Burn your bridges to the past

“He burned the plowing equipment.”         1Ki 19:21 NIV

Elisha’s ministry begins with this Scripture: “He took his yoke of oxen and slaughtered them. He burned the plowing equipment to cook the meat and gave it to the people …Then he set out to follow Elijah.” He couldn’t go back to his old way of life because he had destroyed the time machine that would take him back. It was the end of Elisha the farmer, and the beginning of Elisha the prophet. It doesn’t matter whether you’re trying to lose weight, get into graduate school, write a book, start a business or a ministry, or get out of debt. The first step is always the longest step and the hardest. You can’t just take a step forward into the future; you also have to eliminate the possibility of moving backward into the past. That’s how you go after goals. That’s how you break addictions. That’s how you reconcile relationships. To begin a new chapter, you must end an old chapter. Elisha didn’t need to burn his plowing equipment to follow Elijah, but it made a statement. More specifically, it was a statement of faith. There was no turning back. Nine times out of ten, failure is resorting to Plan B when Plan A gets too risky, too costly, or too difficult. That’s why most people are living their Plan B. They haven’t burned their bridges to the past. Plan A people don’t have a Plan B. It’s Plan A or bust. They would rather crash and burn going after their God-ordained dreams, than succeed at something else. The word for you today is: Burn your bridges to the past and move forward.

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