Red Shoes

As a little girl, I had these red shoes, just like Dorothy wore in "The wizard of Oz" , and I wore them all over the place, and with everything.  I remember even being warned not to wear them while walking down the basement steps and I didn't listen, sure enough, I went flying down the steps, but that didn't stop me!  Eventually I started to grow out of them, but no matter how much it hurt, I refused to let go of those shoes.  I squeezed my feet into them and walked around in pain, I kept going back and getting them, so determined not to let them go, until my mom decided to just take them away from me all together.  

1 Corinthians 13:10-11 -  But when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.

That verse goes for every one of us and that got me thinking, isn't it sometimes that way when we grow in our walk with God?  Many people, including myself, can sometimes get so comfortable doing the same thing over and over, we get to a place to where we just don't want to grow.  God loves us for who we are but doesn't want to leave us the way we are, there is always room for growth!  When we grow in God, it can sometimes be painful, slow, and uncomfortable, just like it was when we experienced growth as children.  We have all been afraid to step out of our comfort zone, we've been rejected, and hurt, but there comes a point, we have to let God remove that all together, just like those shoes were taken away from me.  And sometimes He warns us and we don't listen and we fall. Our Father may want to take away the things that we feel is best for us and we just outgrow them. Say goodbye to what He wants to take out of our lives and welcome the growth and the change He wants for us.  

Philippians 3:12-14 - Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, 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.