I remember coming back from the Mexico mission trip and feeling like I'd had a mountain-high experience with God. I had worked wholeheartedly for Him, seen His fingerprints everywhere, been influenced to serve Him in all areas of my life, etc. He had become very real to me and I was so passionate for Him. I remember feeling like I had it figured out - this was the kind of relationship God wanted... and I prayed that I would never descend from that place on the mountain, but would only reach higher places.
After a week or so, the passion and excitement faded. I wasn't so stoked to serve anymore and I didn't want to keep pursuing God this wholeheartedly. I was slipping down the mountain and I knew it. I remember being frustrated with myself for heading into a valley when I knew I should be on the mountain-top. I was depressed that I had let myself fall, but I didn't know what to do and I didn't have the energy to climb back up. I felt like some sort of fake-Christian who only served Jesus on mission trips, but not in real life.
I found it comforting, or relieving actually, when I heard this Sunday's church sermon. The pastor's main message was that we can't always be on the mountain... even as wholehearted Christians; God wants us to experience Him in the valleys as well. For it is in the valleys that we learn faith, to fear no evil, that God is always with us, that we desperately need a Savior to pull us out, and that God is the only One worth trusting for He, alone, can (and has already)save us. We find a need for God when we are in the valley that we don't feel when we're on the mountain. The truth is, there will always be another valley. But with God, there is always another mountain.
It wasn't bad that I fell down the mountain - it was inevitable. What would have been bad would be to stay in the valley, to refuse to trust Him even in the darkest of times, to deny refinement. Instead, we should let the valleys be a time of learning, trusting, believing and growing. And remember that your greatest day is always ahead of you. You are not alone.
*Miss Bush deserves credit for the title of this post.
1 comment:
I have always thought that for Jesus the Valley had to be especially disheartening. He would preach to 5000, feed the multitude, then get into the boat and have Peter and the others doubting within hours...that he didn't call down angels to smote them all has to be proof of his divinity.
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