What’s the last thing you did that made you look foolish?

Something that I’ve been learning about is taking on the mentality of being “foolish for Jesus.” Being a human that steps into boldness in a way that could be perceived by the world as acting foolish, when in reality all that I’m doing is acting upon the urgency that is the Gospel.

It was our last day in Boquete, and we had been dropped off in town to evangelize. We split up into groups of three and said a prayer, asking the Holy Spirit what He wanted of us that day. As we began walking and praying, we walked past the town square. Matthew stopped in his tracks and quietly said “I think I know what we need to do today.” As he said this, he pulled out his Bible and turned to Joshua 6, The Battle of Jericho.

In this battle, the Lord tells Joshua to have his armies march around the city once for 6 days, and then on the 7^th day they were told to march 7 times, blowing horns and trumpets on the 7^th march, and the walls of the city were to collapse. The armies did as they were told, and low and behold, that is exactly what happened.

Knowing that Boquete is a spiritually heavy place full of witchcraft, Matthew exclaimed that we needed to boldly pray over the city, in hopes that the spiritual walls that we all felt in the town would fall in the name of Jesus. I can confidently share with all of you that if somebody were to come up to me five months ago and ask me to march around a square 7 times while praying out loud, I literally would have thought they were crazy! But in that moment, I intentionally made the decision to be a fool for Jesus; I risked looking silly and being judged for something much greater.

So, there I was in the middle of town in Boquete, Panama, experiencing the weight of being “foolish for Jesus” in its fullness for the first time. We began to march while boldly asking the Lord to break down the walls that were so present around us. As we finished our first lap, we noticed other groups from our squad that had gone out to evangelize had joined us, and before we knew it our whole squad was marching right there with us! As we finished our 6^th lap, Matthew stopped us and encouraged us to do the 7^th lap from a heart posture of worship, thanking the Lord simply for who He is and where He is moving. We all eagerly went into lap 7, boldly proclaiming the truths of who Jesus is. I began feeling overwhelmed with joy as I marched. As soon as I noticed the joy that had come upon me, I looked in front of me and saw that my friend, Aneleise, who had joined our prayer march, was wearing a shirt with the words “The Joy of Marching” across it.

In that moment the Lord reminded me of the joy that comes from being a fool for Jesus! What an absolute privilege it is to have a God who asks us to be people who walk in the boldness of who He is. Whether you’re marching around a town square in the middle of Panama, or simply complimenting somebody in line at the grocery store, I think that we can all work on being people who take small, or sometimes huge, steps into boldness.

How much more joy do you think our world could carry if we made the conscious effort to walk in boldness in order to chase “The Joy of Marching?”