The new Job

     Change can be exciting, it can also be difficult or frightening.  My friend, Lyn, was about to start a new job.  She was excited as she told me that the new job was going to pay more than her old job.  It was a desk job, so she wouldn't have to be on her feet all day.  She also liked the idea of dressing up instead of wearing a uniform.
     I saw Lyn a few weeks after she started her new job.  I asked her how it was going.  She was really down.  She said that the new job was a lot harder then she thought it would be.  She had made a few mistakes, and she felt so bad about them, that she was ready to quit.  I asked her, "Didn't you make any mistakes when you started your old job?"  "Oh yeah lots of them," she replied.
     It's easy to get comfortable with routine things.  Even if they aren't perfect, they are familiar.  Who knows what things will be like if we make a change.  Change can look like a wonderful thing.  But in the middle of a change, it's easy to feel uneasy, inadequate and alone.
     When I was a kid there was a popular show called, "Let's make a deal."  Toward the end of the show, the big winner of the day got a chance to keep a prize that they had already won during the show, or to trade the prize to win something even better.  They got a choice of three doors to pick from; behind the right door could be something wonderful.  But if you picked the wrong door, you would find out that you now own a pig, or some joke prize.  Picking the right door would mean winning the grand prize.
     Lyn, took a job that sounded better than the job she already had.  Her mistakes made her feel like she picked the wrong door.  Becoming a Christian may feel like taking a hard new job at times, you may feel like you won a joke prize.  But sticking to it is like winning the grand prize.
     In Phillippians 3:12, Paul said, "Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.  Brothers I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.  But one thing I do:  Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."