Hoarders

Who has seen the A& E series, “Hoarders”? I love the show! Hoarders is a fascinating look inside the lives of different people whose inability to part with their belongings is so out of control that they are on the verge of a personal crisis.

VIDEO: “Hoarders”

I find myself hooked to the television each time I watch an episode of Hoarders. You never know what people are going to find in some of these houses.On one episode there was one house that, while they were cleaning it, they found two mumified cats under a couch.In another episode they find a live opossum that had been dwelling in the house along side the residents and they never even knew it was there among them.

Hoarders are people that are in a constant battle by an obsessive need to acquire (and failure to use or discard) a significant amount of possessions, even if the items are worthless, hazardous, or unsanitary. This is much like when people come to Jesus. Some of us hold onto things that clutter our walk with Jesus. We, too, are in a constant battle and need to clean up in order to see Jesus.

We need to allow God to clean out our lives and try to live a life of holiness. Some Christians get to a point where big, devastating sins never enter their mind. We don’t wake up and say, “I think I’ll commit adultery today.” Or “I think I’ll murder someone today.” What we do, however, is hoard sins. We tell ourselves that they are small, insignificant sins that we know we don’t need or even want any more, but we keep them around anyway.

There’s that grudge that we hold onto, never willing to let go. There’s that small piece of gossip that we hang onto. There’s that excuse that keeps us from being faithful to prayer time, Bible study, and even from God’s house. There small little things that we keep around we just can’t part with can we.

Suddenly it seems like almost overnight we notice that our lives have become cluttered. We think we should throw out some of these sins, but we don’t, they have really grown and taking over. We realize that our lives have become more than just cluttered. Now it looks messy and it’s difficult to get through certain rooms in our lives. We know we need to throw away some sin, but again we don’t. We realize that, our entire life is trashed.

Our children are a mess, our relationship with our spouse is in ruins, our career is falling apart, and when we look at our life all we see is dirty sin. Now we’re overwhelmed. We say, “Where did all of this come from and how can I ever get rid of it now?” What we must realize is that it didn’t just appear, we’ve been accumulating it for a long time. We’ve become hoarders.

This morning ask yourself, what is the clutter in your life that keeps you from seeing God’s will for you?

Illustration: The Learning Annex, a chain of adult-education schools, says that more than 200,000 people have completed its popular class on controlling household clutter. Who takes the course” People who keep empty mayonnaise jars, manuals for appliances they no longer have, broken buttons, out of date phone books, etc.

Household clutter occupies space, saps energy and creates frustration. Spiritual clutter is much the same, unresolved conflicts pile up in our hearts; un-confessed sins gather a thick layer of guilt; unspoken prayers litter our minds.

Are you a Hoarder? Do you have unresolved issues or sins that you just can’t part with? How can we clean out our jumbled lives today? I think that our text this morning gives us some answers.

23Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: 24And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

I.We hoard unresolved conflicts.

- Two men who lived in a small village got into a terrible dispute that they could not resolve. So they decided to talk to the town sage. The first man went to the sage’s home and told his version of what happened. When he finished, the sage said, "You’re absolutely right." The next night, the second man called on the sage and told his side of the story. The sage responded, "You’re absolutely right." Afterward, the sage’s wife scolded her husband. "Those men told you two different stories and you told them they were absolutely right. That’s impossible -- they can’t both be absolutely right." The sage turned to his wife and said, "You’re absolutely right."

A.I believe we all have had conflict with people once or twice in our lives. It may have been a family member, a business partner, a fellow employee, a neighbor, a total stranger, but we have had difficulty with them.