There is a biblical story about a man who gave up the security of a comfortable life for an unpaid position training to become a prophet. He took his yoke of oxen and slaughtered them. He burned the plowing equipment to cook the meat which he gave away to the people. His new journey would require stability, resoluteness, loyalty, and commitment. He could not go back to his old way of life because he had destroyed the time machine that would take him back. It was the end of who he used to be and the beginning of his new life as the prophet, Elisha.
Are there times in your life when you wish you had the courage to start over? Do you feel that it is too late to make a new beginning for yourself? I am reminded of a sharecropper who became dissatisfied with the owner he was working for; so, one day he cut down all he had grown and took his family on a journey to another city in another state where work was plentiful. Years later the man retired not as a sharecropper but as field superintendent of a major gas company. That person was my father.
You see, it doesn’t matter whether you are trying to lose weight, get into graduate school, write a book, start your own business, or get out of debt. The first step is always the longest and the hardest. You cannot just take a step forward into the future; you also must eliminate the possibility of moving backward into the past. This is how you go after dreams and achieve goals. It’s how you break addictions and how you reconcile relationships. To begin a new chapter in your life, you must end an old chapter.
The prophet didn’t need to burn his plowing equipment to follow another prophet, but he was making a statement. More specifically, it was a statement of faith. There was no turning back. Nine times out of ten, failure is resorting to your old plan when the new plan becomes too challenging to handle.
People committed to a new plan of action never even contemplate going back to the old plan because they have destroyed it. They would rather crash and burn going after their God-ordained dreams, than succeed at something else. Burn your bridges to the past and move forward with your dreams. If you have faith in the dream, your new goal or venture, you will be successful. So Never Give Up! Never Give Up! Never Give Up!
By Chaplain Ghosten
chaplain@lhp.net
