Do you sense God calling you to a higher level, but everything in your life says otherwise? Whether you’ve had a word spoken over you or you just sense the Holy Spirit moving through you, there are likely a few shifts that are taking place to prepare you for a breakthrough.

So, today, I want to talk to you about three signs that God is calling you to a higher level.  When God moves you to the next level it frequently comes with the positions of Greater influence and blessings. And before you go getting excited you’re going to want to be careful that you are prepared for all those blessings. You see God is more concerned with your character than your comfort.

So if you sense that God desires to take you to a higher level, it’s likely that these three signs are taking place in your life.

#1 – He’s removing people. I hear this one from friends and clients alike. “I just keep losing friends.”  And it is almost like this desperate loneliness in their voice. And when pressed, they admit that these people actually weren’t all that great for them and in some cases, they didn’t even like them. But it was a warm body nonetheless and it stings when these people leave.

So here’s the thing, 1 Corinthians 15:33 reminds us that “bad company corrupts good morals.” God knows the people that are good for you and he knows the ones that are going to be a hindrance to your purpose. You cannot climb to higher levels with God while holding on to a reliance on the wrong people. He may remove toxic relationships that you didn’t have the courage to remove. He may even remove relationships that seemed healthy, but God knows what’s best. The question is, “Will you trust him?”

If however, you are the type who is overly reliant on people toxic or not, God may begin to remove these people from your life since He wants to be your source and this can even refer to things being removed from your life. Oftentimes, we have an unhealthy attachment to things and people, look, God gave us things to have, not things to have us. People will often ask this question in a panic, “How much is going to be removed?” And the answer is, “I don’t know how much breakthrough do you want?”

#2 – You’re being disciplined. Feel like others are getting away with things that are far worse than what you are doing? Feel like God has you on a short leash?  It’s certainly possible my friend and I would encourage you to not focus on what God is doing in other’s lives, but on what he is doing in your life, Hebrews 12:5-6 says “my son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline and do not lose heart when he rebukes you because the Lord disciplines the one he loves and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.” 

And Proverbs 3:12 says, “for the Lord’s disciplines, the one he loves just as a father disciplines the son in whom he delights.”  Look, as hard as it is to believe God’s discipline is because he loves us and he wants what’s best for us. He actually wants to take you to a higher level, but can’t do so with sin, coping mechanisms, and bad behavior otherwise holding you back.

When my daughter was younger I would have to discipline her for not taking care of her chores in the agreed-upon time frame and she would give me attitude and sometimes you just wouldn’t do the chore at all. And some may consider this typical teenage behavior and perhaps they would say, Awe come on Kris, just pick your battles. She’ll grow out of it. It’s not worth it. But to me, it was because I knew that it was important not for me but for her to grow up and be a responsible young lady that honored her word. And to do this, she would need development, and in that development. She also needed to be disciplined.

God’s discipline is meant to refine us. If we jump back down to Hebrews 12 and go onto verse 11, it goes on to tell us that “no discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful later on however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have trained by it.”

Let’s be honest. If allowed to get away with our junk, we would have a tendency to ignore our flaws but it’s these flaws that will hinder your growth and success later. And that is why God disciplines us.

#3 – He’s isolating you. When God wants to prepare you to go to a higher level, he will often put you in a season of isolation and he does this often in scripture, especially for His prophets. And the purpose of isolation is to give God the opportunity to speak to us and receive our undivided attention. You see, the more distractions you have in your life, the more it’s going to feel like everything is being taken from you. It’s not true, however, the truth is that those things should never have taken priority over God, to begin with, the truth is that we should be seeking solitude ourselves to seek God’s will, for our lives.  Jesus did.  

Luke 5:16 reminds us “But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray.” And this is different than God purging people from your life. In this case, there may be nothing wrong with the people that are in your life right now, but he needs you to be relying upon him, not them. The season of isolation can be lonely for some if your reliance upon people in your life and your circumstances always feel good. You could be missing your next breakthrough.  Billy Graham once said, “God does not discipline us to subdue us but to condition us for a life of usefulness and blessedness.”

God longs to bless you. If you are struggling in your faith or want to grow in your faith, I want to invite you to join us for a FREE 5-day Mountain Moving Faith devotional. This devotional will be sent right to your inbox.