Holding onto to things with no value

One morning last week I attended a storage unit auction. If you've watched Storage Wars on TV you are familiar with the concept. People fail to pay the rental fees on their units and the owner of the unit can sell the contents to recoup their lost income. While the auction functioned much like what you see on TV there is none of the drama that's on TV and it's highly unlikely that in the last box you open you'll find the Hope Diamond. It's more likely you'll find someone's dirty clothes.

I didn't buy any of the units although I did bid on one. I have bought units in the past and made money on them although it is a lot of work. My criteria for bidding on a unit is that I have to feel that I will bring more items home than I will take to our local dump. Most of the units in the recent auction did not meet that criteria!

If you want to see a large collection of dirty mattresses, outdated, dirty furniture, broken toys, and sacks and sacks of clothes all you have to do is to attend a storage auction. It is unbelievable what people spend money to store. As the doors were opened I kept asking myself, "What are these people thinking?" Why would anyone hold on to this junk? What makes them think they would ever have any use for it?

Later in the day I started thinking of the auction and realized that we hold onto a lot of things that have no value. People struggle with addictions that do nothing but bring them temporary relief and in the end leads to their destruction. We hold onto relationships with toxic people who add nothing to our lives. We hold onto feelings of bitterness towards other people that do nothing but poison our own souls. We hold onto worry, anger, fear, lust and other emotions that eat away at our joy.

Churches hold onto traditions and customs that limit their ability to do ministry in the 21st century. We often focus on minor things while failing to do those more important. We hold onto buildings and property that we no longer need or can afford and wonder why we do not have the resources to do ministry. Churches hold onto controllers in the church and allow them to run off the new people we say we want to reach and keep.

We could list far more items that churches and individuals hold onto that have no value, but there's not enough room in a blog post for such a list. This should be enough to help you begin to identify the things you're holding onto that has no value in your life. These things will cost you or your church far more than paying a monthly storage fee to keep your dirty mattresses and broken toys. But, the question is once you identify those things in your life, what are you going to do about them?