A few summers ago, I attended a retreat with Chi Alpha (a college ministry I'm a part of.) One day was the "Physical day" where we zip lined, rock climbed, and sadly, rappelled. I was OK with zip-lining, I didn't mind rock climbing, but there was no way on this earth I was going to rappel especially since I hated heights and oh, you know, FALLING.
Jonathan, the ministry pastor, told everyone to fix their harnesses because we were about to rappel off of the wooden bridge on the camp grounds. I took my harness off and said, "I do not have to rappel if I don't want to. Jesus will still love me if I don't rappel today." I made my mind up, and so did a few other girls who were at the retreat. Jonathan began to gently push us towards rappelling, causing us to get even angrier. Finally, Jonathan walked straight up to us ladies, looked us dead in the face, and with a very stern voice said, "You are going to rappel. Put your harnesses on." The other ladies finally agreed and harnessed up. But, me, heck no! I was still not putting that harness on. One after one, the girls who stood beside me took that leap off the bridge. At the bottom I heard, "Come on, Elizabeth! It really is not that bad. It's actually kind of fun!" I still was not moving. I did not care what they had to say or how they felt about that stupid jump off the bridge. I wasn't going to do it.
Jonathan finally had enough and physically put my harness on my, dragged me by the arm and put me on the ledge. (Trust me, it sounds so crazy, but I'm glad he did it.) As I huffed and puffed, he hooked me up to the line and began to gently tell me how I was going to jump.
I just did it. I did not want to listen to Jonathan anymore so I was ready to jump off the ledge. I jumped. You know what? It was a blast.
I came to realize that day that my fear was a reflection of my lack of trust in leadership. If I trusted Jonathan, I would have jumped. But since I did not want to, and because I did not feel like being pushed by my pastor, I stood on that ledge and refused to move. You know what? It also reflected my walk with God and my past. Recently, the Lord has been begging me to abandon all things from my past and chase after him. In fact, this has been a common thing for many years that I bet many of you could relate to. For me, He asked me to take the leap off of my ledge and never return to my sinful past. I've been so fearful of what's at the bottom and what the result would be that for a long time, I resisted jumping into God's purpose for my life. But I remember when I was rappelling. Jonathan knew what he was doing; he was trained, had done it before, and knew it would be best for me to grow outside of my comfort zone. God knows what He's doing. God created me, sees what could happen if I don't take a leap of faith, and knows that abandoning my past will be what's best. I believe I have been standing on a spiritual ledge for along time. I keep whining, crying, and moping around about how life has beat me up instead of jumping and allowing God to change what He wants. I can whine and complain all day about not wanting to jump, but He cares too much for me not to let me get away with staying on the ledge.
