The break
They left everything
Before the wilderness, before the new bearings, before any of the long work of being remade, there is a door, and it closes. That is where every upheaval starts. Watch the fishermen on the lakeshore in Luke's account: they have hauled the boats up onto the sand, and then, with no ceremony at all, they leave everything and follow. Not arrange everything, not wind everything down — leave it. The nets are still wet. The catch is still in the hull. And the men are already walking away. This is the first phase, and it has a name: Disconnect. It is the break, the rupture, the leaving. It is not yet the desert of not-knowing; that comes later. It is simply the moment the old life is set down on the shore and the back is turned. Paul gives the same motion a different verb: the call of God is a call to come out and be separate, to step clear of what has held you. The phrase assumes there is somewhere you are still standing that you are meant to walk away from. The first move of God on a soul, and on the whole church, is almost always that: a leaving before it is ever an arriving.
“When they had brought their boats to land, they left everything, and followed him.”
— Luke, of the first disciples — Luke 5:11 (WEB)
“Come out from among them, and be separate, says the Lord; touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.”
This is Disconnect, the first of the four phases: the break, the rupture, the leaving of the old behind. It does not ask you to understand where you are going. It asks only that you let the door close, set the nets on the shore, and come out — trusting that a leaving authored by God is the opening of a work, not the end of one.
Your upheaval began with a break, something left, ruptured, walked away from, or torn out of your hands. It helps, more than you would think, to know which phase you are in. When your life breaks open, the temptation is to read the whole of it off the first chapter, to take the leaving for the entire story and conclude that loss is all there is. It is not. That hollow ache between the two facts is not a sign something has gone wrong; it is exactly what this first phase feels like from the inside.
Name it, and it stops being a formless dread and becomes a recognizable place on the map. The door that closed behind you was not the end of the road; it was the beginning of one. So if you are standing on the far side of some rupture with the old life still in view across the water and nothing visible ahead — if you have come out but not yet come into — you are not lost. The leaving is real. You are in Disconnect, and the leaving is only the first thing.
Every reformation in the Church's history opens the same way, a coming out, a separating, a leaving of the old arrangement long before any new vitality arrives. The Body's great rummage sales begin in rupture, not renewal. Watched from outside, that first phase looks like Christianity simply falling apart before a watching world. But Disconnect is not the failure of the work; it is the start of it, the door closing so another can open. Paul's call to come out and be separate assumes a place the people of God are still standing that they are meant to walk away from. The first move of God on the whole Church, as on a soul, is almost always a leaving before an arriving.
When the old life is set on the shore and the new one is nowhere in sight, what cannot be shaken is the One who issued the call. The leaving is His doing, not your undoing. He does not summon a soul out of one place without intending, in His own time, to bring it into another.
- What did my upheaval ask me to leave on the shore, and have I actually let it go?
- Am I reading the whole of my story off this first chapter of leaving?
- Can I trust that coming out is the start of God's work in me, not the proof of His absence?
Lord, You have called me out, the door has closed behind me, and I cannot yet see the road ahead. Help me set the old life down on the shore and follow, trusting that a leaving You author is the opening of Your work. Hold me in the break until You bring me through. Amen.