The Ground is Shifting
Sarah Jakes Roberts delivered an incredibly powerful message this past Wednesday at The Potters House at One L.A with her sermon The Ground is Shifting. I believe this message is about change, about letting go of fear and anything that would hold us back from reaching our God ordained destiny.
Exodus 3 4-12
4 So when the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, “Moses, Moses!”
And he said, “Here I am.”
5 Then He said, “Do not draw near this place. Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.” 6 Moreover He said, “I am the God of your father—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God.
7And the Lord said: “I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. 8 So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites. 9 Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come to Me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. 10 Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring My people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.”
11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?”
12 So He said, “I will certainly be with you. And this shall be a sign to you that I have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.”
The area that we have become familiar walking in is shifting, and everything is going to look the same but it’s not the same because the ground is shifting.
Priorities are changing
Dreams are changing
Our focus is on something else, the ground is shifting
“it’s not you, it’s me” the ground is shifting
We see opportunity where there once was lack, the ground is shifting
It’s going from what we once were familiar with to holy ground
Moses was thrown into the river, like every other Hebrew male but he had a hedge of protection around him (the basket)
Moses was born a Hebrew but he grew up in Pharaohs household but he knew he was Hebrew. He killed an Egyptian beating on a Hebrew.
There was something about him witnessing the Egyptian beating on the Hebrew that angered him on the inside.
The juxtaposition of him being Hebrew and Egyptian caused him to fled, but it’s also what caused God to bring him back to the place that he once fled.
We have moments in our life where we can not fully be Hebrew and we can not fully be Egyptian, and when we try to pick a side we don’t really know what side we are on until life thrusts us into something.
All of us are not entirely one thing, and we don’t know exactly which one we are until we are placed in a situation where the greatest version of us has to rise up and handle it. Depending on which version rises up, that determines what God has to deal with on the inside of us.
Sometimes it’s easier to run from a situation than it is to figure out why we are conflicted.
We can not always figure out who we are authentically in the environments that produced us.
God will accelerate what he places down on the inside of you
God produced the cry before he produced the solution.
It’s time for you to take your position.
It’s time for you stop pretending like you don’t already have what you have.
The ground is shifting in our direction, and it’s going to take us realizing that we are standing in a holy moment, but you won’t realize it’s a holy moment if you’re too busy staring at social media and headlines.
What keeps so many of us from realizing that we are standing on holy ground is that we haven’t yet taken our shoes off. God told Moses, that you have to take your shoes off. You can’t step into a holy moment the way you stepped into everything else.
There are experiences that would try to hold you back
The true test of authenticity is not what you can do when you are isolated. The true test of authenticity is will you still be authentic when you have to go and present yourself to where you use to be.
Who are you really?
You can not shift the ground when you pretend to be something you are not.
The ground had to shift, Moses had to go from walking in a familiar land to walking on holy ground.
No more running
No more coaching your fears on how to talk to you
God chose Moses because Moses didn’t mind bringing his fears along for the journey.