Will You Soar or Stay Stuck?
There is a moment on every plane flight when the wheels leave the runway and the ground disappears beneath you. For most seasoned travelers, it barely registers. Eyes close, heads lean back, and the miracle of human flight becomes nothing more than a commute. But for a child experiencing it for the first time, that moment is electric. The buttons, the lights, the window, the roar of the engines gaining speed — all of it builds to a crescendo of pure, uncontainable wonder the instant the nose lifts into the sky…iiiiiiii yi yi!

The difference between those two passengers is not the flight. The flight is identical. The difference is the posture of the heart. One is underwhelmed. One is overwhelmed. One is yawning. One is soaring.

That contrast is not just a travel observation. It is a profound spiritual reality. How you approach your journey will determine your destination.

The Story at the Edge of the Promised Land
In Numbers 13 and 14, the people of God found themselves at one of the most pivotal moments in their history. After 400 years of bondage in Egypt, after miraculous deliverance through the plagues and the Passover, after walking through the parted waters of the Red Sea on dry ground, they stood at the edge of the land God had promised them. Moses sent twelve spies into the land to scout it out, and when they returned, every single one of them agreed on one thing: the land was extraordinary. Rich, fruitful, and flowing with abundance.

But ten of those twelve men could not get past what else they saw. There were giants. Fortified cities. Powerful people. The ten spies gave what the text calls a "bad report," convincing the people that the obstacles were simply too great. Their conclusion, recorded in Numbers 13:32, was devastating in its self-assessment: they had become like grasshoppers in their own sight.

And so, instead of stepping forward in faith, the people of God wandered in the wilderness for forty years. An entire generation never entered what God had prepared for them.
This is one of the most sobering passages in all of Scripture, and it raises a question that cuts straight to the heart of every believer: Will we soar, or will we stay stuck?

Three Reasons We Get Stuck
Understanding why we get stuck is the first step toward soaring.

We forget God's faithfulness from our yesterdays. The Israelites had witnessed miracle after miracle. God's track record was impeccable. Yet in the face of a new challenge, they acted as though He had never come through for them before. Numbers 14:11 captures God's heartbreak over this very thing, asking how His people could so quickly forget His goodness. The same tendency lives in us. When a new giant appears, we can forget every Red Sea moment God has already brought us through. Memory is a spiritual discipline. When we forget, we falter.

We stay pleased in the present. Comfort is one of the most effective anchors keeping people from their purpose. The ten spies loved the grapes from the promised land, but they did not want to fight the giants to get there. It is easy to admire what God is doing from a safe distance without ever committing to be part of it. Every great act recorded in Scripture required movement. You cannot remain exactly where you are and simultaneously go with God. The two are mutually exclusive. God’s people didn’t sacrifice their comfort; they stayed right where they were.

We fear the future. Numbers 14 records the people weeping and crying out in despair because they could not see how their story would unfold. Fear is not a minor inconvenience. It is a paralyzing force that, left unchecked, will ground you indefinitely. Understand this, courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is taking steps into the unknown based on what you know to be true. It is pushing off the wall and swimming toward the other side, even when your heart is pounding.

Four Reasons We Can Soar
Against the backdrop of ten fearful voices, two men stood apart. Joshua and Caleb looked at the same land, the same giants, and the same obstacles, and they said: let’s go. Their example points shows us how to soar.

Follow the Father's voice. There were three voices competing for the attention of God's people: the forgetful voice, the fearful voice, and the Father's voice. God had been speaking His promises over this people for generations, all the way back to Abraham. His word had not changed. It never does. When every other voice is loud and convincing, the practice of tuning your ear to the one voice that matters above all others is what separates those who wander from those who soar.

Dare to be different. Caleb stood up in Numbers 13:30 and declared that the people should go and possess the land. He and Joshua were willing to be the minority. They were willing to look out of step with the crowd. Living with genuine spiritual vision means you may not fit in. It means your priorities will look strange to people around you. But as Helen Keller once observed, there is something far worse than being born blind, and that is having sight without vision. Dare to be different!

Believe big. Joshua and Caleb did not deny the giants. They simply refused to let the giants be bigger than God. They looked through what might be called the lens of glory, and from that vantage point, the obstacles shrank. God has not shrunk. He has never shrunk. The question is whether we allow Him to grow small in the lens of our own limited faith, or whether we see Him as He actually is — vast, faithful, and entirely capable.

Obey fully. The people of God had everything they needed. The promises had been spoken. The path had been made clear. Their greatest need was not new information. It was full obedience. The same is true today. The great commandment has not changed. The great commission has not changed. God has given His people everything required to move forward. The only remaining question is whether we will follow Him completely, releasing our grip on the familiar and launching out into the deep.

The Wind Is Blowing
A kite does not rise by standing still. You find the wind, you face it, you run headlong into it, and holding on for dear life. Acts 2:2 describes the arrival of the Holy Spirit as a violent, rushing wind. The early church caught that wind and ran, and what was born in those moments changed the world forever.

That same wind is blowing. The question is whether you will open your hands, release what you have been clinging to, and let it carry you into the wild frontier God has prepared.

The runway is right in front of you. It is time to soar. iiiiiiii yi yi!

The Call of the Wild: Seven Realities of God's Untamed Work
There is something stirring in the human heart that resonates with the idea of exploration. Leif Erikson, Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan, Vasco da Gama — these names conjure images of men who refused to stay within the borders of the known world. Something deep within them demanded that they move forward into the uncharted, the uncertain, the wild. And because they did, the entire course of human history shifted.  What if God is extending that same invitation to you right now?

Throughout Scripture, God has consistently called ordinary people out of their comfort zones and into something far greater than they could have arranged for themselves. The story of Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3 is one of the most vivid pictures of this pattern. It is a story that is not just ancient history. It is a mirror held up to every one of us who has ever wondered whether God still calls people into something wild and transformative.

Here are seven realities of God's wild work that emerge from that story — and from the broader story of a God who refuses to be tame.

God Works While We Work
Moses was not doing anything extraordinary when God showed up. He was shepherding his father-in-law's flock — the same work he had done for forty years. Mundane. Routine. Ordinary. And yet, right in the middle of his Wednesday, God lit a bush on fire and spoke from it.

This is the first reality: God is always at work, even when we are simply doing our week. He does not take days off. He does not sit back and wait for us to get our act together. The question is not whether God is working around us. The question is whether we are paying attention. Moses had to turn aside from what he was doing to see the burning bush. How many burning bushes have we walked right past because our to-do list had our full attention?

God's Work Will Woo You
The first words God spoke to Moses were his name. Not a command. Not a task list. His name. That is deeply personal. God knows you. He knit you together, as Psalm 139, verses 13 and 14 remind us, and He pursues you with the same personal intimacy He extended to Moses.

But there is a condition to drawing close. God told Moses to remove his sandals because the ground was holy. When God calls you near, He will ask you to remove something — a habit, a distraction, a competing loyalty. He will not compete with your calendar or your comfort. Coming close to a holy God requires that we lay some things down.

God's Work Is With Him
Here is something worth pausing over: the Creator of the universe invites you to work alongside Him. In 1 Corinthians 3, verse 9, the apostle Paul describes believers as co-laborers with God. Moses did not dream up the plan to deliver Israel. God had the plan. God had the power. God simply invited Moses to come along.

This is how God has always operated. He asked Noah to build. He asked Abraham to leave. He asked Joshua to march. He asked Nehemiah to build a wall. In every case, the invitation was the same: come with Me. And Moses was eighty years old when he received his invitation. If you think your best days of usefulness to God are behind you, the story of Moses has a word for you.

God's Work Is Well Spoken
When God speaks, there is no ambiguity about it. He told Moses exactly who He was, exactly what He had seen, exactly what He planned to do, and exactly what Moses' role would be. God's plan was clear, transparent, and grounded in His own character and promises.

That same clarity is available to us through Scripture. God's Word is the place where He speaks His plans. If you are wondering whether God is calling you to something, the starting point is always His Word. His call will never contradict it.

God's Work Will Make You Whimper and Whine
Here is where the story gets painfully relatable. After God laid out His entire plan with clarity and purpose, Moses' first response was, essentially, "But who am I?" He questioned his own worthiness, worried about whether people would believe him, and even complained that he was a poor public speaker. He made every excuse he could think of.
And we do the same thing. God speaks, and we immediately begin negotiating. We cite our inadequacies, our past failures, our limited resources. But here is the truth that cuts through every excuse: God's wild work is never about our inability. It is about His ability working through our availability. The moment we make ourselves available, God's ability takes over.

God's Work Will Require a New Walk
Moses could not stay in Midian and go to Egypt at the same time. Responding to God's call required a genuine, practical adjustment to his life. It changed his address, his daily routine, his relationships, and his future. God's call always costs something.
In our discomfort, we discover God's destiny. The frontier is not found in the familiar. It is found when we trust and adjust — when we stop arranging our lives for maximum comfort and start arranging them for maximum obedience.

God's Work Will Lead to Worship
The end of Moses' story is not exhaustion or defeat. It is worship. God promised Moses in Exodus 3, verses 21 and 22, that His people would leave Egypt with abundance, and in Exodus 12, verses 35 and 36, that is exactly what happened. The Passover became a permanent celebration, passed from generation to generation, a monument to what God had done.

When you step into the wild work of God, the destination is always worship. The journey may be difficult, but the glory at the end of it belongs entirely to God.

The wild frontier is not a reckless place. It is the safest place in the world, because it is the place where God is working. The only question left is the one Hank Aaron answered at home plate when Yogi Berra tried to distract him saying, “Hank you are holding the bat wrong! You should be able to read the trademark when you hit.” Aaron hit the ball into the bleachers, stepped on home plate, and said simply, "I didn't come here to read."
The question left for us is,  What did we come here to do?