o3. Make Room

Have any of you ever watched Storage Wars? I sometimes catch myself watching it in the evenings and I am often amazed by the sheer amount of stuff people store and leave behind.

These units are filled with everything from lamps and old records to coin collections and old bedsheets, and as I watch it I often ask myself why these things were discarded and left behind. They had to have had some sort of value to their owner at one point, right? Yet every year North Americans spend a staggering 38 billion on storage facilities with 90% of those facilities being in the United States alone. At the rate that these units are being rented people often end up paying more for storage than what they paid, for the things that they are storing. In other words, holding on to items you do not need is bleeding your pockets dry and taking up valuable space.

It is too expensive to keep things that no longer serve you or your purpose. Hoarders, a TLC show, depicts people who have been broken by abuse, neglect, and despair fighting for the right to keep the trash and trinkets that they believe will bring them joy, not realizing that their very home is being destroyed by the need to always cling to junk. For them, the recommended therapy has always been to throw it all away and clean up their space to make room for the people and things that truly matter. Isn’t it strange how in those shows, their family repeatedly states that they can’t function because they are constantly competing with things?

It made me think about how Christ will not compete with our distractions, nor will he function fully in our lives when we fill our spiritual spaces with things that don’t matter. We find it far too easy to substitute junk for Christ and then wonder why we struggle. When we spend time cultivating our personal space with discord from work, hurt from families, gossip from friends, stress from spouses, and bad habits that feed and inflate our egos, it should come as no surprise. It is all too easy to use what happens in the world as a distraction and then use that distraction as an excuse for not cleaning up our act.

However, it is now time to do some spring cleaning. This time, we’re doing more than just cleaning out our closets of clothes we no longer wear, decluttering our garages, and making room in our basements. We’re going to do the work that is frequently recommended in Hoarders: throw out the junk and accept that you don’t need it. It costs us too much to cling to pain when the people who have hurt us have moved on. When we refuse to do the work, we end up paying a price that our spiritual bank accounts are unable to pay.

I, for one, don’t have the time or the spiritual bank to keep paying for storage when I know what I’m storing isn’t providing a return on investment. Spiritual hoarding merely clogs our process and delays our breakthrough, and when we fill up our storehouses with earthly treasures our hearts become consumed with those things instead of Jesus. Matthew 6:19-21 says.

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Jonathan McReynolds has a song that says, “I make room for what I treasure, I take time for what I want, I choose my priorities and Jesus you’re my number 1. I will make room for you, I will prepare for two, so you…can live here please live in me”. When our storage is empty, Jesus functions best in our lives. Our spiritual storage becomes cluttered when we prioritize our selfish needs and give them the same value as Jesus Christ in our hearts.

However, now is an excellent time to begin again. Now is the time to dust, clean, prep, and present your spaces to rejuvenate your mind and your heart, just as you do with your closets to decide what to discard and what to keep. As you do that you’ll find just how easy it is to make room for God.

Love Always, AB