I loved all the old-time playground equipment. The monkey bars, jungle gym, barrel of fun, log swing, chain swings, horizontal bars, large wooden seesaws, and even the giant stride—which my eyebrow has the scar courtesy of this steel monster. But the one that a lot of my childhood friends loved, yet I had the hardest time with, was the hanging rings. Not being a daredevil by nature, the rings would swing and sometimes you had to let go of the one you were holding on to in order to grasp the one you needed to get to. Eventually this would get you to the end—and the reward! I would find myself watching my friends take these huge risks. In retrospect, it really was not much of a risk because the fall was only about two feet into the sand below. No damage could really be done.

At some point in time, God asks us to stop playing it safe and begins to separate us from the world: our favorite things, our familiar things, our I-can’t-live-without-things, and even things that we don’t even know we were hanging on to things. As difficult as it was to let go of the playground ring to reach to next one, these things that God asks of us is much more difficult. He wants us to let go of what we hang onto so we can proceed in what He has for us. As a kid on the playground, I didn’t really understand that this letting go must be done by faith. As maturing believers, we are expected to walk by faith. We are expected to live by faith. We are expected to overcome the world by faith. And we are expected to grow in faith. Faith pleases God. But unlike the hanging rings on the playground, the next ring may not come for 1 month, 6 months, 1 year or 2 years. But it will come—by faith. If we let go of what He is asking us to let go of—by faith.

However, we cannot progress to the next ring if we continue to hang on to the ring we refuse to let go of. Overcoming the hanging rings has been decades in the making for my life. It’s time to grab for the next ring and know that He is also my soft place to land in the sand. I want the reward the Spiritual Journey offers which can only be attained by letting go and reaching for the next ring.