Old Shoes

I bought a pair of New Balance running shoes several months ago. The shoes are extremely comfortable and perfect for running. They met my needs until I started playing basketball. My New Balances are still comfortable, but they do not give me much ankle support. I’ve played basketball for a long time and I know that you need ankle support or you can seriously injure your ankle.

A couple of weekends ago, Nicki and I went to a departments store that had a big sale going on and on top of it we had received a coupon for an additional 15% off anything in the store. I decided it was the best time to get a pair of basketball shoes.

I’ve tried to wear these shoes twice. On both occasions they tore my feet up. I tried the shoes on and they fit perfectly, but that was until I tried to use them in play. My poor little toe is ripped to shreds from the friction of the shoes. I am going to try and exchange them for a wider shoe to see if that helps.

This experience has made me think about life and ministry…
With every new shoe there is a period where they must be broken in. They are stiff and fresh out of the box, they don’t bend and mold to your foot, some shoes can be extremely uncomfortable in the first few days. Often I see and hear people who simply refuse to throw their old shoes away in exchange for new ones. They are unwilling to face change and the pain that comes with it, so they settle, into something that is less effective, something that will allow them to skim by, something that is comfortable.

Just like with my basketball shoes. Not every new idea or new thing will work in your ministry, but how will you know if you are unwilling to try? I know my shoes don’t work because I’ve allowed them to bring me pain and discomfort. I went through that pain and discomfort willing to see if the shoes would fit and work, but they didn’t, so I move on. The need for basketball shoes is still present and my New Balance running shoes will not meet the need, so that means I must continue to try something new to meet the need, and I must give it time to work. I served on a staff at a church where we were given on average 3 weeks for new programs to work or we changed to something else, many times we changed back to our “old shoes.” 3 weeks was not a spoken time line, it just averaged out to be approximately 3 weeks with every change. This is disastrous! Nothing new was ever given time to work, because the senior pastor did not see his desired results immediately. Pain is inevitable with change and we cannot hide from it if we desire to see things become more effective and more efficient in our ministries. If we continually switch back to our “old shoes” at the first sign of pain, then we will never see progress.

This goes for life too. We experience a lot of “new shoe” scenarios in our lives. New marriages, new children, new jobs, new financial circumstances…When things change, it is inevitable to have pain. Our tendency is to take control of the situation as soon as we feel pain, its almost as if we think God has caused the pain, therefore we cannot trust him. Its easy in a new marriage to want to run back to the single life as soon as there’s a little discomfort, but what about the rewards when you stick it out? You name your situation, whenever there is a new element that imposes itself, there will be pain and discomfort somewhere.

I tend to revert back to my “old shoes” when I make a big commitment to God and then my world falls apart all around me. Its not that I blame God, its that I doubt what I did was right, so I try to fix it by going backwards.

How about you? What causes you to go back to your “Old Shoes?”