Simple and Free: Study Guide: Staging Your Own Experiment Against Excess

by Jen Hatmaker

Packed with tools and practices, this study guide takes us deeper into Simple &  7 Experiments Against Excess by New York Times bestselling author Jen Hatmaker, helping us combat the areas of overindulgence and excess in our lives, freeing us to feel less stressed and more fulfilled.In Simple & Free, first published as 7, Jen Hatmaker gave readers the story of how her reckoning with excess and materialism turned into a social experiment—which soon propelled a spiritual movement. Now, in this study guide, Hatmaker invites us to delve deeper into solutions and practices for our own seven areas of excess—from stress to spending to social media. This nine-week study guide walks us through these excesses and equips us with practical tools for creating solutions—and making this idea a way of life, not just an experiment.Taking the best from Simple & Free and packing these points with Scripture followed by prompting questions, this resource is broken down into focused, thematically organized weeks for readers to explore patterns and solutions around sustainability and gratitude in greater depth.What’s the payoff from living a deeply reduced life? It’s the discovery of a greatly increased connection with God—a call toward simplicity and generosity that transcends social experiment to become a radically better life.

Genres: Nonfiction

210 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 23, 2021

About the author

JEN HATMAKER is the New York Times bestselling author of For the Love and Fierce, Free, and Full of Fire, along with twelve other books. She hosts the award-winning For the Love podcast, is the delighted curator of the Jen Hatmaker Book Club, and leader of a tightly knit online community where she reaches millions of people each week. Jen is a co-founder of Legacy Collective, a giving organization that grants millions of dollars toward sustainable projects around the world. She is a mom to five kids and lives happily just outside Austin, Texas.

To learn more about Jen, visit www.jenhatmaker.com.

Reviews

[Melissa (Semi Hiatus Until After the Holidays) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the study guide that goes along with Simple and Free: 7 Experiments Against Excess, it's definitely a companion book although some of the segments are reprinted in the study guide. I'd recommend that you purchase both if you're committed to trying this experiment for yourself.

In essence, Simple and Free was an experiment with excess that Jen Hatmaker did ten years ago in an attempt to cut out unnecessary things from her family's lives. In this updated version she talks about things that she still continues to do and gets a re-energized vision for trying some of the others again.

The study guide will help the reader to do the same. It contains Scripture verses to back up each section and for further study about the rationale behind cutting the excess in those areas. It has questions to direct the readers in order to streamline readers' lives in similar ways.

I don't think the study guide is entirely necessary, you can do all of the things she mentions just by reading through Simple and Free, but if you like more information and background, as well as some guidelines and directions, the study guide is a worthy companion.

I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book, all opinions are my own.