Do You Want to Grow?

Consider the rubber band.

Rubber bands come in many shapes and sizes and have a plethora of uses.

Let’s list just a few:
-People put them in their mouth on their braces.
-It’s popular now in the younger generation to collect many diverse shapes and wear them on your wrists.
-Rubber bands can be shot quite a distance with your fingers or a gun of sorts.
-Very large bands are used to exercise with.
-Vegetables are held together in bunches by rubber bands.
-Rubber band surgery is done in our stomachs and other parts of our body.
-And people even use them to hold up their pants!

One thing I think we can all agree on is rubber bands were made to stretch.
Consider the rubber band and how we can relate it to our lives.

Pick up a rubber band and hold it between your thumb and finger.  It’s not very useful in that state.  In fact it just hangs there.  Limp. It’s kind of wimpy, isn’t it?  That is how we don’t want to be.  We don’t want to just hang there and not be useful or productive.

If you grasp the rubber band with both hands and stretch it, that is what it was meant to do and it becomes useful.  We want to be like the rubber band and be stretched.

In our lives there will be very little growth if we are not stretched. If there is no pressure applied to lull us out of our comfort zone, there will not be much change happening within us.

We need to be challenged to change, to come out or our sleepy state, to be stretched within so we can become what we really want to and were meant to be.

Legendary football coach Tom Landry says it well: “My job is to get men to do what they don’t want to do, so they can achieve something they’ve always wanted.” (paraphrased)

So, how can we stretch ourselves?  What are some things we can do that will encourage us to grow.  Consider these simple helpful ideas:

1. Get involved with a Master Mind group who will be honest with you and spur you on to achieve more.
2. Develop a self talk that states who you want to be and what you want to do.
3. Begin serving in some capacity and adding value to other people’s lives.
4. Listen to or read daily valuable content that will motivate you to change, such as success stories, personal development, the Bible, trainings.
5. Believe!  Let your faith and prayer strengthen you and give you hope.

Often, change is gradual.  Don’t be discouraged.  Don’t give up.  Focus and stay on course.  

A phrase from a song says it well:
“Growing is so slow showing
But the fruit will bear when God’s time is right.
Growing comes from sowing the seed in fertile soil,
Then it becomes right.”

After you have sown the right seeds and your creative imagination urges you to stretch yourself, just do it!  Look fear in the face and go for it!

Be stretched!
Lynn Jones

http://lynnjonesonline.com