Giving youth pastors the tools they need to make and shape disciples.

Push Forward Or Shrink Back

3 · 25 · 15

ben-hatfield-quote-we-all-continue-to-push-forward-as-hard-as-we-can

 

We have two choices to make.

The first option is to push forward. Pushing froward requires hope, vision, and faith to accomplish something. Pushing forward feels good. Pushing forward shows you have, if nothing else, determination. People applaud people who push forward. Pushing forward says, “I’m not afraid. And even if I am, you won’t know it.”  Pushing forward seems like the thing to do when times get hard, until it gets to hard, then choice two appears. Shrinking back.

Somedays it feels like we run out of hope, visions and faith. When that happens to me, I quietly sing the short line, “Nothing really matters” from Queens Bohemian Rhapsody.  What if you run out of what fuels you? Can you continue? Sure, just slower until one of these three things are refilled. 

The second choice is to shrink back. The phrase “shrink back” bothers me because of it’s reference, “And, “But my righteous one will live by faith. And I take no pleasure in the one who shrinks back.”. I know this is in reference to salvation and faith but I think it applies to everyday life. Who looks at someone shrinking back and says, “That guy is really going somewhere!.” No one. No one admires the “shrink back” guy.

In shrinking back we are destroyed. We are destroyed in the world of public opinion. In shrinking back we  discover our weakness(es) or that we overplayed our hand or that we never had what we thought we had in the first place.

Jesus said, “When the Son of Man comes back will he find faith?” He could say, When the Son of Man comes back will He find us pushing forward? Taking risks? Facing giants? Marching around walls? Jumping out of boats? Or will He find me shrinking back? Hiding in a wine press? Curled up on a fetal position waiting for the world to end?

These choices are not just day to day, for some they are moment to moment.

We need more people pushing forward. I need to see you push froward to help me push forward.

Push forward. Please.

 

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