Good morning and hello friends,
The name of the song is “Holy Ground”. What does it all mean? Am I holy? Are you Holy?
We sing the song. We close our eyes, raise our hands. “We are standing on holy ground.” We feel the swell, the presence, the angels all around. We mean it. In that moment, in the gathered assembly with the music lifting, it feels true.
Then the service ends. We put our shoes back on. We walk out into the parking lot. The feeling fades. The “holy ground” stays behind, in the building, with the sound system.
We have misunderstood the geography of God.
Look at the pattern, straight from the scrolls:
Moses at the burning bush. An ordinary hillside in Midian, doing his job. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground” (Exodus 3:5).
Joshua outside Jericho. A plot of dirt before a battle. “Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy” (Joshua 5:15).
Jacob at Bethel. A random stone for a pillow. “Surely the Lord is in this place… How awesome is this place!” (Genesis 28:16-17).
Notice what consecrated the dirt. Not a ceremony. Not a priest’s blessing. Not a song. It was the immediate, manifest presence of God. His arrival made the ground holy. His departure would leave it just dirt again. The holiness was relational, not permanent. It was a moment of intersection where heaven touched earth, and the only appropriate response was to strip off the trappings of your journey, your sandals, and acknowledge you were on territory that was no longer yours.
Now hear the thunderous shift of the New Covenant:
“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you?” (1 Corinthians 6:19).
“In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.” (Ephesians 2:22).
The “holy ground” is no longer a where. It is a who.
It is you.
The burning bush isn’t on a mountain; it’s in your chest. The Commander of the Lord’s army doesn’t meet you before a battle; He indwells you for the war you’re already in. The gate of heaven isn’t at Bethel; it’s the gateway of your submitted will.
So how do we become holy, set apart?
We don’t become it by effort. We recognize it by revelation. We acknowledge what already is. God is here. In me. By His Spirit. Therefore, the ground of my life, my thoughts, my actions, my home, my work, my quiet, my chaos, is holy ground. Consecrated by His presence.
The command remains the same: Take off your shoes.
But now it’s not leather and laces. It’s the trappings of the journey of the old life. It’s the dust of the world you’ve walked in.
Take off the sandals of autonomy. The lie that you are the author of your own path.
Take off the sandals of self-justification. The grime of trying to earn what is freely given.
Take off the sandals of old identities. The worn-in ways of belonging to the kingdom of dust.
This is the “set apart” life. It is not about being weird for weirdness’s sake. It is about living with the conscious, daily, shoe-less awareness that you are a walking Bethel. A mobile burning bush. The world will recognize it not because you have a fish on your car, but because you live with a reverence, a different gait, a barefoot humility in a world that is always shod and shielded.
Your lamp shines because you live contrary. You forgive when you should get even. You speak truth when a lie would be easier. You remain pure when everything screams to indulge. You serve when you have the right to be served. You do this not to be “set apart” as a performance, but because you are standing on holy ground and you dare not track the mud of the world across it.
We sing, “We are standing in his presence on holy ground.” The question is: do we believe it when the music stops? When the argument starts? When the bill is due? When the temptation whispers?
The call is to live shoe-less. Every day. In the grocery store. On the zoom call. In the silence of your own kitchen. To feel the cool, sacred ground of your consecrated life under your feet and remember: He is here. This is His temple. Act like it.
That is how the world sees a difference. Not by our stained glass, but by our bare feet. Not by our songs, but by our stripped-away pride. We are set apart because He is within. The ground is holy because He has claimed it.
Take off your shoes. You’ve been standing on sacred ground this whole time.
That is all, and thank you for reading.
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Shashue Monrauch