“Change is inevitable, Growth is optional.”~JOHN C. MAXWELL

Change. The only time that most people search out change and willingly run with it is when unsavory circumstances have begun to dim the light and joy from their life and they are desperate to get it back. Otherwise, change is seen as the unwelcome guest who showed up at your perfectly numbered dinner party, uninvited.

Change requires sacrifice, which generally goes hand and hand with discomfort and for some of us, discombobulation.

But change is necessary. It is going to happen whether we like it or not, whether we are prepared or not.

Think about an infant in their mother’s womb. Change comes and is without a doubt a straining shock to everything within the infant and around them. But what awaits them at the end of their travailing journey is something far greater.

Consider the caterpillar who crawls through life, knowing in the core of their being that they are meant for greater heights. They must burn with the urge to fly at some point.

But they, like us, must go through the “changes” that enable them to take flight or in the case of a baby, to feel the tender kiss of their mother and father.

What is required for both of them (and all of us) to experience the full glory of what change has to offer?

Growth.

How do we grow? With willing hearts.

This puts me in the mind of John 15: 1-2:

“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit.”

There is something in these verses that a lot of people miss. Bearing fruit requires CHANGE and GROWTH, but whether the vine is willing to grow or not, it will still get WASHED (JOHN 15:1-5), scrubbed free from the old calloused dead parts or even CUT.

Pruning is cutting and thorough washing. Being taken away is cutting. Cutting is change. Fruit is growth.

Life is filled with options but change is not one of them. Growth is always a choice that we are free to make.

~Dream. Imagine. Believe. Do. CONQUER!

 

-Candice Coates is an author, blogger, and contributor to Ambo TV.  This article originally appeared on her website www.icameforthesoup.com.