Are you spending too much time on the playground?

It might be hard to get kids to try new foods, but it’s rarely hard to get kids to play.

Kids are experts at playing, something they can find great joy in spending hours doing.

Even something as simple as playing on the monkey bars.

The monkey bars was a simple form of play. You grab ahold of a bar, then swing forward to grab hold of the next bar, repeating this movement from one end of the set of bars to the other end. You don’t let go of the bar behind you until you had a hold on the bar in front of you, or else you would fall.

Perhaps some of us have spent too much time on the monkey bars!

As adults, we often live a “monkey bar” life, unwilling to let go of what is behind without first having something new in front of us to grab on to, fearing we’ll fall otherwise.

But that isn’t how God moves us forward.

First, He wants us to let go of what’s behind us so we can fall into His hands, then we can reach forward to what He puts in front of us. The Apostle Paul described his experience of this change like this …

“I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us,” Philippians 3:12-14.

Are you playing “monkey bars” with your life, clutching to what’s behind you and insisting something be in front of you before letting go? Or are you willing to fall into God’s hands so He can position you to move forward?

Scotty