The Familiar PLACE, the Familiar space

How beautiful it is to know the one who Is God in the past, present, and future. However, did you know that our current situation can sometimes prevent us from knowing God in these ways? Many times staying in a place of comfort prevents us from knowing what we need to do because of the fear of moving forward, really moving out from what we’re familiar with.

Isaiah 52:11-12 NLT 

11 Get out! Get out and leave your captivity,

    where everything you touch is unclean.

Get out of there and purify yourselves,

    you who carry home the sacred objects of the Lord.

12 You will not leave in a hurry,

    running for your lives.

For the Lord will go ahead of you;

    Yes, the God of Israel will protect you from behind.

Bondage seems comforting when the place of freedom scares us. 

Bondage seems like freedom when we have learned the patterns of trauma, delay, and mediocreness. Hence, we have developed mental and physical systems to work around these things, to be compatible in the same environment with bondage. This has resulted in us having built-in walls to become “comfortable” with bondage. Assuming that these walls protect us from everyone else; keeping them out but truthfully keeping us trapped. 

Bondage.

Bondage seems comforting when it’s familiar. Freedom seems like bondage when it is no longer a familiar place. An unknown space. 

There are no patterns with God, only faith. We do not know what the next move of God will be. We can only have faith that His next move will be a good one because He is perfectly good; way beyond our definition of it.

The familiar places that we experience may not always be a negative or traumatic place. However, it can be a place that we may have outgrown and now need to move forward from. It is a place we could have possibly identified with, become attached to, become too comfortable with, and now is familiar. Or it could be a season that needs to come to an end and now requires us to enter a new season. Sometimes, it can be frightening because it requires us to leave something God led us to have faith in the first place, something that once was unknown but has now become familiar. He is calling us to the next thing, the greater thing which requires faith for the new unknown. His word tells us in 2 Corinthians 3:18 NKJV, “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as [a]by the Spirit of the Lord.” So we may end up loving a season that we were hesitant to enter at first but now are called out of that season to go to the next, basically experiencing something similar but with something new.  This is us going from glory to glory.

In the unknown place, there's a new revelation you are scheduled to receive. A revelation that is not new about God, but one that is new to you, about who God is and who He has always been. A person may have not yet had a personal encounter with a specific identity of God and needs to know. Someone may have a good understanding and revelation about God the Father but how about God the King? Someone may have a good understanding of God The Lord of Heaven's armies (Jehovah Sabaoth), but how about the God who is The Lord who provides (Jehovah Jireh)? As we continue to walk with the Lord Jesus Christ, our faith and understanding of Him will increase. The goal is to never stop walking with the Lord and think we know all of Him already, that is impossible and will limit one’s perspective of the Lord which will then limit one’s perspective on life and oneself. This can lead to frustration with God and stagnation in life.

If we stay there longer than we are supposed to, then one or more of many things will happen. Pride might creep in and instead of living for the glory of God, we begin taking confidence in ourselves and puffing up ourselves, giving ourselves credit for what “we” accomplished by our God-given gifts instead of doing God’s will. So when one gives quote-on-quote “glory” to God, it's to make themselves seem humble when there is no humility before God in other times, in private, when people are not watching. People may not know the hearts of man but God does, and having a heart after Him is what matters the most. (1 Samuel 16:7 NKJV “But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or his physical stature, because I have [c]refused him. For[d] the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”; Mark 7: 6-8 NLT “6 Jesus replied, “You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, for he wrote,

‘These people honor me with their lips,

    but their hearts are far from me.”

7 Their worship is a farce,

    for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.’[a]

8 For you ignore God’s law and substitute your tradition.”

Other things that may result from this can be insecurity, not knowing who you are anymore in Christ, and feeling inadequate in what you are doing when God has called you to do something different. Of course, you will feel like you lack when God is not supplying or supporting what you do outside His will.

The grace God has given you for that season will be removed because it went to the next season, He needs you there. You will see that there will be a struggle to move things and get godly direction and strategy because God has removed His grace from that season of your life. It is by His grace that we are successful in doing the things He told us to do.

Declaration: We are going to be faithful to the Lord our God and in that, we shall see His provision.

So I trust that we will not be a compromised people. Repent if needed. Ask God for His mercy, He is willing just don't abuse it. 

Let’s take a look into the lives of a few people in the Bible who were called out of the familiar place:

Job chapters 1, 2, and Job 19:25, Job 42.

Job. After Job's season of trial and tribulations and what seems like God forgetting Him and not paying attention to Him, Job had an encounter with God that gave him a greater understanding of who God is, a restorer and a good God, not an evil God, not one who punishes the good. Job knew that God was the Almighty God, but his leaving a place of abundance and peace that he was so familiar with and entering a place where he felt abandoned, allowed him to encounter God and receive the revelation that God is the Redeemer that lives. (Job 19:25)

Genesis chapters 12- 25

Abraham. Surprisingly Abraham was raised in a household that worshiped Idols, not the One true God. (Joshua 24:2) So his encounters not only increased His faith in God but also increased his faith in the God who keeps His promises and promised him good things. Every time Abraham encountered God, he got a new revelation of who God was. He built an altar dedicated to the Lord each time marking the revelation of the character of God. Being obedient and having faith that what God promised him would come to pass; all through uncertainty, in a land new to him, an unknown place. Unlike Job, Abraham did not have to go through a whole season where His life seemed upside down to further follow God. His faith and obedience are what God used to bring him further with Himself. 

Exodus 1- 4 ( chile really the whole book of Exodus)

Moses. A natural-born Hebrew, raised as an Egyptian, raised as part of a pharaoh’s family, was called at the old age of 80 to speak as God’s prophet to the nations and deliver the Israelites from the hands of the Egyptians, mind you he had a stuttering problem as well. Although we know Moses to be a great deliverer, in the story you see that it’s not so much Moses who is great, but the great God who raised him to do His work. Although Moses was not the most courageous, through this story we see that he is getting revelations of who God is and the more he understood who good is, the more bold he became. Revelations are supposed to help him move forward with faith in God, trusting in His being, and character. In this story, we get the revelation that God is Yahweh, The great I AM, the God who delivered His people from slavery into a land flowing with milk and honey, warrior, The God of mercy, and more. Moses' encounter with God led him to lead the Israelites with their encounter with God; the same God that he encountered and they continued to experience as the God of their salvation.

The Book of Esther

Queen Esther. Similar to all the other people talked about so far in this post, it shows us that God raises people for a specific time, generation, and purpose. Esther’s story shows us that moving away from a familiar place may not always be a physical location but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. This story, like Moses, shows us that God remembers his people even centuries after, really showing that He never forgets even though it may appear like it. That he is the God of Justice and freedom. Showing that God is bigger than any protocol that is against Him and that He has the power to tear it down. That God is worthy even if we are faced with death and persecution, His glory does not stop there. It also shows that there’s a certain way of living that is set apart and holy, that it lets people know that you serve Jesus, even without mentioning His name.

 So a little background on Esther, She was made Queen in replacement of the former Queen Vashti who disobeyed the King. Esther was a Jew but never told anyone because her cousin, Mordecai, who also adopted her instructed her not to. One of the king's officials, Haman an Agagite, did not like Mordeci who worked at the King's palace so much to the point of death because Mordeci would not bow down to him. But that was not enough for him, he found out Mordeci was a Jew and wanted not just Mordeci dead but all Jews. So he persuaded the King to write a decree that all Jews would be killed throughout 127 provinces in Asia. The Jews fasted and God raised Esther as a deliverer to rescue her people by speaking up and representing her people.

All these stories highlight God in both different and similar aspects but they all come back to this: God is the only one and true God, and there is no other and what we are all called to do is to bring His will on earth as it is in heaven for His glory. God is good and so is His perfect will for us, with God we don't have to associate new with harm because with God the new always equals better. Romans 8:28, “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”

Another thing we can take away is that all these stories ended well, meaning that God is not doing this to harm us at all but to bring us into the greater good he wants us to experience. He does this because He loves us and wants us to experience more of Him.

May you understand the familiar place is not your permanent place, that God marked you with His glory so you must grow and go into the new to show it. His presence is the only place that must be consistent in our lives.

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