Hebrews 11:8 By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out into a place which he was afterward going to receive for an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he went.
We often celebrate beginnings—new chapters, breakthroughs, divine appointments. But in God’s economy, every true beginning requires a holy crossing. Before the Hebrews could enter the Promised Land, they had to leave Egypt. Before they entered the Promised Land, they had to cross over the Red Sea. And before Abraham could receive God’s promises, he had to obey a single command: “Leave.”
Abraham stood at that threshold. When he obeyed God’s call to walk away from his homeland, his security, and all that was familiar, he became the first Hebrew—the first Ivri, literally one who crosses over. He stepped across the invisible boundary between the known and the unknown, the natural and the supernatural, the seen and that which was promised.
The identity of God’s people is rooted in crossing: from unbelief to faith, from bondage to freedom, from death to life. God didn’t just call Abraham to a destination—He called him to a transformation. And transformation begins when we say goodbye to what’s behind.
Leaving is not just an act of trust—it is a declaration of faith in the unseen. It’s Abraham turning his back on everything familiar—his land, his family, his future plans—to follow a voice, a promise, a God he could not see. It’s the Hebrews standing at the edge of the Red Sea, with Pharaoh’s army closing in behind them and nothing but water before them—yet stepping forward, believing that the God who delivered them once would make a way again.
Leaving is the willingness to let go before you see what’s coming next. It’s choosing to release your grip on the known in exchange for the eternal. It’s not a loss—it’s a surrender that leads to something greater.
Think about the disciples. Their journey with Yeshua (Jesus) didn’t begin with great sermons or miracles. It began when they dropped their nets. They left their boats, their routines, their comfort zones—and followed Him. Without leaving, there would have been no following. Without the exit, no entrance. It’s not just a principle of geography. It’s a paradox of the Kingdom.
How often do we pray for a breakthrough while clinging to what God is asking us to release? We want resurrection, but resist the cross. We want the Promised Land, but won’t leave our Egypt. Yet, the exodus is not punishment—it’s preparation.
God doesn’t just take things away—He delivers us from what no longer fits our future, so He can place in our hands what was always meant to be ours. He strips away what cannot stay, to make room for what cannot be shaken. What He asks you to release is never greater than what He’s preparing to give.
Perhaps for you, it’s a mindset that needs to be left behind, a fear that has kept you stuck, or a comfort zone that has become a cage. “Crossing over” means trusting that what God is leading you toward is greater than what He’s asking you to leave behind. What lies ahead with Him always outweighs what’s left behind. It’s believing the Promised Land ahead is worth every Egypt that’s left behind. It’s choosing, like Abraham, to become one who crosses over.
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]With war drums beating even more intensely in Iran and Syria, we’ve received numerous phone calls and emails expressing their concerns — and understandably so! Nevertheless, even in this climate of anxiety, we are preparing to enter into Shabbat (the Hebrew word for Sabbath) this afternoon. And as we do, we are remembering again, the deep lesson of God’s entering into His rest following the six creation days.
This is one of my favorite promises in the Bible — that God turns mourning into dancing! He takes away the anguish of being clothed in sadness and replaces it with gladness. However, notice what God doesn’t do — simply stop your mourning and make it disappear. No, He transforms it…into joy!
As we discussed last week, the word for “sign” in ancient Hebrew is “oht”. It was used in Genesis to designate God’s covenant sign with Noah, (the rainbow). And we see now the same word again, in Exodus, identified with the deliverance of the Jewish people from the tenth plague, when the angel of death passed through all Egypt to strike the firstborn. Anyone under the “sign” of the blood was spared.
Yesterday we wrote about one of the greatest moves of God … the Moravian Revival. When the community was in complete disarray, Count Zinzendorf focused on how they could live together in love despite their differences. He called all the men together for an intense study of the Scriptures to focus on how Christian life in community was portrayed. These studies combined with intense prayer convinced many of the believers that they were called to live together in love and that their disunity and conflict were contrary to the clear calling of Scripture.
In the late 1800s, an awakening in South Africa led by Andrew Murray was a powerful move of God. Studying that revival yields essential insights concerning the events occurring now throughout the United States. As the spirit of God began to move in Cape Town, Murray compared the SA revival with past experiences of revivals in Europe. He decided that the intense “emotionalism” was a false experience of God and charged in to break up the meeting. Stepping out of the church, he encountered his father standing and weeping. His father rebuked Andrew, “How dare you stop something that I have prayed to happen for 30 years!”
Revivals, that is, genuine Divinely ordained seasons of the activity of God among men, have a universally unusual character. Normal activities and behaviors give way to the tangible influence of God’s Holy Spirit, whose inspiration brings a freedom of expression, emotion, conviction, worship, and other variations from normal experience.
During the Catholic inquisitions, as millions of Christians were being killed by the Jesuit Priests for apostasy, throughout Europe, Christians were fleeing. In Bohemia alone, there were an estimated 4,000,000 Christians before the Jesuit inquisition, and ten years later, only 800,000 people remained in Bohemia – all of whom were Catholic. These terrible events prepared the ground for one of the greatest moves of God that have ever been recorded, the Moravian Revival, which lasted for over 100 years. Gustav Warneck, the German Historian of Protestant Missions, testified, “This small church in twenty years called into being more missions than the whole Evangelical Church has done in two centuries.”