The path to freedom is not safe. Who has ever made their way from bondage to freedom without risk? There are always things to go under, around, or through. Barriers and obstacles, one after another, designed to limit progress and make escape seem futile.
I met God in the wilderness of the unfamiliar. The kind of place where you can see only one step in front of you and have to call on Jesus to take that. Where the math doesn’t add up and the map has no coordinates and all the strategy has gone out of the plan. In these spaces God shows up as a knowing in your gut or a whisper in your ear asking, Do you trust me? Sometimes it’s a call to cross a state or the country or the ocean to learn from serving a people you do not know. Sometimes it’s a weight on your heart when you’ve started out the door that compels you to stay instead.
The problem is, “safety” sells. Marketing execs have built billion dollar industries convincing us of the perils lying in wait for us at every step outside our comfort zones. We are encouraged to play it safe. Don’t venture too far. Don’t stir up trouble. Don’t ask too many questions. Just go along. Trouble is, the one we follow does not espouse to this. Repeatedly the people of God are called to be courageous and fearless. To step into the unknown and the disruptive.
Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous! Do
not be terrified or dismayed (intimidated), for the Lord your
God is with you wherever you go. (Joshua 1:9)
We are warned by humanity to “Be careful!” while we hear God saying, “Be courageous.” There is no promise or implication of safety in the Bible. Time after time we see ordinary people making risk-filled choices that lead them not into destruction but into extraordinary life.
Mordecai calls Esther out from the safety of silence to a potentially life-threatening confrontation with the king in order to stop the genocide of her people. Gideon is led by God to confront the Midian army of thousands with just three hundred men. Jesus calls his disciples from the routines and trades of their day-to-day existence to the angry mobs and stormy seas of new life. Throughout history, men and women have chosen to walk away from the safety of the majority and the comfortable into the wilderness of the unknown and the uncertain. Because on the other side of that desert is liberty.
I’ve often wondered, if Moses was able to get from Egypt to Midian to Mount Horeb and back to Egypt without crossing the Red Sea, why did God lead the Israelites to pass through it? Perhaps there was another way to get to where they were going, but this was the path that stopped their enemies’ pursuit. The story of the journey through the waves and the wilderness would become the reference point to undergird the Jewish faith even to this present day. It was that experience that distinguished them as the chosen people and brought fear to the hearts of their enemies. It was the beginning of their transition from slaves to sons and marked God, not Pharoah, as the only sovereign Lord in their lives.
Like Israel, many of us have cried out to God for freedom. We want to see change in our personal lives or communities. We long to be delivered from a nationalist faith and a colonized church. We want the world to be changed, less violent, more just, but what are we willing to give up to get there? What are we willing to do? Where are we willing to go? The Spirit of God is urging us forward toward the new and the next that we have cried out for God to give us. Yet we find ourselves clinging to the familiarity of Egypt or looking for an alternate route. God may be leading us in a direction that appears more challenging and dangerous, but perhaps it is the course we must take for our transition from bondage to freedom. Unfortunately, we too often choose a vague, small life and a feeble, small faith that is safe.
As early as kindergarten we are taught it is best to just be quiet. We learn to follow the feet of the one ahead of us. To walk in step and stay single file. To operate within the boundaries of the schoolyard. We play the games that are taught to us and pledge allegiance to the flag. And almost always we walk and color within the lines. But Jesus is still whispering to the called-out ones, calling us out into the deep and into the wild. Because while the journey of faith and freedom may involve many things yet unimagined, one thing is certain. It will not be safe.
He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of
Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not
worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross [expressing
a willingness to endure whatever may come] and follow Me
[believing in Me, conforming to My example in living and, if
need be, suffering or perhaps dying because of faith in Me] is
not worthy of Me. Whoever finds his life [in this world] will
[eventually] lose it [through death], and whoever loses his life
[in this world] for My sake will find it [that is, life with Me for
all eternity]. (Matthew 10:37-39)
Taken from Enough for Today by Donna Barber. Copyright (c) 2025 by Donna Marie Barber. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com
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