Over this last month, as I’ve been off social media, the Lord has been highlighting a profound yet simple instruction for 2025 and beyond. This is something He has spoken to me personally, but I know it applies to many others who have felt a deep reverence stepping into 2025. There has been a real fear of the Lord regarding what we are meant to do, what we are meant to be involved in, and how we are to advance His kingdom.
It feels as though, especially over the last six months, the Lord has been shifting our appetites and affections, down to our appetites and desires. He has been prompting us to redefine and even question what we have been doing in the past and what we are called to do moving forward. It feels like the Lord is making a very loud statement to us - begin to build unusual!
As pioneers, what we step into in 2025 must be a brand-new blueprint. It is as though we have come to the end of the last map. We had to write it, plot it, and walk into the unknown to discover it. But now, that map is complete. We have walked the path we were meant to walk. And now, stepping into 2025, the Lord is handing us a blank slate, a new parchment and a pen to begin charting a new course.
This means stepping into something that has never been done before. It means forging a path that has not yet been paved. But it is impossible to step into the new while still clinging to the old instructions, methods, and mindsets of our last pioneering journey. What needs to happen now is a grand departure.
That is why your affections have changed. That is why your appetites have shifted. That is why you have felt an unusual discontent watching what others are doing. It is not that those things are wrong; rather, the Lord places that discontent in us when He is calling us to detour from familiar paths and step into our own unique journey.
In 2014, Christy and I felt this pull deeply. At the time, we were involved in a church where I was serving as a worship pastor and we both began to sense that if we didn’t step into what God was calling us to, we would be forfeiting a decade of our lives. We knew that if we ignored the call, we would be stuck going around the same mountain, doing what everyone else was doing instead of what God had placed on our lives. The Lord was asking us, “Are you willing to feel uncomfortable for a season to step into the destiny upon your life?”
I can tell you, it was a deeply uncomfortable season of leaving behind the familiar. We had to burn the oxen and the plow and be okay with being misunderstood. Yet now, ten years later, we are reaping the fruit of that obedience. We chose the unfamiliar, the unpopular. We took hold of the blank parchment and began to etch out the revelation of the Lord, taking daily steps of obedience. That journey has now formed a map for many others to follow.
And I believe we are at that same moment again.
I know many pioneers reading this are asking, “What is my next step? Why do I feel lost? Why does nothing seem to be coming together? Why do I feel the pull to leave this, to walk away from that, to not do what others expect me to do?”
It is because the Lord has called you for seasons, not to be a lone ranger, not to be isolated, but to walk in the grace He has given you for the unusual. You are called to step into the unfamiliar, to embrace the unknown, to pioneer a new language and build an infrastructure that no one else is building.
Right now, God is redirecting many. It reminds me of the Macedonian call, when they were set to go in one direction, but God gave them a dream and redirected them elsewhere. In the same way, God is now releasing mass revelation to His pioneers. He is sounding a clarion call: “You cannot follow the same path as before”
There is a temptation to fall into complacency because it is comfortable. It is easy to think, “God, I’ve paid my dues. I can settle into ease now.” But the Lord is saying, “I have not called you to ease. Ground does not break beneath your feet through comfort. I have placed a sledgehammer in your hands to break the hardest of ground. And as you break that ground, what has been hidden and concealed will begin to erupt.”
Wells need to be uncapped and YOU are called to do this in cities and regions that are blocked.
We are in a season where the nations are ripe, but the ground must be tilled to prepare for the harvest.
So, pioneers, my word for you today is this: Lean into the unusual.
Do not do what everyone else is doing. Do not fall into the trap of continuing with the same religious or ministry endeavors simply because they are familiar. Step into the unusual.
There is a grace and anointing upon the unusual. There is a grace and anointing upon that which is organic and grassroots in this season. You do not need the masses. You do not need widespread approval from people. You simply need the yes of the Lord.
Step into what may not make sense to others, because in heaven, it makes perfect sense.
This is your call.
