Your ship has come in!

You can hardly believe it, but there it is. The prepaid tickets are in your hand, your name printed boldly across the top. You've been given a condo on the beach in Maui, free airfare, and a lifetime salary for just showing up! The condo comes with a maid and all bills paid. You'll have time to pursue your dreams and goals--whatever you want to do. It's all yours.

You call a few friends and gloat over your news. For the next few weeks you're the talk of the town as you dream and plan and imagine a life beyond anything you've experienced.

A year later, you're still sitting on your couch, tickets clutched in one hand, remote control in the other. The print has faded a bit from all the folding and passing around you did last year, but your name is still clear.

The phone rings.

"Hey..." It's your best friend. His voice is irritated. "Tell me one more time why you're answering your phone from your ratty old couch?"

You sigh and stare at the tickets. "I told you. I have a condo in Hawaii. A maid and everything."

"Yeah, right. So why aren't you there?"

You swallow and switch your gaze to the dusty window that looks out on an alley. "I'd have to leave here."
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Just as it is impossible to live two places at once, it is also impossible to enter into the new life God offers without leaving the old one. Too many people are still clutching their tickets in their hands, boasting about going to heaven some day, but they've never left their old lives.

Jesus said if we would come after him, we must pick up our cross and follow him. We don't know the way to eternal life, but he does. He's been there before. If we don't follow him, we will never find it.

You have been offered an all-expense paid new life.


.Are you forfeiting it because you refuse to leave your dusty window?