40 Days To Lasting Change By Kyle IdlemanExemplo

“Time to Get Up”

After high school graduation, I joined my senior class for a trip to Dallas, Texas. There, for the first time ever, I saw someone bungee jump.

We watched as a guy got ready to make the leap with nothing but a cord strapped to his ankles. He dove headfirst, and it was clear my fellow students were impressed.

In this moment I experienced a phenomenon known as word vomit. It’s when a thought spews from your mouth before you can stop it. “I’d do that, but I’m not going to spend forty bucks on it.”

That’s when one of the girls in my class pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and said, “Would this help?”

At that point, my back was against the wall. A girl had called my bluff—in front of everyone. So without stopping to consider the fact that I don’t like heights, I took the twenty dollars and got on the platform.

Overcome with paralyzing fear, I turned to the crane operator and said, “Do you have any other ideas for me?”

“Well sometimes it works if you just close your eyes and fall,” he said. Then he added, “Anybody can do that.”

So I stepped to the edge, closed my eyes, and I’m proud to say… well, I didn’t exactly bungee jump; I bungee fell.

It’s one thing to say what you are going to do, but it’s another thing to do it. Action is where a lot of us get stuck. We know what needs to be done, but we just can’t move.

In Luke 15:20 we read a simple phrase that changed the story of the Prodigal Son. Jesus simply said, “So he got up.”

The Prodigal Son took immediate action. He recognized that it was time to get up. It was time to do something.

And unless our story also reads, “So he got up,” or “So she got up,” then nothing really changes. This is where AHA stalls out for so many of us. We have an awakening moment, we even find the strength to be brutally honest, but we never get around to actually doing anything different. We spend much of our lives stuck.

My question for you is: When are you going to get up?

*Where are you stuck? Identify what’s holding you back. Get up and overcome an obstacle today.

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