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Rock City, we're family, so I can be honest with you. I hate moving. I hate breaking down the beds, taking down furniture and fixtures and pictures off the wall, packing up all my clothes, and putting it all back together wherever we're headed. If it were up to me, I would never move again. I would just stay in the same place. I don't understand people who move just because they woke up bored with a great idea and said, "You know what? I think I want to pack a U-Haul today."
I've never truly moved because I wanted to. I've only moved because I had to. There are really only two reasons why I've ever moved.
My wife Elise and I have three children — Ava, our oldest; Allison, our middle girl; and our baby boy, Hollis Jeremy Thomas Jr. Every time we had a child, we had to move. Why? Because we outgrew the home we were living in. There weren't enough bedrooms. There wasn't enough closet space. There wasn't enough square footage to accommodate the growth that had occurred in our family. In order to accommodate the level we had grown to, we had to move.```
One of the reasons God might be calling you to move on is because, truth be told, you've outgrown the situation, the circumstance, the season, the circle that you're in right now. Why have you continued to force yourself to remain in an environment that, truth be told, doesn't have the capacity to hold you anymore?
When God began to speak to us about moving to Nashville and starting a church, we knew that chasing that assignment also meant changing our address. There were some things we could not do there while we still lived here.
There are some things God is calling you to do in life, and you cannot do what God has called you to do over there until you move on from over here. The anointing and the favor and the calling on your life is too great for you to become comfortable — for you to allow yourself to be stuck, stagnant, complacent, and content with where you are. It's time to move on.
A part of wisdom is warning. It's easy to hear a message like this and externalize it — "It's time to move on" because someone else wasn't what you needed anyway, and you've already got your text ready to send. But maybe what God is really trying to tell you is that you need to internalize it. Is it possible there's an outdated version of yourself that you need to move on from?
I was texting someone recently, and because I text fast, I misspell a lot of words. The person texted back, "Hey, you can just edit it now." I didn't have that option on my phone — same phone as them, but mine doesn't do what theirs does. I called tech support, ready to be upset, and they told me: "You need to update your phone. There's some software you haven't updated. Your phone is operating on an old version."
That's exactly how it is with God. As soon as you update the version of yourself and start being who I called you to be, there's stuff I told you that you could do — I prophesied it over you, I put my hand on your life, it's been on you since you came out of the womb — but you haven't been able to walk in it because you're married to an outdated version of yourself.```
You have my full permission to break up with the you you used to be. "I'm not that anymore. You can't talk to me that way anymore. You can't treat me like that anymore. You can't be in my life when you want to be and then out of my life when you feel like it." The old version was okay with that, but the new version says, "I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. I'm blessed from the crown of my head down to the soles of my feet."
I want to give you permission to introduce yourself to a new version of you. I can tell I've outgrown this circle because the only time I do certain things is when I'm around certain people — being around them drags me back to who I used to be.
"Forgetting those things which are behind, I press toward the mark of a higher calling which is in Christ Jesus."
He's inviting you to the next level. Crazy as I am, having dotted every i and crossed every t, the next level has my name on it.
We move because of capacity, and we move because of calling. In our text today, we meet a man whom God is inviting to move on, and there are lessons from his life that we can apply to ours.
In some seasons of your life, moving on is optional. But in other seasons of your life, moving on is optimal. In order for you to optimize who and what God has called you to be, you've got to move on. I would love to let you walk out of here thinking this is just an option, but for some of you, you have to move on.
You've been having that little feeling in your heart — when you're around them, it just doesn't feel the way it used to feel, and you think, "I think it might be time," but you don't want to, because what will people say? Forget what people have to say. I've lived long enough to know that people will talk about you if you do and they will talk about you if you don't. If they're going to talk about you either way, let them talk about the you that's blessed and paid and excelling and elevating and going to the next level. God forbid I stay stuck on my level just so people won't talk. They're going to have to talk about me and look up at me at the same time.
In the same way some of us have to move on physically, it's time to move on spiritually, relationally, emotionally — and for some of you, financially. The Bible says wherever a man's treasure is, that's where his heart is also, and a lot of times your pocket tells on your heart. There's no amount of gifts you can buy to fix that. You can pour as much money as you want into a season that God has decided is over, and all you're doing is wasting money.
"Moses, my servant, is dead." (Joshua 1:2)
That sentence doesn't grab your attention unless you understand what Moses represented to the people of that time. One of my professors told me something I'll never forget: "The Bible was written for you, but not to you." It's an ancient book with timeless truths — and there's meaning in Scripture you never truly gain until you realize the audience it was actually written to.
Moses went toe-to-toe with Pharaoh and said, "Let my people go." God spoke to Moses face to face. When the Israelites were trapped with Pharaoh's army behind them and the Red Sea in front of them, Moses raised his staff and split the water so they could walk across on dry land. Later, when they got thirsty, Moses struck a rock and water came out. Every time they had a problem, Moses had an answer.
So when Moses dies, they're not mourning a person — they are mourning their preference. They thought whenever God was going to give them an answer, He would use Moses to do it. What do you do when your answer dies? What do you do when your preference dies? Many of us are holding God captive to our preferences.
Moses represented more than just where they were headed — he also represented the way they always thought they'd get there. What do you do when God does what you want, but in a way you didn't expect? What do you do when God says, "In order for Me to take you there, you've got to let go of it"?
"So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, just as the Lord had said. The Lord buried him in a valley near Beth Peor in Moab, but to this day no one knows the exact place." (Deuteronomy 34:5-6)
God buried Moses Himself — God said, in effect, "Moses means so much to you that I can't even let you bury him, because you'll keep going back to the bones of what's dead, trying to bring it back to life."
There are things in your life that you keep trying to resurrect when, truth be told, God said it's dead. That's why some seasons of your life ended abruptly and you never got closure. Closure is a gift you give yourself. Sometimes God has to strip stuff out of your life without giving you any explanation.
Public service announcement: stop explaining yourself to people God has not called you to explain yourself to. Sometimes when God says move on, you've got to get your stuff and go without any explanation.
What do you do when that relationship you were banking on — one you had already planned a wedding around — dies? What do you do with your great job, the one that gave you so much identity and financial security, when God says, "I didn't just call you to be an employee. I also called you to be an employer," and going full throttle into entrepreneurship means letting that job go?
What do you do when God calls you out of a friendship that finally made you feel socially accepted — a friendship that has occupied an unhealthy place in your life because what God intended as an assistance has become a crutch, since you never worked through your rejection issues? You've wrapped your entire identity around it, and when God relocates you out of that circle, you can't function.
For some of us, our Moses has to die because we're more loyal to it than we are to God. God is a jealous God — you can't have any other gods before Him. Sometimes we elevate people, places, and our preferences to godlike levels in our lives. Anytime you make something or someone a rival of God, it's only a matter of time before they lose, because the God I serve is undefeated, undismayed, and sovereign in all His ways. Don't elevate someone to an unhealthy place in your life where they become a rival to God, because it's only a matter of time before God has to knock them down off the pedestal you put them on.
Some things have left your life not because they were bad, but because you put them in the wrong place. They're not wrong — you just had them occupying the wrong place.
"Moses my servant is dead. Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River." (Joshua 1:2)
On the surface this seems insensitive — "God, You don't see what I just lost? You don't see who just left me? I'm here with a broken heart listening to sad love songs." But why do that? It's not helping you heal — you're just sinking deeper, like you're begging what's gone to come back. You're listening to the blues and wondering why you're blue.
This seems insensitive until we engage the history and context. Deuteronomy 34:8 says:
"The Israelites grieved for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days, until the time of weeping and mourning was ended."
Here's what we learn: it was customary for Israel to mourn for only seven days. God gave them thirty. Moses meant so much that God changed His own customary rules to give them extra time to heal.
But God gives you all the time He's going to give you — that's tight, but it's right. He doesn't owe you more time to get it together; that's entitlement, and we need to kill that idea now. He gives you enough time to move on, and then He says, "Now it's time to do what I called you to do."
If you don't grab anything else I say today, grab this: God gave Israel thirty days to mourn Moses, and at the end of those thirty days, He said, "Now it's time to move on." What He's teaching us is this — we can't let mourning keep us from moving.
You've got to learn how to mourn and move at the same time. The next season of your life is going to be defined by how well you learn to mourn and move simultaneously. Mourning and moving are not exclusive — you can do both at the exact same time. Sometimes maturity looks like learning to mourn and move in the same season: "I'm mourning what was while I'm moving into what will be. I'm mourning what I left while moving into what God has for me."
If you are going to mature as a believer, there's some stuff you've got to mourn and move into at the same time. Just because you're doing one does not mean you can't be doing the other. There's a season you might be mourning, but there's also a season God is calling you to move into.
Just because you're doing one does not mean you can't be doing the other. There's a season you might be mourning, but there's also a season God is calling you to move into. There's a you that you used to be that you might be mourning, but there's a you that you're about to be that you have to move into.
I've made up in my mind that I am so in love with who and what God has called me to be that if I have to mourn and move, I'll do it. Because the anointing on my life is not either/or — it's both. My anointing is ambidextrous. People don't even realize what all you've been catching, because you learned to mourn and move at the same time. People look at you and can't tell if you've got a million dollars in the bank or a dollar in the bank, because the way your anointing is set up, you can mourn and move at the same time.
People don't know if you're happy or about to break up, because your lifestyle and your praise are not predicated on the place you are in life. David said:
"I will bless the Lord at all times, and his praise shall continually be in my mouth."
God has called you to move on to what's next, even while you mourn. You've got to learn how to move and mourn at the same time.
Lay your hands on yourself and say, "Self, I prophesy to you that you won't stay stuck. You won't stay stagnant. This is your last season being where you are, because God has called me to move on." Greater is ahead of you. Peace is coming — move on. Joy is coming — move on. The next level is coming — move on. Peace, joy, happiness, fulfillment — it's got your name on it.
"Moses, my servant, is dead. Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I'm about to give them."
He's inviting them to move on into something that's not even fully theirs yet. It takes the type of crazy faith to say, "I can move on a maybe," because what God can do is better than what I've been doing.
Where are you going? Maybe. What's going to happen? It might. When is it going to happen? I don't know. But I trust God enough that if He says move, I'll move. It takes a certain type of faith to move on a maybe.
I'm not telling you what I think — I'm telling you what I know. God told me: "Hollis, leave everything you've ever known. Go to Nashville and start a church." Maybe people are going to come. Maybe they're not. Maybe people are going to give. Maybe it's going to work. Maybe it's not. But when you hear God speak to you, faith says, "I'll move on a maybe."
Moses is the method, not the mission. The problem that most of us have is that we marry methods, not missions. Moses was not the mission — he was the method that God was using to accomplish the mission.
That job is not the mission. It's a method. That last season was not the mission. It was the method. You've got to mature to a place in your walk with God where you hold on to the method loosely and hold on to the mission tightly.
Maturity means: method, we handle loosely; mission, we hold tightly. Sometimes God will call you to divorce a method so that you can marry a mission.
You can't confuse what God is using with what God is doing. You can't confuse who God is using with what God is doing. This is pivotal to your growth and development, because what God is doing is interrupting the Israelites' plans.
You don't like interruptions. Be honest. But that's how you treat God sometimes — "God, hold on, let me finish this, I'll talk to you later."
A sign of maturity as a believer is when you allow God's plans to interrupt yours. A sign of real maturity is when you create a space in your life that says, "God, you can interrupt my plans with yours." Many of us cannot build the life that God wants us to have because we are having too much fun building the life we wanted for ourselves.
Half the songs we sing in praise and worship, we don't even mean. "God, have your way" — but really we want it our way. We correct God: "No, God, this isn't who I'm supposed to marry. No, God, this isn't the job." But the next level of your life will only be unlocked when you give God permission to interrupt you.
His ways are not our ways, His thoughts are not our thoughts. But He is not a man that He should lie, nor the son of man that He should repent — if God has said it, that settles it. If you allow God to interrupt you, you'll find out that you could see to the corner, but God could see around the corner. Sometimes He interrupts the life you wanted to live because He knew it was headed toward a disaster you couldn't see. You're hurting on the front side, but you'll be blessed and better on the back side because you created a space that says, "God, you can interrupt me."
"I will give you every place where you set your foot."
He doesn't say He'll give you some of the places — He says every place where you set your foot. In other words: you're done waiting on it. Now it's time to walk in it.
This is a public service announcement — you're done waiting on it. It's time for you to walk in it. Start walking where you are. I'm walking into the next level, more joy, more peace, abundance, favor — everything God said was mine.
"We walk by faith, not by sight." "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for He is walking with me."
On the surface it sounds like a shout, but truth be told, God is giving us a strategy. Wherever God expects success, He first invests a strategy. Don't let what you don't know stop you from moving on, because God will not expect success without investing a strategy.
The problem is that God gives instructions in increments. He doesn't give you all of it at one time. Sometimes He's waiting on you to make the first move, and then when you make the first move, He'll give you the next move. When you take the first step, He'll give you the next step. So when I told you to start walking, some of you stayed in the same place — and then got mad that God hasn't told you what's next. God is saying, "When you do the last thing, I'll tell you the next thing."
This is what Pastor Mike calls participatory deliverance — sometimes God will do it for you, but when you get to a certain level in Him, He prefers to do it with you.
A miracle is not the greatest indication of what God wants to do in your life. In fact, many times where you see a miracle, it's to fix a problem that somebody didn't properly manage. Do not live your life dependent on miracles.
Jesus turning water into wine was a miracle because somebody mismanaged the wine supply, and He had to give them a miracle to fix their mismanagement. If you live your life dependent on miracles, what you're actually admitting is that you don't practice good management. You shouldn't always need a miracle to bail you out — sometimes the issue isn't that God didn't provide, it's that you mismanaged what you had.
"No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life." (Joshua 1:5)
There's tension in this text — God said He's giving them the land, so why would Joshua need to fight for it? Because God doing His part does not absolve you of your responsibility to do yours. God is preparing Joshua for the reality of what's in front of him.
Moving on isn't just an announcement that you make — it's a set of actions that you take. You make too many announcements about what you're about to do, and you don't take enough actions. In this next season: no announcements, all actions.
"As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will never leave you nor forsake you." (Joshua 1:5)
The Israelites' old foundation was "Moses is with you." The new foundation is "I am with you." They had believed the promise would come to pass because Moses was with them. That foundation was good enough to get them to the doorstep of the promised land, but not enough to get them into it.
Aren't you tired of almost being where God has called you to be? The wrong foundation is that they are with you. The right foundation is that God is with you. Moving on means what I have left is worth more than what I've lost.
"Be strong and courageous... only be strong and courageous." (Joshua 1:6)
God repeats this refrain throughout Joshua chapter 1. He is restricting the emotions Joshua is allowed to feel: "I'm not even going to allow you to feel anything else but strength and courage," because He knew that moving on required fixing your feelings.
What's keeping many of us from moving on to our next season is our emotional attachment to an old season. We romanticize the past — make it feel like something it wasn't. In the field of psychology, they call it revisionist history — when you go back and revise history to look the way you want it to. You look back on that old relationship and swear it was great, when really everyone around you was wondering why you were with them in the first place.
The past is the past. It's time to move on. You're making a decision to let the past be the past, and to move forward — I can't stay stuck, I can't stay where I am, I've got to move on.
When you look back on that old relationship, you swear it was just great. Can I be honest with you? Let me tell you what all the rest of us were thinking — we were really trying to figure out why you were with them in the first place. It may not have been a good fit. When you told your friends who you were dating and they responded with a hesitant "Oh yeah... yeah, I know, yeah" — that should have told you something. We romanticize the past.
Can I tell you something, church? The past is the past. It's time to move on.
You're making a decision to let the past be the past — to let the sound of your feet hitting the ground say, "I've got to move on. I can't stay stuck. I can't stay where I am. I've got to move on."
I believe today is a divine, providential moment for you. You're not here by accident. You're hearing a message like this at a particular time in your life because, truth be told, you know it's time for you to move on. You've been feeling it. Things aren't clicking the way they used to.
God can either motivate you to move, or He can irritate you into moving. Maturity is saying, "God, motivate me. You don't have to irritate me."
"Fix their fingers to fight, and their hands for battle..." (Psalm 144:1)
Father, I pray for everyone whose hand is lifted right now that, according to Psalm 144:1, You would fix their fingers to fight and anoint their hands for battle. I thank You for the promises You've placed on their lives. We are promised people — we have a promise over our lives. The promise on one person's life might be different from the promise on their neighbor's life, but there's a promise nonetheless.
We understand that sometimes elevation requires relocation — sometimes it's hard for us to move up if we are unwilling to move on. So in this moment, as our hands are lifted, it's a sign of surrender — we're taking our hands off of it. We're creating space and capacity in our hearts to move on into who and what You've called us to be.
Moving on is difficult for us for various reasons. So, Lord, I ask that through the power of Your Holy Spirit, You would rise in us and enable us to move on from things we never thought we could. For some of us, we're moving on from mindsets. For some of us, we're moving on from old mentalities and perspectives. For some of us, we're moving on from certain habits, because for too long we've had high hopes but low habits.
God, You are calling us to move. And today, our answer is, and will always be, yes.
