Take those shoes off

It’s March already? Yyyyaaayyyy!!! Why the celebration? It’s my birth month, that why. March comes as a reminder to me of God’s faithfulness and love for me. It’s a month of reflection, a month of reconciliation, of re-determination, of re-dedication. Simply put, March is a month of deliberate ‘Going back to Zero’ for me. It’s a time to more intentionally than ever before, revisit my original design and see how much further I have progressed in alignment with God’s mandate and purpose for my life.

True, many years ago I couldn’t have said this… but I have grown and I am growing. And as I mature as a person and as a son of God, intentionality of purpose is my passionate pursuit. That simply means I can’t sit back and let life happen. No sis, I have to happen to life the way God would have it be. No better time than the period counting down to the completion of one more earthly year to do this, as I see it.

I hope I didn’t lose you at the ‘Going back to Zero’ phrase. Those who have followed me over the years will be familiar with this, but if you are a new enough reader, let me explain. The Zero principle was taught me by my Coach, sister and friend Anna McCoy – entrepreneur extraordinaire, author of the amazing book Woman Act Now, minister of the gospel, life coach and all-round wonderful sista-pillar! Clearly I love this woman, lol. You would too sis, I assure you. If she’s got your back, she’s GOT your back. An amazing template for womanhood, Anna McCoy is for sure!

Coach taught us that anything that has a zero added to it increases. When you add a zero to 1, you get 10 and when you add another zero to that, you get 100…etc, ad infinitum. The Scripture in John 3 v 30 - 31 says ‘He must increase, but I must decrease. He (the Holy Spirit) that comes from above is above all’. The Holy Spirit is infinite and boundless in His wisdom, power, and might...you know this right sis? Going back to Zero is therefore you and I saying ‘Lord, I choose to decrease, that Your Holy Spirit might increase in me’. Going back to Zero is recognizing that our power comes from the God in us, and that each time we allow more of Him to hold sway in us, we are more powerful, more knowledgeable, more ‘more’ of any and everything than we can be and do in Christ!

So yes, March is that month for me when I re-calibrate and allow myself zero-out again fully. Nothing like a birthday to remind you how blessed you are to be alive, how graced you are to still have the opportunity to be used of God and for His glory. But…. this actually isn’t my subject today. As the Lord has led though, I trust that what I have said so far has been a word for someone, but let me get to what I originally planned to share shall I? Lol

I was listening to a sermon by Steven Furtick and he said ‘The shoe should never tell the foot how big it can become’. I thought this was pretty profound and I wrote it on a Post-it slip on my son’s reading desk where I’d been working on something while listening in. I didn’t give it much more thought until a couple of days later when my son came to me and said ‘Mum, what does that quote you penned down mean really? And we then had a conversation about it.

I started by reminding him how when he was much younger he had loved to put his feet into his father’s shoes, and oversized as they were, he devised a technology with which he could not only walk, but also run around in them – albeit providing us with quite an amusing spectacle in the process. His same father’s shoes stuffed with tissues up-front would be his saving grace at a school event years later where he needed to wear a suit, but didn’t have formal shoes to go with them. As long as there was room enough, the size 44 shoes worked well for him. I reminded him that he was exactly 11 years old when his own feet became size 44, the shoes fit just right and he entered direct competition with his father for who could get to which shoes faster.  By the time he was 13 though, he was a size 45 and today he is a size 46…. two clear sizes larger than the very shoes that once were ‘room enough’ and ‘just right’. And this dear sis is what I believe the Lord wants me to speak to you today – the twin challenges of ‘room enough’ and ‘just right’.

The challenge with ‘room enough’:

As I explained to my son, once we are in shoes that seem to have room enough, if we are not careful, those very shoes tell us just how far we can grow and we might not stop to think that there are sizes beyond that. I mean, when you are a size 20, then size 44 shoes seem to you like a great leap right? More than double where you are right? If you could grow into them, that would be remarkable right? The world would and should clap for you if you were able to double your business, the reach of your ministry, your wealth, etc right? And hey, let’s face it…. Given the odds you would definitely have to overcome to get to double, you should also applaud yourself right? And you should bless God for establishing you right? Yes sis, you well should. Certainly, you should and the world should! But…. there is so much ‘more’ out there, sis. There is!

The problem with ‘room enough’ is that it can limit your ability to see your truest potential in its grandest form according to God’s purpose and design. Room enough is comfortable; it has ample space; it allows you revel in movement no matter how small, to celebrate victories that are actually below your best. Room enough limits your vision. It frames acceptable borders for you …acceptable particularly because you haven’t yet begun to realize that those borders exist to confine and constrain you. The biggest problem with room enough is that you have an end-point in view at which you can define that you have ‘arrived’ at your maximum best, and that is one of the most dangerous places to be as far as God’s purpose is concerned. Does this make sense, sis? I pray so.

The challenge with ‘Just right’:

So, eventually, my son grew into a 44-size shoe. The same shoe size his father had been long before my son was born. 44 was the shoe size he had aspired to fill even as a young boy running around in his father’s oversized shoes...it was his subconscious self-limiting border.  As his own feet hit size 44, ‘just right’ happened! And don’t get me wrong sis…‘just right’ is great. It really is! But therein lays the problem in itself! Just right is an affirmation that all your efforts, all the growing and stretching have been worth it in the end. Just right is ‘arriving’... it’s a place of victory.  ‘Just right’ works sis. It does! Think about it. My son suddenly had access to several dozen pairs of shoes. And what a variety of shoes he then had access to – formal, casual, sports, slip-on’s, etc. He had access to red shoes, black shoes, grey shoes, blue shoes, shoes with a combination of colors. He could choose between pure leather shoes, patent leather, suede shoes, etc. I mean, he literally had it going on at the point of size 44… at his ‘just right’. So yeah, just right works! But, it’s only meant to work for a season sis...that is God’s way! So why do so many of us tend to settle at ‘just right’?

Sis, translate this to your life. Do a quick self-assessment and ask yourself where you have hit ‘just right’….and where you may have settled.  If my son had settled at just right, his shoes would have continued to pinch as his feet grew larger. But you know what? If he didn’t realize there was a ‘more’, he could simply have taken the pinch on his toes as the pain that goes with the territory of ‘I’ve arrived at the max shoe size…  which I can also restate as ‘I’ve attained the self-imposed limit of my growth and success’. He could have made excuses for the ‘cut’ of the shoes being the cause of the pain. He could have started to rationalize that pure leather shoes didn’t hurt as much as the others, and he could then have constrained himself to wearing painful pure leather size 44 shoes for the rest of his life. He could have found many ways to justify the discomfort of settling with size 44 shoes, whereas in truth the discomfort was God calling him to stretch to the size 46 God had ahead of him.

Sis, what are the pains in your life that you are making adjustments and accommodations for because you feel you have arrived at your ‘just right’? What excuses are you making for not stretching? What are the ‘perks’ of your arrival at ‘just right’ that are blinding you to seeing the ‘more’ that is up ahead, the more that you were designed for in the first place? Sis, from as simple a belief that you are not even qualified to have arrived at size 44 in the first place… from as simple a mindset of ‘let me just be grateful that I made it this far’, you can settle at way below your potential and God’s purpose for your life. Sis, what do you know that you know that you know, that God is calling you to come up higher in?

I have used the analogy of a simple phrase about shoes translated in near literal form, to also try to speak God’s heart to you, sis. Today, the Lord is asking you to take a good look at your life, at what you have done, at what you are doing… and He is asking you to compare it with what you have the potential to do, to be and to achieve. But here is the thing, sis… God is not asking you to make this comparison based on your own strengths. No! Rather, He is asking you to look at your potential from the point of view of the breath that He breathed into you, the gifts and abilities that He imputed into you at creation, the ‘more’ that He has for you if you would go back to Zero and allow His power in you truly avail for you.

I just saw a tweet that said ‘Your life is too small to be the purpose of your life’, to which I had responded ‘Absolutely’, for really that is just it, sis. Our lives are way beyond us! And if this is true (which I assure you it is), then we must reach for that ‘more’ that God has for us. We must reach for more because there are more lives that God has purposed to be blessed because we fulfill the fullness of our potential. Do you get this, sis? God is calling you today to revisit what size you think you are, sis. He is telling you and I expressly that we are at least two sizes larger than where we have settled. He is asking us to stretch, sis…. to take the limiting shoes off and allow our feet grow into ‘more’. He is assuring us that we can do it because of the greater One that is in us. He is asking us to put away that ultimately false ‘humility’ that keeps us from wanting to be more, and He is saying ‘more  is who I called you to be. Don’t settle!’.

Our God is limitless, sis. And we who are created in His very image and likeness, we in whom He lives, we shouldn’t be the ones placing limits on the purpose of creation, and of the Creator. God is asking you and I to take some time today to seek His face, in the quietness of worship to seek to hear His voice as He speaks to us what He needs us to deliver on. It in one of such quiet encounters, seeking His face, that God said to me that He has ‘graced me to deliver specifics in my latter years’. For me that clearly means that I need to be attentive and always listening out for what He would have me do next… for instructions concerning my ‘more’, especially as He also said to me that this year He would speak to me more ‘on the go’.

Sis, you need your own word from God so you can push through to the next phase of growth He has for you. He is here and He hears. He loves you and He is willing to help you. Please take off whatever comfy-sized shoes you have on today and allow God stretch you, sis. And can I tell you something? Stretching never ends! You never arrive as far as God is concerned. When you do, then that is the day of your calling to the other side of eternity. And you and I know our hearts cry is to hear ‘Well done’ right, sis? By the grace and power of God, we will die empty of all the Lord has purposed for us to deliver on this earth. The Holy Spirit will help you sis. He is certainly helping me!

Be blessed sis… for you surely are!