GOD'S AGAINST STORAGE!            DFO 1065                  9/80

         1. It's a shame to have to tell you how to preserve storage when you shouldn't even hardly be storing anything according to God's rules & laws, but since we do move a lot I think the Lord will probably make a little extra exception for us, & we do use our things quite a bit & often.
         2. As the Lord has warned, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures on Earth where moth & rust doth corrupt & thieves break through & steal."--Mat.6:19.
         3. In the first place I would choose a good DRY place & make sure the roof doesn't LEAK. Make sure it also doesn't FLOOD when it rains. Even if the roof doesn't leak, if it's in a low spot on an alley someplace where the water maybe runs down like a river when it rains, it could run right in under the door if the garage floor isn't built up higher than the surface & flood the whole garage when you're gone & not knowing it.
         4. And of course it ought to be a secure place where you can lock the door securely enough that you don't expect people to break in.
         5. There's nothing a thief or burglar hates as much as being SEEN, that's why they usually work in the dark. So if that door or window or garage door or vehicle is in plain sight of someone who might be looking out a window--they don't know, they can't see whether they are or not, they might be or could be--they're not apt to bother it.
         6. You cannot store things on the bare concrete floor of any kind of a building. If they were FLAT on the floor, most of them would accumulate not only dirt, bugs, probably mice, dust, lint & cobwebs, but all kinds of fungus & mildew.
         7. Anything you set on the concrete will get damp & will eventually mold & rot. Most storerooms are unheated & not always waterproof or watertight, frequently flood or leak or both, & to protect your things you need protection not only OVER the things, like a tarp or a plastic cover or something to keep off the dirt & the dust & the bugs & the rain & the leaks, but you need to prop'm up OFF THE FLOOR.
         8. So your best protection is to set it up on FLATS or build your own flats by just laying a two-by-four every three or four feet & then laying boards across the top of the two-by-four so that the stuff is therefore propped up three or four inches off the concrete, off the ground.
         9. Your storage MUST be propped up OFF the ground or floor no matter what kind of ground or floor it is. It's GOT to be off the ground. And there HAS to be air able to circulate underneath it. And it must be COVERED, completely covered clear down to the bottom, if possible, then with rope or string or cord tied tightly around the cover, all the way around.
         10. BEFORE you put the final covering on after you've got the stuff nicely stacked off the floor, get a spray of some kind that is a bug retardant residual spray that repels bugs & is so stinky or whatever it is that the bugs or mice don't even like to get near it, & spray everything real thoroughly inside & out as much as you can, even under the pillows & everything.
         11. And sometimes you can spray it with a DAMP resistant spray which resists damp. Because no matter how much you spray it against bugs & mice & rats, the DAMP will get at it & the SAPROPHYTES, of which there is a very large family & you can find them everywhere in every clime, hot or cold. You find molds & mildews & mushrooms & things like that in almost every climate.
         12. Even the furniture will absorb moisture from the air if it's not covered. It will also get thick with dust. It doesn't matter where you are, there's always dust & there are always bugs. Covering doesn't completely prevent the bugs, but discourages the bugs from entering in.
         13. You cannot possibly have a place that is unoccupied by human beings & nothing but a lot of storage, as the Lord Himself warned us, but what the rot & the corruption will set in--the so-called RUST which covers a lot of those things--plus the THIEVES, which include rats, mice, roaches & everything else that chew on things. They sometimes build nests underneath in the furniture if the place has been unoccupied for a long time.
         14. I'll tell you, this whole life is a fight with corruption! It's a fight with the destroyers, & you need to take good CARE of things & really keep them in USE. I never heard of any furniture that is being constantly used & never stored in a dark place ever being touched by termites. It's always been furniture that's been stored away. Because apparently it has to be very quiet & very dark & unused for a long time in order to have this whole process, give the termites a chance to bore in, lay their eggs & hatch & all that.
         15. So you see, God doesn't really like storage, He really resists storage, & you've really got to fight it pretty hard in order to make it KEEP. What was it the Lord didn't like about the rich men's riches? Why is it He didn't like the RUST & the corruption of it or the corrosion of it or the tarnishing of the gold & the silver? (Fam: Because it wasn't being USED.) Exactly, it showed it was being STORED AWAY somewhere & wasn't in circulation, it wasn't being USED.--Jam.5:1-3.
         16. He says it's not the gold & the silver that He would hold against the rich men, but if He caught it getting tarnished, RUSTY or corrupted, or corroded like iron & steel. Rust & other things corrode.
         17. Well, I'll tell you, the RUST & the corruption of your riches, that's what God will hold against you! You know what He's going to hold against you?--That mildew, that moss that grew on the stones, that rust on the steel, that tarnish on the gold & the silver, that mold, & the termites. He's going to hold THOSE against you!--Because of DISUSE!
         18. Don't blame HIM, He created them to destroy what you didn't USE, or let somebody ELSE use, & He's going to blame YOU for the rust & the corrosion & the tarnish & the mildew & the mold & the bugs & the termites & the roaches! If you don't keep a CLEAN house, of course you'll have ROACHES! If you don't keep a clean house you'll also have MICE. If you keep leaving food around & dirty floors of crumbs & food on the sink & dirty dishes in the sink at night, of course you're going to have BUGS!
         19. God created them to eat up what you weren't using, eat the garbage, & if you leave the garbage on the floor & the sink or on the sideboard or the kitchen table or the dining room table, God's garbagemen are going to come out tonight & try to clean it up, what you failed to clean up, believe it or not! What do you think of that?
         20. But God's going to blame you if you store stuff & it gets ruined & there's a loss! It's YOUR loss & the FAMILY'S loss because you could have SHARED it, GIVEN it to OTHERS.
         21. So don't be a storer! I've had to kiss my stuff goodbye so many times, but the Lord always gives me MORE & I have to just KEEP forsaking all & KEEP getting rid of stuff because He keeps piling it on! Don't worry about not having it, keeping it, don't worry about storing it, He'll give you MORE.
         22. The less space you have, in some ways the better off you are because you just CAN'T carry any more than you've got SPACE for, & then you will only carry what you absolutely NEED & HAVE to have, & NOT a lot of other junk that you MAY think you MIGHT use someday or you might happen to need someday or you might need next year or all that sort of thing.
         23. It is God's principle, His natural law, a natural law of His economics to make it as DIFFICULT for you as possible to STORE anything away for any length of time & not USE it. It will be rusted or corrupted or stolen or something--if not stolen by actual human thieves, stolen by little rats & mice & rodents & bugs, all thieves--& rusted & corrupted by saprophytes or plain metallic rust.
         24. God has His judgements & He'll judge you for STORING stuff you don't need & aren't GOING to need! He knows whether you're going to use it or anybody's going to get to use it, & if YOU don't use it or see that somebody ELSE uses it or keep it in circulation & in USE, He'll see to it that it's DESTROYED no matter how hard you work on it! He's not going to let you SAVE it for yourself selfishly.
         25. If you don't want to be bothered with lugging them around, it's better just to GIVE them away. I'm a great one on just giving stuff away, sharing it, getting rid of it, & LAYING ASIDE EVERY WEIGHT that I may run the next race to the next place!--Heb.12:1.
         26. Help these, Lord, to not keep anything they're not really sing or aren't absolutely sure they're GOING to use immediately or very SOON, or maybe clothing for next Winter, whatever it is, unless they know definitely, Lord, they're going to use it SOON. Help them NOT to keep lugging it around & loading down the vehicles with it until it just nearly flattens the tires & wears us out moving it!
         27. Help them, Lord, to try to eliminate stuff that they don't actually NEED & HAVE to have, cut it down, like we have, to just a few personal things & the vital necessary equipment, the tools we USE for office work & so on, our work of various kinds & the things we absolutely HAVE to have every place we set up again & stop & live for awhile.
         28. Please, Lord, help them to get RID of junk that's NON-essential & NOT immediately useful & NOT likely to be used for a LONG TIME. Help them, Lord, to try to whittle down their luggage & their clothes & their books & their belongings & storage so we won't HAVE to have ANY storage, or at least as LITTLE as possible if we DO have to store it any length of time at all.
         29. So help us, Lord, not to just take along stuff that we CAN use & is NICE to have & that if we HAVE it we will use it, but only the things that we absolutely HAVE to have & CANNOT do without & are absolutely NECESSITIES & which we cannot live nor work without.--Not just a bunch of stuff, Lord, that's nice to have & useful if we've GOT it, but which we COULD do WITHOUT if we had to.
         30. Help us, Lord, to keep these rules in mind when we think about moving & think about storage, & if we DO have some things that HAVE to be kept for future use when we KNOW we will need them, then help us to learn to store them PROPERLY & be GOOD STEWARDS of Thy goods, take good CARE of them & store them & protect them from moth & rust that corrupt & thieves that break through & steal, & keep them in a dry place well covered & packaged & in the proper shape & form & well-protected from all material goods' enemies--dampness, bugs, rodents, termites, molds, mildews & all the other things that ruin the material goods, storage stored in the dark & the damp.
         31. Help us, Lord, in Jesus' name not to store ANYTHING unless we absolutely HAVE to, & not to take anything with us unless we absolutely HAVE to have it, & to remember Thy law that the rust & corruption & mold of these things will be a TESTIMONY AGAINST US because we STORED it, we didn't need it, & never used it & didn't let anybody ELSE use it, & it got ruined! You're going to blame US for it, Lord, because it was ruined instead of giving it away, selling it, sharing with others or using it ourselves.
         32. But help us, Lord, to keep the quantity & the burden down, to LAY ASIDE EVERY WEIGHT that we don't need so we can run the race a little faster & it won't be such hard work for the boys when we move & it won't be so much trouble, it won't be so likely to get damaged in STORAGE. Help us, Lord, in Jesus' name to remember that usually YOU'RE AGAINST STORAGE & Your natural laws are against storage & You've created NATURAL ENEMIES OF STORAGE & You will even JUDGE US by our STORAGE, in Jesus' name. Amen. PTL! TYJ! Amen? (Family: Amen!) Will He judge YOU for storage?
         33. I'm sure that the Family has wasted a lot of things through storage, which instead of just storing & letting it get ruined, they could have GIVEN away & let somebody USE it, let somebody HAVE it, SHARED it with OTHERS, other Homes, other members of the Family.
         34. That's of course where you ought to give your storage first of all if you CAN forsake it, give it to others in the FAMILY. And if you haven't got some poor FAMILY members that need it, then give it to the poor NEIGHBOURS or just leave it for the poor landlord.--Ha!
         35. --And you're not gonna have much storage left if you don't take care of it!--It'd be better to GIVE it away! SHARE it! USE it!--Or let somebody ELSE use it!--Even if you only LOAN it to'm! Keep it in USE!--DON'T STORE IT if you can help it!
         36. STORAGE is defying God's laws of SHARING & USEFULNESS! Give it away TODAY! TOMORROW may be TOO LATE! It may be a rotten mess NOBODY can use!--Or be DESTROYED with the ROTTEN NORTH! LEAVE it! FORSAKE it! Go South & East TODAY!--Amen?

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family