“I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us” (Philippians 3:13b-14, NLT).

There is an old story about a hunter in the jungles of India. He desperately desired to trap a very rare monkey, but monkeys of this type had always proven to be elusive. So he tied a rope around the neck of a skinny glass bottle and put a handful of treats inside the bottle. He tied the other end of the rope to a tree.

Then the hunter waited. Pretty soon, the curious monkey apprehensively approached the bottle. He smelled the opening and the aroma of the treats inside. He shook the bottle and could see the treats rattling around inside.

Finally, the monkey stuck his hand inside the bottle and grabbed a handful of treats! Suddenly, the hunter crept out from hiding with a net in his hands. The monkey turned to run away, but because he was still grasping the treats, his balled up fist was too big to come back through the neck of the bottle! And the bottle was still tied to the tree!

Even when the hunter threw the net over the monkey, the monkey scrambled around inside the net, but still never let go of the treats inside the bottle. He was TRAPPED!

What do we hold onto longer than we should? We hang on to resentment, hurt feelings, depression, destructive relationships, bad business deals – we have a tendency to hold onto things because of a PERCEIVED VALUE that has long since expired. Yet, we’ll hold onto these things of the past and become trapped in a cycle of misery.

We’ve all listened to the person that said, “It’s mine, and I’m hanging on to it, even if it kills me!”

Really? Can we really become that proud, that greedy, that needy – no matter how self-destructive that might be?

In the Bible verse above, Paul reminds us to let go of the temporary things of this world because God has something better for us. And, it is through GOD’S POWER that we find the necessary strength to LET GO of the things that trap us in order to be FREE IN CHRIST.

David McCall

Executive Pastor