Could something that once helped you now be holding you back?”

Let me share a shocking story from the Bible that shows just how easy it is for the tools of the past to trap us in the present.

We’d all like to think it could never happen to us—that we’d never be enslaved by tradition or nostalgia. But read on… and if snakes make you shiver, read on carefully!

Travel back with me to Jerusalem, about 2,700 years ago. The 25-year-old King Hezekiah takes the throne and immediately launches a spiritual clean-up. Idols smashed, false altars destroyed—and then, in a bold move, he breaks apart a bronze snake called Nehushtan.

That bronze snake has history.

Jump back another 500 years to Moses, weary of leading the grumbling Israelites. In Numbers 21, God tells him to form and raise a bronze serpent so that anyone bitten by poisonous snakes can look up and live - and to send the snakes packing! A strange remedy—but a prophetic picture of Jesus lifted up on the cross centuries later (see John 3:14).

But here’s the twist: what once pointed to God eventually became an idol itself. By Hezekiah’s day, hundreds of years later, Nehushtan was being worshipped. Something good had turned into a stumbling block.

That’s why this story matters.

We all risk clinging to strategies, solutions, structures, or past successes instead of staying alert to what God is doing now. Nostalgia can seduce us, tradition can chain us, and—worst of all—hubris can blind us. When that happens, our faith shifts from the God who gave the tool to the tool itself—and creativity and innovation are stifled.

So, what about you?

Is there a “bronze snake” in your life or leadership that needs breaking? Something you’re holding onto that’s actually holding you back?

Cheering and praying for you as you press on,