I love chess because it is all about strategy; planning your next move while you anticipate your opponent’s next move. Sometimes, I wish life will just be as straightforward as playing chess. You can predict the set of moves your opponent is likely to make and plan your own move based on that (this depends on your level of expertise). One thing about chess is that you know when it is time to make your move. Once your opponent has made his move, you know it’s time to make yours.
Life does not come with that obvious simplicity. Identifying when to make that move can be difficult. There are people who clearly hate their jobs but still remain there and they have various reasons for doing so. For some, they love the security that the job brings while others don’t want to mess with the status quo. What if they don’t find something better or their next job turns out to be worse than the current one? These are indeed legitimate excuses but that’s the issue; they are excuses. Excuses haven’t really done anyone much good.
There’s also that ugly monster that cripples a lot of people, fear. I can’t begin to imagine the number of people fear has hindered from making the next move. Some people are unable to get out of an abusive relationship because of fear. Others are unable to enter into one because of it also. There are so many ways fear stops us from making progress. Some of us try to mask our fear with the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” attitude. That’s the mentality that causes us to manage when we really ought to move on.
Take a minute and examine yourself. What’s holding you back from making the next move? Right now, I know I need to make a move but I don’t want to make the wrong move. I’ve been feeling this uneasiness in my spirit and while I was praying a few days ago, I realised that I need to make a change very soon. I am getting too comfortable with the way things are. Though I know that I need to move, I am really afraid of making the wrong move. So I told myself that I will wait for God to point me in the direction He wants me to go. If He doesn’t speak, I won’t move. This is great. We should be led by God but do you know there are times God will not speak until you make a move? Your blessing or abundance might just be dependent on you taking that next step. How sad to miss out on it because you failed to move.
It’s quite easy to push the responsibility of making the next move on God. God leads but He will not force you to move. It’s not every time God says like He did to Abraham, “Arise, leave your family and go to a place that I will show you.” As much as I wish it could be like that every time, more often than not, God will lead you by His spirit. When you know within you that you need to make a move, you have to make it in faith. That’s how it all works.
If the next step for you is long overdue, now is the time to make that move. Move higher, move on to greater things. Don’t let the comfortable limit you from the great. I like this quote that says, “the enemy of the great is not the worst but the good.” I’ll add to that quote that “the enemy of the great is not only the good but the comfortable.” Comfort brings laziness and lazy people never really do great things.
About the Writer: Adedoyin Jaiyesimi is a Writer, Media Content Creator and Brand Manager. The various publications she has written for include Y! Magazine (now Y! Africa), Discovery, Pride Magazine Nigeria, Butterscotch magazine amongst others. She currently holds the position of Brand Communications Manager at Victor Adeyemi Ministries and she is also the founder of LRouge Media, an editorial and brand consultancy company which provides content writing and editing services for business websites, magazines and blogs. When she is not creating content, you can find her in church doing the work of her Father. She tweets @msdoyeen and blogs at http://adedoyinjaiyesimi.wordpress.com/
