When I get comfortable with a cell phone, I don’t like to change.

I must admit that I was glad to exchange the old bag phone for a handheld device, but once I got my StarTac, I tried to hold on to it until the rapture. Long after it was out of style, I still had one. People would see me pull it out and often say, “I used to have a StarTac. That was a good phone.” One church member said, “I thought you were the last person alive who still had a StarTac.” I promptly told her that the funeral director still had one. (Hmm, I wonder if that should have told me something?)

Finally, it was time to replace the family phones, and the cell phone dealer offered me the new LG camera phone for free. It was a scary thought, but I took a leap of faith and switched. I was amazed to have caller ID, an alarm clock, calculator, speed dial and take pictures. Wow!

That was a few years ago. Then I made the momentous decision to trade in the LG for a Blackberry. At the time, I was afraid to start using a phone that was so “big.” But the Blackberry left the LG in the dust. Soon I was sending emails, posting on Facebook and Twitter, listening to Pandora, reading the AP News and reading the Bible directly from my phone on hospital visits with this suped-up smartphone. I thought I had finally reached cell-phone heaven with my Blackberry.

But now they tell me my contract runs out this month and there are new phones to be had. I feel a trembling in my hand already…

This reminds me of the experience a person has in accepting Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. Life in Christ is so much better than life without Christ — there is hope and peace and purpose, not to mention eternal life in Heaven. As the apostle Paul put it, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old has gone, and the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Yes, becoming a Christian offers so much more to life, that a Christian would wonder why anybody would resist making the change.
Yet changing over and giving up your old life is still a scary thought, and still requires a leap of faith. Kind of like giving up the StarTac or an LG or even a Blackberry. It’s a little frightening until you do it, but then afterwards you wonder why you didn’t come to Christ years before.

(Copyright 2012 by Bob Rogers. Email: brogers@fbcrincon.com. Read this column each Friday in the Herald. Visit my blog at www.bobrogers.me.)