A couple weeks ago, the day after our time at the city dump in Santa Ana, my friend/squad leader/awesome sister in the Lord got this word from the Lord and shared it with us. I hope it speaks to you just as much as it did to me. God is slowly stripping me of myself one thing at a time. My pride, my selfishness, my desire to please man before God. It all has to go in order for me to fully step into the glory He has called me to. God is so good, and He is taking us from one glory to the next. He is constantly teaching me how to walk in the freedom I am given in His Spirit and through Jesus. So, I hope this speaks to you as much as it did to me..
"Take your sandals off you feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground."
Exodus 3:5
"Holy ground. The place where we step out of the ordinary into the extraordinary. Where we step out of being just another face in the crowd and into our divine identities as sons and daughters of the King of kings. No longer are we just people simply alive – we are people called. And in order to step into this new, holy thing, some things must be left behind.
Shoes – what we have been walking in and have become so comfortable in for far too long. They've carried us through our trials and triumphs. They may have been worn out from all the running we've done. Or they could be brand new as we've been trying on all different kinds in order to find the ones everyone else agrees are acceptable. Either way, they have to go. The call to greatness is not comfortable. It requires vulnerability and the rapid realization of your weakness and desperation. Like bare feet on scolding hot sand. But yet even in those moments your mind is too fixated on what's before you to care – the burning bush. The voice calling out to you by name. We must first step out before we can step in. We must be aware of what He's asking us to leave behind, and what we are taking with us – like a staff. The tools He's given us to do His Kingdom business, even the ones that seem so typical. But we must be willing to come to that place of trust – of obeying the burning bush when it tells you to take off your shoes and come forward. We must be willing to see with eyes of faith the deeper places the Lord is calling us into that we oftentimes cannot perceive with our human eyes or comprehend with our human minds. Because sometimes it can all seem too crazy to be true, to be real.
So, as people walking in the newness of our lives resurrected by Jesus' sacrifice, what things of old must we leave behind? What are we taking with us? Are we stepping onto the hot sand with bare feet or are we still waiting on the edge, shoes on, unsure of what this whole thing is about?
I think deep down, Moses knew he was destined for greatness. His life had been miraculously spared, allowing him to then grow up as royalty. But then he was called out of that. It was not where he was meant to stay. He was made for more. Yet he had to wait 40 years for that more to come. And when it did, I think he knew. There may have been a spark of anticipation and expectancy still burning inside him all those years as a shephard.
"He has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end."
Ecclesiastes 3:11
I think God plants something inside us. That hunger and thirst for the Kingdom that nothing on this earth can satisfy. And in that, an anticipation to be part of it. To be and do more than what the world has imposed upon us. Our spirits are tuning into the whispers of something greater to be had and to be lived.
So will we take off our shoes and step into the holy ground that is our holy, God-given calling we were born to live?"
-Carly Brown
Carlybrown.theworldrace.org
