Uproot from comfort, flourish in newness

A month ago, I asked the Lord to show me what He is calling His people to and what He has for us as a church. He gave me some pretty sweet words that should ring true for us every. single. day. It’s such a sweet reminder, that I decided to make a sticker so that you can put it in a place that you look every. single. day! yay!

So here are the words! (a photo of the sticker will be attached at the bottom) 

He said, “uproot and plant.” So I asked Him to show me more of what these words mean, and He told me, “uproot from comfort and plant in newness in order to flourish. to thrive. to grow.” He then brought me to the verse Jeremiah 1:10. 

“See, today I appoint you over the nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.”(NIV) 

I love these words because this is what we are called to do when we choose to follow Jesus and walk in the Kingdom of God. 

We are supposed to uproot ourselves from the comfortable and our broken motives. To me, being comfortable often means blending in with the crowd. It means agreeing with what they’re saying or doing even when I know that it goes against what Jesus stands for and what I stand for. Jesus actually called us to be set apart from the crowd. To be set apart from these societal norms and broken motives within nations and governments. We aren’t supposed to go with the flow at the cost of surrendering what we know to be righteous and the truth. Instead, we are called to go against the grain, because everything about how the Kingdom of God operates is opposite of how we operate as nations and governments on Earth. Hear this loud and clear, this definitely doesn’t mean causing upheavals within our nations and governments. That’s not God’s heart either. Uprooting from comfort simply means choosing to live as Jesus lived by stepping outside of the norms and of being comfortable. It might mean that you stick out like a sore thumb and that people look at you like you’re kinda crazy, but when we live outside of how we’re “supposed to,” it’s noticeable. It’s not our jobs to change everything either, because only God can do that, but when we allow Him to move through us when we uproot ourselves from our comfort and living out of our broken human motives, the Kingdom of God is brought near. 

Our jobs are to uproot ourselves from comfort and the norms of the world, tear down walls of separation (whether that be hate, fear, racism, etc.) between nations and governments by being Jesus’s example of love, and to destroy and overthrow darkness by being Jesus’s light. 

The second part of the verse tells us to build and to plant. The second word that the Lord gave me was to plant in newness. God calls us to build up everything on the foundation of His love and often, even though we may claim that something is done in the name of love, we have strayed far away from that. It’s about the actual heart behind the action, not the appearance of love. We should be building up people and our relationships with them on the basis of love (not on the basis of envy or pride or jealousy or whatever other broken motive.) 1 Corinthians 16:14 says, “let all that you do be done in love.” This means REAL love. From this building up of people and relationships, we are then able to move into building up bigger communities of people. Whether that be in the church, in our schools, in the workplace, on our sports teams, in our government or in our nation, we are called to build each other up in love. The word the Lord specifically gave me though was not to plant. I love the idea of planting, because once you put a seed in the ground, you can water it, but ultimately you have to trust that it will grow. You can’t really do anything to actually make it grow. You can use machines to help you build, but machines won’t make a plant grow. In Luke 8, the parable of the sower, only the seeds that fell upon good soil were the ones that grew and flourished. When we plant ourselves in new and healthy soil and trust God, we are able to not only grow, but flourish. The second part of the verse says, “It came up and yielded a crop, a hundred times more than was sown.” See? Flourishing. 

When we plant ourselves in newness, we are no longer in our comfort zones or in our very human mind and heart postures with broken motives. Newness pushes us to rely solely on God to be our foundation and the renewer of our minds (see Romans 12:2). Being planted in new and healthy soil will not only grow us, but allow our communities (and even our nations) to flourish because of His love.  

Jeremiah 1:10 is a verse that holds a lot of weight and responsibility, but more than that, POWER. I love it because lately the Lord has been blowing my mind with what He allows us to be a part of. Helping to uproot from, tear down, destroy and overthrow broken and corrupt norms? Then building and planting in love so that nations can flourish? Huge. And He’s letting us be part of it. 

This ‘uproot from comfort. flourish in newness’ sticker is available for purchase to help me fundraise for airline tickets to get to and from Georgia, where Adventures in Missions is located since this transportation is not covered in fundraising with World Race! I am FULLY FUNDED FOR TEAM LEADING which means that lodging, food, airline tickets for out of the country travel, etc. are covered for me through World Race, even though it might now show up in the bar yet. If you would still like to donate please do so on Venmo @Elena-DeLaPaz-3! 

Stickers are $4. 

If you would like to purchase, make sure to get me your address (you can email me: [email protected]) and the number you would like so I can mail them to you!

Also, this is just what these words and verse mean to me. If the Lord gives you a different interpretation of it, please share! I’d love to know what He speaks to you through it:) 

Thank you for all of the love, encouragement and support! 

Elena