The other day I was playing a computer game and was getting frustrated because I couldn’t beat a certain level. I closed out of the game and came back an hour later only to realize that I had already beaten that level the day before. I was fighting a battle I had already won. How often do we do the same in our spiritual lives?
In recent months I have felt God calling me to change careers. While I have been teaching English for almost 20 years, I have always wanted to be a full-time writer. I have struggled with writing on the side, but there was never enough time to really devote to it. I taught part-time, so I often had 2 or 3 jobs, which made it even harder to focus. When the current school I was working for closed its doors abruptly, I kept hearing the following verse:
“Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert” (Isaiah 43:19).
God is Doing a New Thing by Lara Martin
I have started down this path before, but I always ended up back with several part-time jobs with the best of intentions to write on the side without any success. It was time to try something new. New is often scary. There are times when God wants to move us into a new season of life. Sometimes it is through the loss of a job, but it could also be through a change in health or the loss of a loved one. We were comfortable in the old way, not necessarily because we were happy, but because it was familiar. God doesn’t call us to be comfortable. He calls us to be obedient. Sometimes He uses a change in circumstances to shake us out of complacency so that He can move us to where He needs us to be.
Once we begin to move, there will always be a temptation to go back to the old ways, to the familiar, but the old ways will never be as comfortable as they once were. “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). The new man will never be satisfied with the old ways.
So, let’s follow Paul’s advice: “Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14).