You Are What You Can’t Let Go Of

My friend Brian Scudamore said something so insightful that Starbucks printed it on 10 million coffee cups:

“It’s difficult for people to get rid of junk. They get attached to things and let them define who they are. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this business, it’s that you are what you can’t let go of.”

Brian was talking about physical junk and mental junk as well.

What is the junk you need to get rid of? Do you have an attachment that defines you?

“You are what you can’t let go of.”

Some people can’t let go of authority.

Some can’t get go of fame.

Some can’t let go of anger.

Some can’t let go of pain.

Look around. What do you see?

I see groups of people who believe something, hating other groups of people who believe something else. They, like us, are defined by what they can’t let go of.

Jesus talked about this in his famous Sermon on the Mount. He said,

“If you are planning to give a financial gift to the work of God and you know that someone is pissed off at you, (this is the Williams “Street” Translation) go to that person and apologize and be reconciled. Then you can offer your gift.”1

Jesus was more interested in what you were carrying in your heart than what you were carrying in your hand.

What you carry in your heart defines you.

Immediately after Jesus finished his famous Sermon on the Mount, he made the same point another way.

As Jesus was going down the road, he saw a much-despised tax collector named Matthew sitting in his tax collection booth. “Come and be my disciple,” Jesus said to him, and Matthew jumped up and went with Jesus. Later, when Jesus and his disciples had dinner at Matthew’s house, Matthew invited all his notorious swindler friends to be there also, so that they, too, could hear what Jesus had to say. But when the religious leaders saw what was happening, they were indignant and demanded to know why Jesus associated with men like those. Jesus told them, “Sick people need a doctor. Now go away and understand what God meant when he said, ‘It isn’t your sacrifices and your gifts I want—I want you to be merciful.'” 2, 3

The funny part of this story is that it all happens in the book of Matthew, the despised tax collector who invited Jesus to dinner and then became one of the 12 disciples who stayed with him always.

I have always found it interesting that Matthew’s book is the first book in the New Testament.

Roy H. Williams

1 Matthew 5:23

2 Matthew 9:9-13

3 Jesus is quoting Hosea 6:6, which had been written about 750 years earlier