my need away, so I asked a woman in my Bible study if she had extras that I could borrow. For a whole year, I got to walk in the sandals of the first century church:

Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. (Acts 4:32 ESV) 

What most unified those early believers was their total allegiance to Jesus. It showed up in the way they shared and stewarded their stuff. These simple acts of asking and receiving might seem insignificant on the surface, but the ways they knit my heart together with the saints were powerful and precious. 

Then there were the gifts . . . 

I wish I’d kept a running list, but the sheer volume of gifts given to me “out of the blue” during my no shopping year was astounding. One friend cleaned out her closet and, without knowing about my shopping fast, brought me bags of the most adorable clothes you can imagine. Churches where I was teaching gave me earrings (which might be my love language), tea towels, new books, beautiful journals, and more. 

Gift upon gift upon gift, each one something I would have picked out for myself at the store. I couldn’t purchase them, but I certainly could receive them. There’s never been a time in my life when gifts were more thrilling or treasured. 

One of the things our shopping costs us is that we don’t get to see the Church be the Church. The Bible tells us to be “generous and willing to share” (1 Tim. 6:18), but how can we be generous when our brothers and sisters are never in need? Who needs neighbors when as soon as we want something we put it in our Amazon cart?

Stewardship Is a Long Game

A year of no shopping gave me better questions. Before I would have asked, “Can I afford to buy it?” Now I know to ask, “Can I afford to steward it?”

Money is not our only God-given resource. The far more precious, and limited, gift is time. Everything we buy must be cared for. New clothes must be worn, washed, folded, and put away. New items for your home must be dusted. New shoes must be kept from piling up in the entryway. 

For me, less shopping translated into having less to manage. I got minutes back that I was free to redirect and a choice to make about whether to use those minutes in ways that were meaningless . . . or not. 

The noise of need costs you time. It costs you energy. It costs you dollars. It costs you peace. Turning down the volume led to a profound freedom I wasn’t expecting. It’s a freedom I wouldn’t trade in now for all the pillows at HomeGoods. 

Turn Down the Dial

You won’t find a thou-shalt-not-shop command in your Bible, likely because God is less concerned with giving us hard and fast rules and more concerned with taking our hard hearts and molding them to be soft toward Him and the people He’s made. Though I’m now free from my commitment to avoid shopping, I am also acutely aware of the noise of need that screams from every billboard, commercial, social media ad, and, most annoyingly, my own heart. 

True change rarely happens through denial alone. We need something better to bend our affections toward. Jesus makes this so easy. His comfort is better than new clothes. His nearness is sweeter than a temporary hedonistic high. His kingdom is far superior to anything we can ever buy. 

The Bible doesn’t add extra holiness points for poverty or wealth. Our righteousness is based on the generosity of God’s grace alone. Still, we are called to look less and less like our stuff-crazed world and more and more like our Savior. 

The discipline of denial turns down the dial on the noise of need, freeing us to hear what Jesus has been saying all along. 

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. (1 John 2:15–17 ESV)