To watch it click here: Part 10- Less is Better- January 4, 2015vimeo.com|By BentTree
First off he looked at the audience and said that no one here was poor. He said you are considered wealthy if you make above 40 grand a year! What?! To me that's poor, but he said if you live in the DFW metroplex you are among the wealthiest. Ok, well now I feel convicted acting like we are poor when we are clearly not. It's just been a struggle to starting a business from scratch over the last 2 1/2 years, but we are making it. We just can't afford the THINGS our friends can, and instead of being sad or jealous about it (which is what Satan wants) I'm learning to be ok with it through the grace of God. Pete went on to say that we have bought into the lie that excess stuff equals success.... that more stuff will make you happier. Excess does not equal success; it's supply for others. He dumped out a bag of 16 pairs of old eye glasses. He said they could be used to help someone see for the first time in the Amazon. That really touched me. He asked all of us to find and donate old pairs of glasses for this cause. He then went on to challenge us to clean out our closet! Ummm, YES!!! My husband takes up 3/4 the space in our closet. I'm the girl and I only take up 1/4. I've been dying to clean out our closet. We have cleaned out the kids closets, the garage, and the pantry to name a few, but never ever our closet in the 8 years we've lived in this house. Max does not like to get rid of things. He likes to think that the 90's fashions will make a come back and when they do he will be ready. So you can imagine my sheer joy when our pastor sent out this email:
January 5, 2015
Dear Family,
I talked to a lot of you after services on Sunday, and we decided to send out a special edition email this week to answer all your questions. Click here to watch Sunday’s message, and please share with your family and friends!
We were challenged to see the excess we have in our lives as an opportunity to bless others. What we are not using could be used now by someone in need in our community. I challenged you to look through your closet and donate clothing items that:
- don’t fit anymore
- you haven’t worn in 12 months
- you don’t feel happy wearing
Please bring your clothes in a bag for ease of donation, and look for the drop-off boxes for eye glasses. You can also use #GoLocalBT on social media to share pictures of your closet clean-out with us!
To find out more information, volunteer to help, or get information about donating other items to organizations in our community, go online to benttree.org/clothing-drive.
Thanks for using your excess supply to serve our community. If you have any other questions, please contact our Community Pastor for Local Missions, Robby Gordon.
Pete
“Excess isn’t success – it’s supply for those in need.”
We took his words very seriously and spent our ENTIRE Saturday cleaning out our closet. We had to enlist the help of our children who at first where eager to help, but that excited quickly wained. Rhett said, "This is a lot more stuff than I expect." I had to kids pull out everything on the middle shelf and below and put it in our bedroom. Turns out I'm able to hide my stuff better than Max. I had stuff crammed in every corned and behind all the clothes. Max, however, had piles of clothes, shoes, and hats in our small closet to the point that I was being pushed out.
How did all this stuff fit in our closet?!
I don't know, but It's not all going back in.
We filled 4 yard sized trash bags of clothes, purses, belts, shoes, coats, blankets, and more. It was unbelievable, gratifying, and cathartic...for me anyways. Max said he didn't feel anything. :)
I should have taken a better before picture so you could get the full idea of how different it is.
These were all the left over hangers we decided to keep! We threw away just as many black, plastic, store hangers.
When we got to the church we saw 4 U-haul trucks. There were 4 more on the other side of the church too. It was cold, rainy, Sunday morning and to top it off the Cowboy's playoff game was about to start, but people still came and donated, thank you TIVO and DVR. :)
When Max's friend, Richard, opened the back of our minivan he said, "Oh you must be a hoarder." ;) And turns out we kind of are. We were holding on to our stuff I think to save money because we might need these things one day and we wouldn't want to have to go buy them again. But now we let go of our stuff to save people not money. We were able to help people gain warmth and comfort from our blankets and coats and confidence and self-esteem from our work clothes and shoes and eye sight from our glasses. What a blessing it is to be able to bless others. Thank you, Pete Briscoe, for pushing us out of our comfort zones once again so we could be fully used by God.
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