Uncluttering Your Life - Making Room for God

Matthew 6:24

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. 

There have been two instances in my life when the Lord has had to teach me, in very practical terms, the meaning of these words - “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.   Each time it happened, I had let my heart become cluttered.  The Lord was getting shoved off to the side. The first happened after my dad died.   For most of my life I had been afraid of what I would do without him.  Then it happened.   Dad died.  For months I struggled with letting go of him.  The clearest illustration of that struggle was his work shop. I would not allow anyone to move anything in his shop.  I would often go in there just to look…nothing more.  Then one day, after referring to “my dad’s tools,” my pastor said to me, “Wayne, those aren’t your dad’s tools anymore… He will never use them ever again.”  That’s when it came home.  I was holding on to dad as if I couldn’t live without him. Yet, we can all only handle one master in life – for me that master needed to be God not my grief.

The second time was when we took the call to Germany.  That call meant clearing away all sorts of clutter – We sold or gave away most everything we owned – furniture that had been part of my life since childhood… all those tools that I had inherited from dad… my attachment to Lamb of God… my love, even dependence on being loved and needed by them.  God moved us 5000 miles away from our kids and grandkids.  The question in rejecting or accepting that call came down to this – Who would be master of my life?  “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.

Please note, there is nothing sinful about any of these things.  There is nothing wrong with loving or grieving your dad, nothing wrong with keeping family heirlooms, nothing sinful about having nice tools… nothing wrong with loving people, nothing wrong with being needed and loved… Nothing wrong that is, unless you give to those things the place in your heart that belongs to God… nothing wrong unless you allow those things to become Master.  Then you will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other… That’s what had happened.  I was so stressed by trying to maintain what we had… trying to please and be liked that I was easily angered… struggling with anxiety and more.  Jesus warns us, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Too often we set our hearts on things that perish. We think that we can’t live without them.  We give things or people a place in our heart that can only safely belong to God.  We expose our hearts to the temporary nature of those things or relationships… to the eating of the moth, the canker of rust and the subtle hands of thievery.  Instead of having, we end up being had.  Disappointment and discouragement, jealousy and envy take hold of your hearts.  When you worry about all these things you need to ask, “Who owns who?  Do I own my things, or do they own me? 

God’s solution?  In love He decluttered my life.  He put me in a situation where I had to give up everything that was leaving no room for Him.  He left me with the one treasure moth and rust can not destroy… the one thing no thief can take away… He left me with the one eternal treasure – Himself.  The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.   You and I are that treasure for the Lord! He literally went and sold all that He had to purchase us for Himself.  He gave His own Son.  Jesus left heaven, made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, then dying on a cross.  He sacrificed everything so that “you and I might be His own and live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness.”  Yes, He paid it all that we might be His treasured possession… more than that – He paid it all that so that He might be our one true eternal treasure – the treasure in heaven… the only treasure that can never be taken away.  

Even St. Paul had to learn this lesson… had to declutter his life of the things that had left no room in his life for God.  Listen as Paul describes this in Philippians 3 – “If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more:  circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.  Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith…  This is really what this sermon series has been about… this is what it really means to declutter your life… getting rid of anything that crowds Him out… making room for God… letting Him have the place in your life that belongs to Him… the place He purchased with the life of His own Son.  Amen.